As spring creeps up on students at the Ridge, the junior world of work requirement does the same. Before graduation, students must complete a world of work requirement to prepare them for post-secondary life, whether in the workforce, continuing with schooling or other ventures. The requirement allows students to engage in a semi-professional environment and learn the necessary skills to flourish as an adult. For Marriott’s Ridge, juniors must participate in an interview and create a resume detailing their skills and accomplishments thus far, teaching them valuable skills in the work application process.
Although not necessarily graded on the quality of both the resume and interview, the process results in juniors obtaining feedback. Juniors can use this feedback to learn and improve their application skills when they officially attempt to apply for jobs and colleges after high school. Not only can students use the skills and feedback from the event to help them in the future, but students can also use the resumes they built themselves to improve upon and submit for applications.
“I think that the juniors interviews are important because they can provide people with experience with writing good resumes and doing a job interview for later in life,” noted junior Andrew Keiner.
Traditionally, the lessons and assignments associated with completing the requirement are done through the English 11 courses. For most students, this works well as they are able to engage with the material through school; however, a larger proportion of juniors are starting to take their English credit through HCC. Since these students don’t have an English class, many are lost on what they need to accomplish for the credit.
“I [felt] like I had no idea what I was doing because I didn’t even know if I was supposed to have both the resume and the cover letter,” said junior Ariana Calin.
Luckily, these students had access to an online resource available to them, which had a trove of information on how to write a resume. Alongside this resource, the College & Career Readiness Advisor, Mr. Gittermann, hosted sessions where these students could gather information on the resume-building and interview process while also asking any necessary clarifying questions.
For many students, HCC or not, building a resume can be a difficult task, especially high schoolers who don’t have nearly as much work and life experience as someone joining the workforce. Although many students don’t have an abundance of work experience, if any at all, students do have skills and qualities that they have fostered throughout their lives. These skills are separated into hard and soft skills: hard skills, quantifiable measures of expertise like proficiency in languages, and soft skills, positive measures of character. These skills can fill up more space than they usually would on a resume instead of work experience in order to demonstrate a person’s character.
“There are lots of ways to build a resume. One of the things I would focus on right now is writing it. Focus on your skills… You might want to put your GPA on there, but you might not. If you haven’t had a lot of work experience, you can maybe list clubs or activities… strengths or other skills you have,” imparted counselor and junior lesson planner Ms. McKechnie.
The interview process itself, which took place on March 14th, also proved stressful for many students who were anxious to talk to an adult about themselves and their accomplishments.
Juniors were required to dress up for the occasion and answer questions from parents. When preparing for the interview, many juniors received advice from the senior class not to stress about it.
“[I am] slightly nervous, but from what I’ve heard from seniors… they say it was easy, just dress well and show up,” stated junior Andrew Zhang before the interview date
Whether or not a student uses the resume they built for the junior interview in the future, the experience they gain from the event as a whole can prove useful for their post-secondary life. The event also acts as a wake-up call for juniors that they need to start planning for their life after high school, coming only a handful of months before they start to apply for colleges.