By Mona Lisa Tucker/south news editor

South Campus will hold National Career Week Nov. 15-17, when various seminars will be presented, career center coordinator Monica Miranda, she said.

Every year, South has commemorated the week with a seminar, she said.

“But this is the first time that we have three for the whole week,” she said.

Make the Connection: Career Clusters and Military Careers will start the trio of seminars Nov. 15.

The session’s purpose is to teach students how their military service can connect to military careers using O*Net occupations, Miranda said.

“The O*Net is like a handbook. It’s a guide online that lists occupations and lists job descriptions and salary history and working conditions,” she said.

Miranda said the First-Year Career Guidance and Planning Nov. 16 will teach college freshmen a variety of techniques that can help them focus on selecting a major, self-assessment, exploring occupations and developing an action plan for career decision-making.

Overall, the seminar is designed to get students thinking about their next semester in college, she said.

“A lot of times, students, they don’t plan ahead of time, and so we’re just trying to gear them to start thinking early,” she said.

The Sorting Through My Career Values seminar Nov. 17 is fashioned to help students find their values in relation to work, Miranda said.

People’s values seldom coincide with the values of the environment or company they will work for, she said.

Variables within the seminar include time freedom, position work, technical competence and public contact, she said.

“Sometimes if you’re in a job or you’ve chosen a career that is more than 40 hours a week, you really don’t have time freedom,” she said.

For example, the nursing field has 12-hour shifts and rotating days, leaving very little free time.

Position work is detailed. Most jobs require employees to have computer and people skills.

Therefore, students should know who they are and what they can or cannot do, she said.

“It’s just a way to get job seekers to fine-tune their present jobs and career changers to figure out where they are in their process and maybe re-evaluate what they’re doing so that they can make changes and then get in the right direction,” she said.

All seminars are 1-2 p.m. in the SSTU Texas Room.