Career Development

Course Description

Career Development is designed for students who are undecided or need clarification in choosing a degree, major or career path. The course incorporates personal evaluations examining values, goals, and skills alongside practical activities that ready learners for entering the workforce, and prioritises strategic academic and career planning and workforce preparation.

Within the SCNS taxonomy, SLS is the Student Life Skills prefix. Daytona State publishes this at 3 credits, offered fall and spring, giving approximately 45 contact hours at the standard lecture convention — matching the live SLS1122 at 3 credits and 45 hours.

Taking this course early is worth far more than taking it late. The expensive mistake in higher education is not choosing wrong; it is accumulating credits toward a destination you have not decided on, and then discovering they do not count. A student who spends one term deciding and three years on a coherent pathway finishes sooner and cheaper than one who spends four years drifting. The decision is the work, and it is legitimate work.

Learning Outcomes

Required Outcomes

• Assess your own values, interests, aptitudes, and personality as they bear on work.
• Interpret career assessment instruments and describe their limitations.
• Distinguish a job, an occupation, and a career.
• Research occupations using authoritative data sources.
• Evaluate wage, demand, and entry-requirement data critically.
• Describe Florida's labour market and its regional differences.
• Identify the education or credential each target occupation requires.
• Compare the cost and time of alternative pathways to the same occupation.
• Describe the return on investment of a credential honestly, including its risks.
• Conduct an informational interview.
• Build and use a professional network.
• Select a major or programme and justify the choice with evidence.
• Build a term-by-term academic plan to completion.
• Describe transfer pathways and the 2+2 articulation agreement.
• Write a targeted resume.
• Write a cover letter addressed to a specific role.
• Build a professional online presence and audit your existing one.
• Prepare for and conduct yourself in an interview.
• Describe salary negotiation at an introductory level.
• Search for work effectively, including the unadvertised market.
• Describe workplace expectations and professional conduct.
• Describe employment rights and protections at an awareness level.
• Plan for continued learning and credential maintenance.
• Revise the plan as information and circumstances change.

Optional Outcomes

• Describe entrepreneurship as a career pathway.
• Describe portfolio and freelance careers.
• Describe graduate and professional school pathways.
• Describe career changes later in working life.
• Complete a job shadow or site visit.
• Build a professional portfolio.

Major Topics

Required Topics

• Values, interests, aptitudes, and personality
• Career assessments and their limits
• Job, occupation, and career
• Researching occupations
• Evaluating labour market data
• Florida's labour market
• Education and credential requirements
• Comparing pathway cost and time
• Return on investment and risk
• Informational interviewing
• Networking
• Choosing a major
• Building an academic plan
• Transfer and the 2+2 agreement
• Resume writing
• Cover letters
• Professional online presence
• Interview preparation
• Salary negotiation
• Effective job search
• Workplace expectations
• Employment rights
• Continued learning
• Revising the plan

Optional Topics

• Entrepreneurship
• Portfolio and freelance careers
• Graduate and professional pathways
• Mid-career change
• Job shadowing
• Professional portfolio

Resources & Tools

• Your academic advisor — free, and the most under-used resource in higher education. An hour with an advisor before registration saves more time and money than anything else on this list.
• FloridaShines (floridashines.org) — free; the statewide portal for transfer planning, common prerequisites, and the 2+2 pathway between Florida public institutions.
• Florida Department of Education — Statewide Course Numbering System — free; the authority on what transfers and what a course number means.
• Daytona State's student services — tutoring, the writing centre, library instruction, disability services, and counselling, all included in what you already pay.
• O*NET OnLine (onetonline.org) — free; occupation profiles, required skills, and wage data.
• Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook (bls.gov/ooh) — free and authoritative on pay, entry requirements, and projected demand.
• CareerSource Florida and FloridaJobs.org — free Florida-specific labour market data and local workforce services.
• FAFSA and the financial aid office — ask directly about how a course counts toward enrolment status before you register, not after.

Career Pathways

• The skills here are not tied to one occupation — they are the ones employers name most consistently across every field: communication, reasoning, planning, and self-management.
• Transfer to a Florida public university under the 2+2 articulation agreement — an Associate in Arts guarantees admission to a state university, though not to a specific institution or programme.
• Any Associate in Science pathway — the planning done here shapes which one fits.
• Direct entry to employment — where a certificate or A.S. is the credential, the career planning matters more, not less.
• Apprenticeship and workforce programmes — frequently overlooked, and frequently paid.
• ⚠ Plan the whole pathway, not the next term. The most expensive mistakes in higher education are credits taken that do not count toward the destination.

Special Information

⚠⚠ Check what the credential actually costs and actually returns — before committing

• Look up the occupation's real entry requirement, not the one implied by a programme's marketing. Some occupations require a licence the degree does not confer; some require a bachelor's where an associate is advertised as sufficient.
• ⚠ Check accreditation where the field requires it. In allied health, education, engineering technology, and interior design, eligibility to sit a credentialing examination frequently depends on the programme's accreditation — and it is unrecoverable afterwards. This repository records that trap for CAPTE, CAAHEP, ACOTE, CoARC, JRCERT, and CIDA.
• Compare total cost, including the income not earned while studying. A two-year programme costs two years of earnings as well as tuition.
• Use published wage data rather than anecdote, and look at entry-level pay, not the median — the median includes people with twenty years of experience.
• ⚠ Ask what the entry conditions are really like. Several fields have entry-level conditions materially worse than a prospective student would assume — early starts, night shifts, physical demands, or modest starting pay that improves only over years. Find that out before enrolling, not after.
• Talk to people doing the work. An informational interview costs a coffee and tells you more than any amount of reading.
• Check whether the credits transfer if a bachelor's is the eventual goal — FloridaShines and an advisor will settle it in one sitting.
• Be honest about fit as well as return. A well-paid occupation you cannot tolerate is not a good outcome.

⚠ Most jobs are not filled from advertisements — plan accordingly

• A large share of hiring happens through referral and existing contact, which means an application-only search competes for the smaller half of the market.
• Networking is not a personality trait. It is asking people about their work, and most people will happily talk about it — the request that works is for information, not for a job.
• Use faculty and clinical or internship supervisors. They know who is hiring and they are asked for recommendations constantly.
• Do the internship, the placement, or the volunteer work. It converts to employment more often than any other single activity.
• ⚠ Audit your existing online presence before employers do. Employers search, and what is public is what they find.
• Tailor the resume to the role. A generic resume sent widely performs worse than a targeted one sent narrowly.
• Follow up. A short, polite follow-up distinguishes a candidate at almost no cost.
• Keep the network alive after you are hired, because the next role is found the same way.

How Florida course levels affect transfer

The first digit of an SCNS number denotes the year of offering, not transferability. Courses at the 1000 and 2000 levels transfer transparently between Florida public institutions, and 3000 to 4000 is unproblematic since both are upper division. The boundary that actually matters is 2000 to 3000, where lower-division credit generally cannot satisfy an upper-division requirement.

SLS2301 is 3 credits and approximately 45 contact hours, offered fall and spring at Daytona State.

Take it early. Its value is almost entirely in preventing credits taken toward a destination you have not chosen.