When walking into an interview high school students are told to prepare and to “show your skills.” What does that look like? How can high school students start preparing for their future? Second-year DECA students, Salma Kamal, Edward Itzep, and Alex Canseco seek to rectify that problem in their DECA project entitled The Roots.

“Our project is promoting resumes and college career readiness. To promote that we decided to conduct multiple surveys, presentations, and interviews,” Canseco said.

The hopes for this project extend beyond a trophy and the chance to go to California. 

“I would say that will they learn how to build resumes that would prepare them for college. [How to do] interviews and careers. [And be] a stepping stone in life,” Itzep said. 

The students were inspired by classes already taught at Tupelo High School and wanted to branch out on the topics taught in those classes.

“We wanted to create a little platform or something that college and career readiness classes already do, but really emphasize on it and really teach from student to student on how to become career ready,” Kamal said.

This project took months of preparation, dedication, and research to better help students understand the importance of getting career-ready.

“September [is when] we started brainstorming. Figuring out what we needed to do or if we wanted to do a workshop. We originally presented to about 150 students,” Kamal said.

The students sought to make the project interactive and took advice from fellow students.

“During our surveys, we got positive feedback. We got also negative feedback to improve but nothing we didn’t fix. We also created brochures and a flyer or sir survey that allows students to turn in their resume and let me grade it,” Kamal said.

The students went to the State Career Development Conference (SCDC) in Vicksburg, Mississippi on February 26-28. The students earned first place and will be competing at the International Career Development Conference (ICDC) in Anaheim California this April. 

“I was very happy and a little shocked, we put in a lot of work and effort into our project. And I was very glad and happy with the results that we received” Kamal said.