Lunch and Learn series aims to make job searching easy

The Lunch and Learn series is a new program during power hour to help students find subjects of interest that await them after high school.

Counselor Chris Wood said that the counseling department wanted to start this series because there are students who would like to job shadow but don’t have time in their schedule or can’t leave the building.

“The goal of the Lunch And Learn series is to give you general information about the job in that field,” Wood said. “Kelly Kobliska, the Cedar Valley Career Connections individual at Hawkeye, gave me the idea of the Lunch and Learn series to promote job shadows. We want to bring in career speakers once a week or once every other week during power hour to talk about what their jobs are like and what it takes to get into that field.”

Beth Johannes from Black Hawk Grundy Memorial Hospital came and spoke this past week.

“We targeted the science cluster first because it is the largest percentage of what our students show interest in based on the career cruising tests we did last year,” Wood said.

Although last week’s Lunch and Learn didn’t pull in large numbers, Johannes agreed to do job shadows with some of the students that attended.

Wood said he would love if each student would be able to participate in a job shadow.

“If you go into a job shadow you thought you were going to love and you hated it, that’s the biggest success because you won’t waste your time at college doing something you thought was going to be great.”

Wood added that 25-30 percent of students that go on job shadows end up disliking them, but it rules something out they thought they were going to like.

“Usually the students that end up disliking their job shadows find something they enjoy, so then they do a different job shadow,” he said. “Each month we are going to have a career theme, and then each week different types of jobs in that career.”

Wood said that he is open to having speakers of all career fields come in and talk. He is hoping to get the series rolling by the middle of January and will be taking suggestions once second semester start.

Wood said he hopes that as word gets out, the Lunch and Learn series will continue to grow, as it is an easy way for students to get a taste of what’s out there after high school.