11th Grade — Design Career Deep-Dive: Applying to the Careers Hub

⏰ Do Now — Start Here

Pick one career from the hub. Right now, are you closer to "ready" or "not close yet" for its entry requirements?

🎯 Today's Big Question

How does my actual portfolio right now measure up against a real career's entry requirements?

📈 By the End of Today, You Will Be Able To

Choose one specific career from the Careers in Design hub and study its entry requirements, income data, and project list in depth.
Compare their own current portfolio against that career's stated entry-level expectations.
Write a specific, realistic action plan naming what's missing and by when they'll build it.

🧰 What You'll Need

Careers in Design hub (site/careers.html)
Own portfolio site

📋 Your Plan for Today

Day 1: Study

Independent research (35 min): read one career page in full -- requirements, income data, and the 4-5 listed projects.

Day 2: Compare & Plan

Independent work (35 min): compare your own portfolio to that page's requirements and write a specific action plan.

🖥️ Today's Slide Deck

Short, on-the-board pacing slides — project these to follow along. (The full details are in the handout above, not here.)

Day 1

⬇️ Open / download this slide PDF

Day 2

⬇️ Open / download this slide PDF

📚 Key Words

Gap Analysis: Comparing what you have to what's required, to see exactly what's missing.
Action Plan: A specific list of steps, with rough timing, for closing a gap -- not just a wish.

✅ What Your Finished Work Should Include

Gap analysis and action plan checked for specific, accurate comparison to the real career page, not vague generalities.

Exit Ticket: What's the single biggest gap between your portfolio and this career's entry requirements right now?

📊 Before You Leave

Quick, anonymous class check-in -- takes less than a minute.

Class Check-In

📁 Portfolio Update — Once a Week

Once a week (e.g. every Friday, or your class's last meeting of the week), add your best finished or in-progress work to a running portfolio folder with a 1-2 sentence caption: what it is, what skill or standard it shows. This becomes your formal Google Sites portfolio in Unit F -- keep it current all year so you're not scrambling right before your PBAT and portfolio review.

✍️ Example description for your Google Sites portfolio (fill in YOUR blanks -- don't just copy this):

For this piece, I made ______________ (name what you made) for “Design Career Deep-Dive: Applying to the Careers Hub.” This project asked: “How does my actual portfolio right now measure up against a real career's entry requirements?” I used Gap Analysis by ______________ (explain how you used it in THIS piece). The hardest part was ______________, and I solved it by ______________. I'm proud of ______________ because ______________.

🎓 ACP Exam Prep

This lesson connects to the Photoshop Adobe Certified Professional exam: Domain 1: Working in the Design Industry

🔗 Want to Learn More?

No extra links for this lesson.

🚀 The Extra Mile

Cross-Class Connection: Gap-analysis is straight Business/Economics thinking — comparing what you have to what's required.

Career Connection: This is direct, hands-on use of the Careers hub itself.

Go further -- turn this into a portfolio piece:

Reach out (email or social media) to a real person in that career for one piece of real advice. Start here: find one specific real person — LinkedIn, a school alum, a family connection — and write your one-paragraph message before you send anything.
Build a public "career roadmap" page on your portfolio site documenting the plan and the gap you're closing. Start here: list the actual gap — what the career requires versus what you currently have — before you design the page around it.