USE THE INTERNET TO EXPLORE YOUR CAREER POSSIBILITIES
Examine your interest in different kinds of work
- Interests. First, run the O*NET Interest Profiler at http://www.mynextmove.org/explore/ip to “help you find out what your interests are.” It asks you how much you like or dislike 60 different kinds of work. It takes about seven minutes to answer all of them. As a result, you learn whether you appear to like work that’s Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising or Conventional.
Job Preparation. Then tell “mynextmove” whether your skill, knowledge and experience means you’ve had little, some, medium, high or extensive job preparation.
Explore Careers that fit your interests
Careers. Then look at three lists. (a) Careers that fit your interests and job preparation. (b) Another list that require less preparation. (c) A third list that require more job preparation that you might consider after more training or experience.
- Search careers with key words. From there, go to any of those careers. Get a one-page description of knowledge, skills, abilities, personality, technology, education involved, and job outlook. Use this very helpful information if you apply for that job.
- To be even more thorough, look at the online Occupational Outlook Handbook at http://www.bls.gov/ooh/. It tells what people do in hundreds of careers and the preparation required for each career.
Once you’ve narrowed your possibilities to a few types of jobs, go to Indeed.com and search for jobs that you have an interest in and take note of the:
- Job responsibilities
- Experience and skills required
- Any other relevant facts about the job
Look at several examples. Responsibilities and experience and skill requirements differ from job to job. Collect information from many sources on the internet for the career/jobs you’re interested in. Try to find out what they pay (usually referred to as the compensation range). See d if the job market is growing, stable or declining for the career/job you are seeking. This can differ by regions and/or states in the United States.
KNOW YOURSELF – YOUR EXPERIENCE AND RELATED SKILLS
Using the Exercise 2.3 – Describe Skills You Applied in Each of Your Work Experiences template on page 23 in the Course Workbook, list your work experience and identify the skills you applied in each of the jobs you’ve held. The purpose of this exercise is to inventory your experiences and start developing a list of proven skills that are strengths that you will refer to as you explore career possibilities (in the next section of this action). Later, you can further refine the list and use it to select skills for your resume and LinkedIn profile.
There are two types of skills: Soft Skills and Hard Skills
Soft Skills are personal habits that shape how you work, on your own and with others. They are very much transferable. Examples of soft skills include Communication, Active Listening, Problem Solving, Flexibility, Interpersonal Skills, Adaptability, Organization, Willingness to Learn, Time Management.
Hard Skills are technical knowledge or training that you have gained through any type of experience, including your career or education. Examples of hard skills include Bilingual, Multilingual, Microsoft Office, Coding Languages, Project Management, Sales, Customer Services, Marketing, Administration, Accounting, Negotiation.
The skills listed above are only examples. You are encouraged to use the internet and Google “list of skills”. You will see numerous sites that will provide you with lists of skills, and in some cases, they will show skills by type of work. For example, Zety.com, Robert half.com, indeed.com, flex jobs.com, are some of these.
For the next Action, see the Choosing Your Career Objective page.
Nice going!!! Another Action is Who Is God? and Writing Your Resume and LinkedIn Profile.
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