No-Cost Tools To Identify your Perfect Career

 Thanks to Bryan Wortman who leads the CoachU curriculum, for helping me understand all the tools available to career coaches.

If you ever wondered how you could determine what types of careers might be of interest to you without you actually visiting hundreds of companies or signing up for expensive personality profiles, this blog is for you.  In fact, there are many good no-cost resources available on the internet to help someone better understand what types of work are of interest to them, and then match those types of work to particular occupations.   

As with every assessment, nothing is perfect. But these tools are accessible and could be a good place to start.

• • You want to know if there are available jobs…start by getting local job information through Ohio’s Top Jobs List. Customizable by region of Ohio, education required, preferred experience, in-demand status, and job category (e.g. construction, community and social service, personal care, etc), the site shares information about number of open jobs, median salary, growth in the jobs, and current openings. While anyone can select to enter any occupation they like, it’s better to do so informed by understanding these dynamics.
  • Want to know more about what types of careers are interesting to you? The Career Profiler at OhioMeansJobs is a good place to start. This very easy-to-understand assessment lets you “vote” on how much a given role sounds interesting to you, and then matches you to occupations which fit the types of career activities you most enjoy. Of those to which you are matched, you can also tell which are most in-demand in Ohio, and what the average annual wages are. One of my matches – actor – is not an in-demand job!

Other career guidance and exploration assessments include the O*Net Interest Profiler , the Holland Code Career Test, and the CareerOne Stop Interest Assessment

• • Want to know what values are important to you in a job and how to find careers which fit those values? Try the Career OneStop Work Values Matcher, provided by the Dept of Labor. It allows you to see which of six work values – Achievement,  independence, recognition,  relationships, support, and working conditions – are most important to you, matches your important values to specific roles at different education levels, and then helps you learn  how to determine if the most important values to you are present in a job. 

I acknowledge that not everyone seeking a career will have the luxury of having one which matches her or his individual values. 

I took this test myself and while I didn’t match with the role of “foundation colleague”,  I did learn I would be a match with a podcaster, tax examiner, or a baker. Hmmm…

• • You can build your own career path based on the first or current job you have,  or just as importantly, you can understand options to change careers based on your existing skills with the use of the Philadelphia’s Federal Reserve’s Occupational Mobility Explorer . This tool identifies the transferrable skills you have from a job and suggests different career paths you can take. It is localizable, providing you wages, growth rate, and the number of jobs available in any given jobs.

Lastly – a very important and helpful new tool has emerged out of beta testing. The Atlanta Federal Reserve has build a Benefit Cliffs tool for an individual to understand the impact of occupations and training time on existing government benefit payments. Give it a try to see the real power of this tool for many people seeking financial independence through work.