Back To School Blog-Useful Career Websites

Hey everyone! I want to share with you all some useful tools that I utilized when I interned in a career center in 2011 up until last May.  It was such a great experience. I got to hear a lot of wonderful stories from students about what they wanted to with their lives and what influenced them to explore certain majors and careers. There were also students who had no idea what they wanted to do and that is OK! College is a time to explore different aspects of yourself and you DO NOT have to figure it all out by a certain time. I didn't really have an idea of what I wanted to do until after I got my Bachelor's degree.  All I knew was that I wanted to help people. Students told me that talking to them one on one came natural to me and I would have to agree. I would much rather talk to individuals rather than a large group. 

The first tool that I used was the Occupational Outlook Handbook.  You can either search by the category that a certain career falls into (ex. Healthcare) or you can search for a specific job (ex. Occupational Therapist)  When you find a certain career, it will give you subcategories in which you need to get into that specific career, which includes training, growth rate, and salary.  Now, the website has a new feature where you can can search for careers using those subcategories. The students that I worked with found this tool very useful.

Another tool that I utilized with students is O*NET. This website is very similar to the Occupational Outlook Handbook. You can still search for specific careers, however you can conduct even more in-depth searches based on your skills, work values, knowlege, and interests. For example, you can do a search for jobs that require basic skills or technical skills. 

There are assessments you can take that will better assist you if you do not know exactly what you want to do as a career. You can take the Self Directed Search (SDS) which will ask you a series of questions regarding your activities, interests, and skills.  When you complete the assessment, you are given a three letter code taht will correspond to certain jobs. According to John Holland's theory every individual fits into 6 personality types: Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, and Conventional. A realistic person likes to work with their hands and generally does not like working with others.  Investigative people are interested in Mathematics and Science.  They are also good at solving problems.  Artistic people are creative and like to express themselves through different art forms. Social people are good at helping and informing people. An Enterprising personality is good at persuading people and being a leader.  They are also good at selling things or ideas.  They value success.  Finally, a Conventional person is very routine oriented.  They need structure.  They also value success.  There is a small fee if you want to take this assessment of of their website, but sometimes college career centers have them to take for free.