How did I find myself career exploring?... After 25 years with the same company, I was feeling pretty burned out having managed software engineers for the better part of 15 years. The job was rewarding at times, but the last 2 years were not so great – felt like I was a small cog in a huge machine – connecting success to day-to-day activities was difficult. So when an opportunity to be laid off came up, I took it (I know that sounds kind of stupid, but hey, I was really burned out). Now 8 months later, I don’t regret doing it, but I do feel that I am taking too much time finding my “next thing”.
Several months ago, I attended a “career exploration” seminar at the outplacement service my former company hooked me up with. I like this type of personal investigation, although I seem to come up with different options depending on what I’m evaluating – skills, interests, knowledge, etc. I was energized by the seminar and took the suggested “online resources” to see if I could identify the career change choice that was right for me. [I should point out that I’m lucky in that my personal situation (that is, my wife’s job) allows me to investigate my next step in an un-pressured way]
Getting the career choice right is important. None of the career assessments I’ve taken point me to the job I was in, and I agree that the fit was not right. There are some good websites to help narrow the options. Here are the ones I looked at along with my opinions about them.
· http://www.bls.gov/oco - as it relates to employment, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) of the U.S. Department of Labor provides labor statistics and projections - being a bit of a geek, I like the databases and tables, especially the employment projections. Also of value is the classification of occupations if you already know what area you’re interested in. Not much here in terms of assessments though.
· http://www.careeronestop.org/ - CareerOneStop is a U.S. Department of Labor-sponsored Web site that is more focused on the individual career seeker, as compared to the BLS (above). The browsing capability is interesting, including the high growth industry search. Work with the searches that tie to occupations rather than industries – these searches are more appropriate for personal career finders. The site points to the following assessment tools:
- The Skills Profiler identifies skills and matches them to jobs.
- O*NET's Ability Profiler matches strengths with occupations.
- O*NET's Interest Profiler identifies broad interest areas.
- O*NET's Work Importance Locator identifies job features that are important to you.
- Employability Checkup provides a snapshot of your employability.
The skills profiler is worth taking – it’s pretty quick and immediately provides a list of occupations that fit your skills. For the level of accuracy, I don’t like the need to specify both the skill I have and then the level. To me, it would make more sense to have a combined rating since they seem to be related to me. I’ll cover the O*Net links below.
· http://www.onetcenter.org/ - is a government program sponsored by the US Department of Labor/Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). According to their web site, O*Net “is the nation's primary source of occupational information”. Their online assessment tools are limited. The “O*NET Computerized Interest Profiler” peaked my interest because it claimed to be able to “help people discover the type of work activities and occupations that they would like and find exciting” – just what the doctor ordered! Well, as you might guess, excitement turned to disappointment. The tool is pretty old – requires that you download the assessment – and it’s oh so loooooooooooooong (180 questions). This assessment should be available as a web-based tool, and in fact there are several sites (http://www.workforceexplorer.com/cgi/career/?PAGEID=3 , for example) where you can take this online. But it’s still very long. O*Net also includes a tool called “O*NET® Work Importance Profiler” (WIP) that helps “users decide what is important to them in a job”. It is similar in some ways to the interest profiler – that is, it’s old and on the tedious side. It was a while ago that I took the 2 O*Net computerized assessments. I did find them to be pretty accurate in identifying my interests and what would be important in my future work (independence and achievement from the category options: Achievement, Working Conditions, Recognition, Relationships, Support, and Independence). [by accurate, I should say they are in sync with the other assessments I’ve taken]
…more to come – posting what I have for now