Enhancing Job Awareness Through Career Exploration Course – A Report

Abstract

In recent years, in developed countries such as the USA, Europe and Japan, ‘career search behaviour’ awareness and practice via university courses have been a keen focus. However, this is not the case in Malaysia, even worse is, university students do not think about it at all. This career exploration course was introduced with the aim to raise undergraduate students’ awareness toward job searching before graduation. This was a 14-week career exploration introductory course with four main interventions; 1) to set your future career goal, conduct an interview with a graduated senior from the same faculty, who work in the industry you are interested in and then share with your course mate the interview results and what you have learned from the interview via oral presentation, 2) once the career goal is set, learn the techniques of making career-related documents(e.g., resume writing), 3)do a self-examination on the knowledge and skills required in the job market and make a career searching action plan, 4) share and discuss your actual job search action plan via second oral presentation. Learning achievement is measured via continuous assessments and final written examination. Excerpts from the written examination revealed that students were more aware of the importance of conducting job searching activities before graduation and skills learned on career-related documents and writing the job search action plan have been useful to them.