Try Stuff: Career Mind Mapping
A mindmap is a visual representation or drawing that connects information related to a central topic. In this case, we are focusing on areas of career interest. Creating a mind map allows you to compile all your activities, interests, and ideas on a given topic in one place, allowing you to generate more ideas and notice themes visually.
Activity: Mind Map
Create your own Career Mind Map by following the instructions below:
- Clear your mind of any preconceived ideas or judgments. Remember that this activity is open-ended, so you can’t make any mistakes if you’re honest with yourself!
- Take a large sheet of blank paper and pencils or pens (using different colours may help you be more creative with this activity).
- Think back over your life up to the present for favourite activities and courses, significant people, meaningful events, jobs, hobbies, etc. Write these items down on the paper randomly as they come to you. It may look chaotic, but let the ideas flow and write down a few keywords.
- Don’t try to organize your map now; just write down everything that comes to mind.
- When you’ve run out of things to write, start thinking about things you’d like to try! Write these ideas down, too.
- Now, look over your mind map and consider what it is more specifically that you liked (or think you might like) about the items you’ve written down. For example, if you liked your experience playing on a soccer team, you might note that you enjoyed the teamwork aspect of the experience, skill building, or competitive atmosphere—list as many things as you can about what you liked about each of these experiences.
- The next step is to start noticing themes. Do any of the things you have written connect to any others? Can you identify a few themes or threads in your map? If yes, connect different entries on your map and write down basic themes below or on a separate piece of paper.
Career Mind Map Questions
Look at the themes from your Career Mind Map and respond to the following questions:
- What themes are taking up a large portion of my map?
- Which areas on the map do I want to develop further in my life?
- What areas are irrelevant or less relevant with regard to my career goals?
Jane’s Sample Career Mind Map
Let’s look at Jane’s map. After drawing her map, where she used different colours that helped her identify main themes (all her favourite stuff was purple), she could see three areas or themes: Administration, Animal/Vet related careers and Outdoor/Environmental themes.
Jane’s early experiences, such as helping her dad in the family business, assisting a school receptionist (who was also a mentor), a customer service position in retail and volunteering at the library, led her to choose a career in office administration. She had been considering an alternative career as a Vet Technician. However, reflecting on her negative volunteer experience in this field helped her determine this was not a viable option. Drawing this map helped Jane to see another theme that hadn’t emerged in other assessments: outdoor/environmental. Upon further reflection, Jane realized she would prefer to keep it as a hobby or consider looking for an administrative position in a related industry.
Attribution
“1.6 Career Mind Mapping” from Centennial College Career Success Guide Copyright © by Career Services and Cooperative Education, Centennial College is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.