Your Horizon Part 2: Match Yourself

Last week,  I talked about the first step in discovering your career horizon: Know Yourself.   The next step is matching yourself with jobs that fit align with your talents, passions and values.  In considering your matches, you also have to consider the job market where you live or where your willing to relocate.

1.  Take assessments that match yourself to jobs that fit you: 

For free tools, check out O*NET's Career Exploration Tools.  Some of these assessments require you to print out an manually score the assessment while others let you download the application to your computer.  The easiest tool to use is the Career Interest Profiler that can be found at mynextmove.org  which will provide you with a list of careers that match you based on your assessment results and how much education and training you have or are willing to pursue.

If you are willing to pay a little for an assessment, you can take some more comprehensive tools found at:

Self Directed Search
Strong Interest Inventory  This includes an in-person or over the phone interpretation from me.

2.  Learn more about your matches:

First, explore online to learn more about your matches.  I like to use careerinfonet.org   You can enter occupations in the search field in the top right-hand corner of the screen and watch a career video about the job, learn more about what's needed to be successful on the job, daily tasks and activities of the job as well as salary and job growth data. 

Speaking of job growth data,  You can't be a marine biologist in the middle of Nebraska......

This is where it is important to consider the horizon of the job market as to whether or not you can get a job that aligns with your talents, passions and values in the area where you live or where you are willing to live. 

Finally,  talk to people who are in the occupations that interest you.  This Job Shadowing Questionnaire may help.