Trends and Resources: Career Exploration

The Sloan study also found that teens can find choices about education and occupations overwhelming. Students are often provided with self-directed activities such as internet resources and self-rating assessments to explore and make career choices. Frequently, students report a lack of confidence in how to use the information to evaluate what careers fit them best.

The best strategy to assess “best fit” careers (and appropriate college majors) is for students to participate in a personalized career assessment and have their results interpreted by a credentialed career professional. Once the students know how the information relates to them, they can focus their exploration process.

Two excellent resources for career exploration come from the Career Services offices at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville and Northern Illinois University.

“What Can I Do With This Major?” from UTK is a listing of academic majors, with information on common career areas and paths for each major, typical employers, and strategies designed to maximize career opportunities.

Northern Illinois University’s Career Services website hosts “NIU Major WebLinks” – an impressive collection of information about the occupations related to different majors, job search sites, company and industry information, professional associations, graduate school information, salary surveys, job fairs and much more.