TAPS Helps Students Find Their Ideal Career

tapsThe question, “What are your career and college plans?” gets asked to young adults all the time. More often than not, those young adults don’t have an answer to that question.

But there is a great resource that can help change that. Tony Credit, a Student Success professor at Ivy Tech and the College of Court Reporting in Hobart, created The Academic and Professional Success Foundation (or TAPS) Foundation. TAPS is a nonprofit organization that is dedicated to helping high school and college students learn and use academic and professional success skills, free of charge.

“In all of my years of research, and experience, I witnessed thousands of American students struggle needlessly. They struggled both academically, and professionally, because they had no one to help them,” Credit said. “I channeled all of my failures, and successes, and my deep passion for the success of American high school and college students into this effort.”

The website is called “Plan for Your Success” and it has steps that students can follow to create their plan for success. They correspond with a workbook called "Plan for Success: What Century Do You Live In?" that you can print for free or purchase a copy of for only $31.

Follow these Success Steps:

Step 1: Find a 21st century career field
Step 2: Choose a major & the best school for your field & wallet
Step 3: How to succeed academically
Step 4: Networking
Step 5: Understand the legal environment
Step 6: Develop your Soft Skills
Step 7: Be an expert
Step 8: Be a great communicator
Step 9: Create a 21st century cover letter & resume
Step 10: Break the cycle of failure

Each step gives detailed instructions and guidance on what students should be thinking about and looking into in order to blaze their career paths. There are links to supporting articles, videos, and more from well-known Ivy League schools that support the TAPS plan. When students complete all 10 steps, they should be able to answer “yes” to four essential questions.

1. Has the student found a career field that is projected to grow in the 21st century global economy? If so, is it a career field that she, or he, will enjoy?

2. Has the student discovered his or her learning style(s)?

3. Has the student studied the professional success advice from Tapsacademics.com, and discussed it with mentors?

4. Does the student have a written plan?

There are also plenty of individual resources from which students can draw valuable information. Articles written by representatives from Monster.com, CNN, Harvard Medical School, and others are linked and used as supporting sources in these comprehensive and interesting articles that TAPS created. You can learn about free colleges, scholarships, the best and worst majors to pursue, how to read faster, preparing for a speech, the importance of soft skills, how to network properly, and more.

There are just the things that students need as they navigate their way into the working world. Everything is right at their fingertips in and organized, easy to follow plan.

For more information visit http://tapsacademics.com/, email them at tapsacademics@gmail.com, call 219-942-1459, extension 355, or visit them on Facebook.