At Rize, we’re dedicated to supporting students in pursuing fulfilling and rewarding careers. We’re also committed to finding the best way to support our partner institutions in their efforts to assist students along this journey. That’s why we recently rolled out Career Navigation and Exploration Courses in Business Analytics, Computer Science, Cybersecurity, and Digital Marketing. Student feedback has been stellar so far.
“My favorite assignment has been exploring the right jobs for me. It was great looking at what job best suits me and my interests.”
"I love this class as is!” - Student when asked what they would change about their Career Navigation course so far
“It was like it peeped into the inner chapters of my mind and knew what am I planning to pursue in life” - Student after using the exploration tool
But we wanted to provide more opportunities for every student to explore best-fit careers. That’s why we’re excited to share that in addition to career navigation courses, we’ve built a free and easy career exploration tool for students to explore their possible career paths.
A recent Rize survey of 600 4th-year students in the Spring 2024 semester found that the most common challenge students faced in their job search was - “I don’t know what type of job I want.”
Our research has also shown that students are actively searching for more information about the career paths available to them in their fields of study.
It’s discouraging for a student to get that close to the finish line, with a degree in sight, and yet still feel confused and undecided about what career path is right for them. Career exploration resources give students a way to discover career paths early in their college journey, and academic content alongside skill-building projects help support students in building their unique pathway to success. Freeform, lightweight exploration is a vital first step on a long journey of discovery that ends with a student who’s confident about their future.
Studies show that when students are engaging with career resources, they’re more likely to persist and complete their degree. When students use exploration tools, they’re opening their eyes to career paths they may have never considered and understanding how their academic program empowers them along that path. They also have the chance to reaffirm their confidence in a given pathway, by seeing that pathway as a top match in their results.
Deciding what to study is difficult for students, especially first-year students. Nearly half of students regret their major after graduation, often due to dissatisfaction with their employment outcomes. Our tool combats this by helping students understand the ROI of their education and giving them a way to calculate the ROI of different career paths using BLS salary data.
Students who use our tool take a short personality assessment, backed by Holland’s Theory of Vocational Personalities, which utilizes a framework of keywords and work activities to map an individual to a personality type measured across six categories: realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising, and conventional. It’s a long-standing framework that has proven helpful in academic and career advising for years. The assessment results include a description of their personality type, a list of occupations and career categories that are the best match for their personality, and a list of relevant fields of study for those categories. The entire experience is supplemented with salary data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and job titles and descriptions from O*NET database.
At Rize, we believe that career exploration is critical to a student's education. That’s why we’re excited to empower our partner institutions with more career exploration and navigation resources that help students build excitement and clarity about their future after college.
Schedule a call with your dedicated Rize liaison to learn more about our career resources and how they can benefit your institution.
