| October 9, 2019 | Mark Giles | reporter |
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Employing a brief but informative style, TR career services coordinator Kristin Vinson, focused her Oct. 1 career exploration speech on aligning students’ majors with their careers.
Vinson, who gave her presentation in TR’s Discovery Center, talked about MyPlan.com, which helps students make decisions about their majors and careers. According to Vinson, students take four assessments on the website to find a career match that will give them specific job duties. The site also helps students build their resume and their overall portfolio.
Vinson gave different reasons why people do not remain at one job for long.
“Know the lifespan of your industry,” Vinson said.
It might negatively impact one’s life if one moves from job to job, so having a personal career with a backup plan is the key to success, Vinson said.
Over the course of three careers, Vinson has spent 10 years working for TCC. She knows what “people like and how to communicate with them,” she said. She urged students to “find a fine line between your passion and the money you are making.”
Vinson also gave information on the 16 different personality types that reflect on a number of characteristics, such as extroversion, introversion, sensing, intuition, thinking, feeling, judging and perceiving.
One of the personality types Vinson cited is “the performer,” characterized by extroversion, sensing, feeling and perceiving. Vinson also suggested that a person can have more than one personality type. MyPlan.com can help students find their personality types if they struggle to figure it out.
Dantrayl Smith, head of the Intercultural Network and organizer of the career workshops, praised Vinson.
“She is an extreme expert when it comes to careers,” Smith said. “She is able to do a formal assessment based upon MyPlan. She’s very well connected with the employer community and can assist you with making sure you pursue the major that you want and that you understand all the options that are available to you so that you can be successful.”
TR student Mariana Nasir said she enjoyed the speech and “liked how it was small and everyone has their own advice, plus how relevant and useful it was.”
