Career Exploration

Career exploration is crucial for high school students. Proper career planning will encourage you to develop and work toward goals and improve your knowledge of career options. Career exploration is simply learning about various occupations and their "fit" with your unique career preferences, e.g. the skills, interests and values you want satisfied by your future career. When trying to choose a career, there are two things you must do. First you will need to conduct a self-assessment. Then you must research careers that match the results of your self assessment.

The Self-Assessment

A self-assessment is not a test, well it can be a test, but not in the sense of right or wrong or pass or fail. It is a way to learn about yourself by gathering information about:

• • • Work-Related Values: Your work values are the ideas and beliefs that will be important to you on the job. They may include things like prestige, high salary, helping others, and flexible work schedule.

    • Interests: Your likes and dislikes regarding various activities make up your interests. Examples of interests include: reading, running, golfing, knitting, and so forth.

    • Personality Type: Your personality type is made up of your social traits, motivational drives, needs, and attitudes. Particular personality types are better suited to certain careers and work environments, than are others.

    • Aptitude: Aptitude refers to your natural talent, learned ability, or capacity to acquire a skill. You may have a high aptitude in math, science, visual art, music, verbal or written communication, reading comprehension, logic and reasoning, manual dexterity, or mechanics. Any of these skills could lead to a future career.

Researching Occupations

The results of your self assessment will give you some career options. It will not match perfectly with a career but it will point you in the right direction of careers or general industries that will match your values, interest, personality, and aptitude. This will yield several options. It is recommended you spend sometime researching the careers in the following ways:

• • • Connect with people in the field: Within your local community their are plenty of businesses and organizations that have professionals doing what you want to do. Some of them are more than willing to talk to young aspiring students.

    • Conduct book/online research: There are plenty of books, journals, blogs, and internet sites that provide information on career sectors. Read professional publications.

    • Attend a career fair, workshop, or summer program: You will have an opportunity to learn, study, and ask questions to a large number of working professionals.

    • Meet with your Career Advisor: The Career Center has useful resources available to you.

    • Intern or Volunteer in the field: Nothing lets you know if you are cut out for a particular career than spending time working in it.

The following are other links that can assist students in career exploration:

California Career Resource Network contains resources for students and parents interested in developing the career self-management skills necessary in today’s world of work.

California Career Zone is a web-based career exploration system available to all Californians free of charge.

Make Money Choices is a web-based budgeting system available to all Californians free of charge.

California Occupational Guides includes information on careers and occupations in most counties of California, job descriptions, projected employment outlook, wages, education and training, links to possible employers and much more.

WhoDoUWant2B.com encourages middle and high school students to prepare for futures through Career Technical Education (CTE) coursework. Students will discover CTE opportunities, potential career pathways and curriculum options.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics provides up-to-date information about current trends in the labor force and access to the Occupational Outlook Handbook which provides information on hundreds of different occupations including the training and education needed, job earnings, expected job prospects, and more. Exploring Career Information is an excellent resource for students wanting to investigate careers within major subject areas.

www.Onetonline.org is also a very valuable occupational exploration site. You can search for an occupation and even get job information from any of the states in the U.S. Let’s say you want to move to Colorado, this site lets you know about jobs available in Colorado!

Understand The ASVAB

The ASVAB measures strengths and potential for future success.

You don't "pass" or "fail". The results represent how well you have developed your skills in addition to your potential for training.

Learn About Yourself

Before you make decisions about what to do after high school, spend time thinking about your interests, values and abilities.