By Esther Schlossberg
A few weeks ago, we had the pleasure of having a full day seminar with Larry Braman, a career consultant. I thought it was very exciting for us to meet with a career coach because there are a handful of us who know exactly what we want to do, however, there are a bunch of fellows who have ideas of what they want to do, but are not exactly sure how their career path will turn out.
We started off the day with everyone going around the room and saying their “I know…. I don’t know…” about their potential career paths. What I found most interesting was that pretty much every person in their “I know…” said that they want to work and help people. I think that speaks measures to the kind of people in our cohort, and no matter what career paths we choose in the Jewish world, one common goal that we all share is helping others.
Prior to the full day seminar, Larry had all of us take the “Strong Interest Inventory” assessment which compared our interests to thousands of people from hundreds of professions, and tells us how well we match up. As a group, we discussed the assessment and Larry helped us understand our results. I know for me this was very helpful because the assessment reiterated jobs, skills, and hobbies that I know I’m interested in and good with, however, it also suggested other career paths and skills I would like based off of my test results.
Additionally, we watched interviews with various people in careers within the Jewish professional world and found out information on what graduate degrees they earned, what previous jobs they had, what skills, they needed, etc. Since a large component of the Nachshon curriculum is on careers, I think this seminar with Larry Braman was very beneficial because it helped everyone begin to narrow down things that are interested in doing in the future. Many people, including myself, left the seminar having a better understanding of what Jewish professional career they could ideally see themselves doing and what steps they need to start taking.
