Accounting Program – Employment Strategies

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Section 1: Understanding Yourself

Contents:

 

Section 1: Understanding Yourself

Salary Review

Regardless of your priorities, most agree that a person’s wages are important when seeking a job.  Most of you have salary either in your top 3 or top 5 priorities. 

However, some of you have salary in your bottom 3 and that is okay.  The bottom line is that to achieve your educational, family, personal and financial goals; regardless, the salary you earn in your career plays an important role.

This next exercise will help you understand your career interests and priorities in terms of money.  We will use a powerful tool on the internet called Salary.com to research earning potential.

After compiling information about career earning potential, you will then reflect on how this impacts your 5-year forecast and your career interests in general.

Using the internet, visit this website:  www.salary.com

To help you understand how to read salary data from this website, your instructor will walk you through a sample career. 

The objective for this exercise is to use Salary.com to research the salaries of careers that interest you. 

Thus, you need to recall the 4 careers you researched in earlier exercises.

Use the worksheet below to record your results.


Salary.com findings

Career #

Career
description

Entry level
 salary

Median
salary

1

 

 

 

 

2

 

 

 

 

3

 

 

 

 

4

 

 

 

 

5

 

 

 

 

6

 

 

 

 

Think.  How do you feel about the results of your findings?  Compare your five year forecast with your salary findings.  Will the salaries involved with your current career choice and other career interests allow you to accomplish your goals and dreams?

After thinking about these things, you should put your thoughts on paper.  It will continue to help solidify the foundation of an effective employment strategy.

Thought-paper instructions

For each career area, write thoughts about the salary findings:
o Are the salaries what you expected?
o How do the salaries fit into your goals and dreams?
o Are there any career choices you should eliminate?

Each bullet point above should contain a 1-2 paragraph reflection.