Megan’s Career Exploration — Interview Guide

Purpose: a relaxed, 45–60 minute conversation with Megan to capture her interests, deal-breakers, and priorities, grounded in her CliftonStrengths report and the initial career research (02–05). Run by James. Log answers verbatim afterward into the portfolio doc.

How to run

• Keep it a conversation, not a survey. No right answers; she should feel free to revise earlier answers as she talks.
• Ask one question at a time; let silence work.
• Listen for energize vs. drain patterns and mark them in your notes — they matter more than the specific answers.
• Don’t lead toward the research findings. Let her react to the three interest clusters neutrally before sharing anything the agents found.
• If a question lands flat, skip it. The goal is her priorities, not a complete form.

Section 1 — Current state and the burn-out

1. When you think about your work at Cassia, what parts of your week give you energy? What parts drain you?
2. When did you first notice feeling burnt out? What was going on around that time?
3. If you could change one thing about your current role with a magic wand, what would it be?
4. What does a genuinely “good day” at work look like for you right now?
5. Is the thing driving you away from fundraising, or toward something — or both?

Section 2 — The three interest clusters

Present each cluster neutrally, one at a time, with an open opener. Then ask the follow-up at the end.

• Therapy / counseling: “You’ve said before you’d be a good therapist. What draws you to that? Is it the one-on-one relationship, the problem-solving, the meaning-making, something else?”
• Mental health outside therapy: “You’ve also been interested in mental health fields that aren’t necessarily therapy. When you imagine that, what do you picture yourself doing?”
• Child advocacy and protection: “You’re amazing with kids and you’ve talked about protecting them. What pulls you there — working directly with kids, the justice/advocacy side, or both?”

Follow-up after all three: “If each of those was a real job offer starting Monday, which one would you actually want to show up for?”

Section 3 — Energize vs. drain (strengths-grounded)

Ground these in her top strengths (Connectedness, Belief, Input, Context, Strategic, Developer, Positivity, Ideation, Intellection, Empathy):

1. In the best moments of your career, what were you actually doing? Who were you with?
2. You’re a deep thinker and collector of information (Input, Intellection). Do you want a role that uses that heavily, or do you want less thinking and more doing?
3. Your Connectedness and Belief mean you need meaning and values alignment. How important is it that you fully believe in the organization’s mission — and what happens when you don’t?
4. You naturally develop and encourage others (Developer, Positivity). Do you want to work directly with people growing (clients, kids, students), or build the systems that help people at scale?
5. What’s the worst kind of work day for you — too much routine, too much ambiguity, too much chaos? Which is hardest to survive?

Section 4 — Deal-breakers and constraints

1. Education: If the ideal path required a 2-year master’s costing $30k–$70k, is that on the table? What about a 4–6 year commitment?
2. Income: What’s the minimum income you need to feel secure? Would you take a pay cut for a year to switch, or does income need to hold steady?
3. Timeline: Are you looking to make a move in the next 6 months, in 1–2 years, or is this exploratory for now?
4. Setting: Do you want to work alone with clients/people, on a team in an organization, or both? Office, school, hospital, or from home?
5. Structure: Do you want structured, predictable work — or creative, flexible work? Where’s your comfort zone?
6. Relational load: How much intense one-on-one emotional work can you sustain in a day before you’re depleted? (Keep this casual — it maps to her compassion-fatigue risk.)
7. Values: How important is it that the organization’s practices fully match its mission — for example, no “fundraising for programs you wouldn’t endorse”?

Section 5 — Priorities and ranking

1. If you had to rank the three clusters today — therapy, non-clinical mental health, child advocacy — what order, and why?
2. What made fundraising unfulfilling that we should make sure not to repeat?
3. Who is a person whose work or career you admire? What do they do?
4. Is there a role or job title you’ve daydreamed about but never told anyone?

Section 6 — Closing

1. “Paint me a picture: what does the best version of your work life look like five years from now?”
2. “What’s the one thing you want out of this exploration that we haven’t talked about?”

After the interview

1. Log her answers into the portfolio doc (07 Career Path Portfolio.md), verbatim where possible.
2. Rank the candidate paths using her stated priorities + strengths fit.
3. Pick 2–3 “test before committing” actions (e.g., a CASA — Court-Appointed Special Advocates — volunteer info session, a 988 crisis-line volunteer shift, an informational interview with a Licensed Clinical Social Worker) and schedule one.