Excel Together New Mexico

A new type of career development course

The primary focus of most career guidance in the United States is on the choice of a career. This webpage introduces Career Strategies, a new type of career guidance course that instead focuses on the skill of making career decisions throughout your life. Career Strategies comes free with CSM, and so anyone taking CSM in West Virginia can access this course.

Overview of Career Strategies

People make many career decisions throughout their life. This could be choosing the vocational or college program that they'll take after high school, deciding that their current career isn't working for them, signing up for a management program at the fast food restaurant at which they work, or simply asking their manager to help mentor them at work.

Making career decisions includes both mindsets about how one addresses both work and career, as well as specific knowledge and skills to make informed and optimal decisions. Career Strategies is designed to build an internal career coach in a person's head, so it can guide them all day, every day as they navigate the world of work.

Lessons and Resources

Some Career Strategies lessons:

  • the differences between a job and career -- it's not about the job you have, it's about how the approach you take of building a career
  • you should always be thinking about your job, and not just at a few career transition points
  • there's more to a job than how much it pays, and how to think about the different factors
  • a living wage gives you a basic target salary -- it's an attainable wage that provides nearly as much life satisfaction as a person with a million-dollar income
  • the key to work and life success isn't choosing a job with purpose and passion, but learning how to put purpose and passion into any job that you have
  • you should always be on a career path, but if it's not working for you, it's OK to jump into another pathway, and there are ways to do that effectively

These lessons are paired with free resources from around the web to help a person in career planning.  

How to take Career Strategies

Career Strategies is provided free along with CSM, or it can be taken on its own for $9.

When taken with CSM, it can be delivered either in-between CSM lessons, or after CSM. The course takes most people 6-8 hours to complete, but there are resources that can fill many hours of student time if they are interested.

  • People who already have a CSM account can add Career Strategies for free! They only have to login to their SeeMore Impact Labs account and then choose the Career Strategies course.
  • If a person hasn't previously registered for CSM, they can register for a SeeMore Impact Labs account here. In the registration process, it will ask them which courses they'd like to take, and they can select Career Strategies -- they will have to pay the $9 fee, however.

If you have any questions, please contact us.

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