Career Resources
Most young professionals and experienced workers have to pursue multiple careers throughout their lives. To discover careers that fit skill sets and interests, every professional should develop a toolkit of career discovery resources available on the Internet.
Conventional Career Resources
High school and college students have abundant resources in their schools to discover careers. Every school has an academic counseling department loaded with college recruiting posters, career tests, and other resources that can make career choices easier. Public universities require freshmen and sophomores to meet with academic advisors regularly to guide their coursework. Once graduation day comes around, however, graduates have to find their own tools to discover careers.
Young professionals have access to several tools for career discovery once they enter the job market. Temporary staffing agencies offer their applicants access to tests and evaluations that ensure the best placements possible. Major employers use career tests to help entry-level professionals find their next stage of advancement within company ranks. There are plentiful career tests and tools for professionals who want to look outside career advice from their current employers.
Every professional should use several criteria before using online tools to discover career. Psychology, business, and human resources experts should be behind career tests based on biographies in “About Us” pages. The cost of an online career test should not be excessive, forcing unemployed or underemployed users to break the bank to find their next careers. The final criterion for career discovery tools is the detail required to determine ideal careers. While a test taker may not want to spend time on career tests, short tests that ask few questions cannot gather sufficient data to make accurate decisions.
MBTI Instrument®
The centerpiece of career testing and discovery from high school and beyond is the Myers-Briggs Instrument® (http://www.myersbriggs.org). The Myers-Briggs Foundation delivers the MBTI Instrument® to corporations, high schools, and universities worldwide each year. As the Internet has evolved, this career discovery tool has gone online to reach a larger number of professionals.
Professionals using the MBTI Instrument® are asked a series of multiple-choice questions without a right answer. These questions are used by test observers to determine personality traits, tendencies, and skills that can direct career discovery for the test taker. After the MBTI Instrument® is administered, the test taker receives a four-initial result along with a series of careers that fit within the parameters of a given result. The test determines a taker’s place within four trait ranges including Extrovert-Introvert, Sensing-Intuition, Thinking-Feeling, and Judging-Perceiving. For example, an ESTJ (Extrovert, Sensing, Thinking, Judging) may be best suited for entrepreneurship because of his practical nature.
Career Dreamscape®
The Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandise offers a career discovery tool called Career Dreamscape® that acts as a good example for industry-specific tests. The Career Dreamscape® (http://fidm.edu/academics/interest-survey/index.html) is a series of 81 short questions that offer prospective students and fashion professionals insight into the industry’s day-to-day demands. These questions are used to produce a career report for each test taker that offers the best majors for a set of skills and aspirations. For example, an aspiring fashion professional who answers in the affirmative about a desire to convert ideas into products will be recommended to the fashion development major. The Career Dreamscape® is used in various forms at institutes, tech schools, and universities throughout the United States to help students find their ideal careers.
The Career Key™
North Carolina State University offers a career discovery test that melds scientific techniques with the latest evaluation tools used by human resources professionals. The Career Key™ (http://www.careerkey.org) was developed by Dr. Laurence Jones utilizing the career personality studies of Dr. John Holland. Holland’s six personality types are intertwined with standardized career questions to help users find their ideal careers. Since The Career Key™ was developed at a public university, the primary focus of its questions is to assess academic areas that fit with a test taker’s career personality. Users are able to complete the test questions and get career advice in less than 15 minutes from the Career Key™ website.
The Career Key™ offers career information in addition to its career discovery test to turn test results into action. The test’s main page features articles detailing job prospects in growth industries as well as career advice for professionals who disagree with test results. The litmus test for a good career resource is whether it offers plenty of information to put its results into context.
Occupational Outlook Handbook
The Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes its Occupational Outlook Handbook (http://www.bls.gov/OCO) every year to help millions of professionals find the right careers. The Occupational Outlook Handbook has become a bible for human resources professionals, executives, and entry-level professionals in search of insights into the job market. The reason why so many people rely on Occupational Outlook Handbook, which has been critical to the success of millions, is the density of information available to its readers.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics outlines dozens of career areas from architecture to zoology using the same format for each chapter. Prospective professionals in these areas can find out current employment and future job prospects before they pursue additional education. The Bureau of Labor Statistics also covers educational requirements needed for entry and advancement based on national surveys. Each chapter features a description of a career area including the variety of job titles and niches within that chapter heading. The most important section of each chapter in the Occupational Outlook Handbook is the wages rundown including median, low, and high wages during the past year.
LiveCareer®
The Internet has experienced an explosion in free online tests that make it difficult to find legitimate career tools. The best part about free online tests for career discovery is that they typically take less than 15 minutes to complete. Websites like LiveCareer® may offer clear career opportunities for test takers, but they should not be the sole source of advice during job hunts.
LiveCareer® (http://www.livecareer.com) claims it is the leading free online test running. The career test starts with personal information like age, educational attainment, and location before veering into multiple choice questions about personal and professional habits. The career report produced by LiveCareer® is designed to narrow career choices to a handful of options that match current education and skills.
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