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Career Exploration
Career Interest Inventories
Introduction
Taking an inventory of your interests can help determine what career you might like. An Interest Inventory is one of many tools that help you learn about yourself and match what you know and learn to the characteristics of jobs to help you find a better match. There is no guarantee the fit will be perfect, or that you will not still move around, but chances are better you will like what you are doing, stay longer, and earn more because of the skill and natural ability you bring to a job. Interest Inventories ask you lots of questions about what you like and don’t like, what you do, or don’t do. From these answers the results are relatively good at predicting job interests and skills you would find similar to the positive experiences you’ve found in other more familiar situations. Is there a right answer? No, and there may be more than one answer. Most inventories give you a range of areas to investigate. These results are not telling you that one job is the best; but are giving you a range of jobs that you might find interesting. Below you will find links to several web sites that have Interest Inventories.
Career One Stop: Pathways to Career Success:
This site contains a Skills Profiler that identifies your skills and matches them to jobs. It also includes an Employability Checkup that provides a snapshot of your employability plus other information on Career Exploration Training Tools that can be bought from O*Net Resource Center. The site also includes occupation information that can be sorted by state including salary information and employment trends, as well as information on educational programs available.
Career Voyages:
Having trouble deciding which career to pursue? Check out the Career Compass page. First determine which work related interests best describe yourself. Then choose your top first, second, third interests. A list of occupations will appear that you might consider. This site is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Labor and U.S. Department of Education. It focuses on 13 high growth industries including health care. Information is targeted to students, parents, advisors and career changes. You will find career videos, information on career paths, training and much more!
Collegetoolkit.com:
This site gives you 3 different ways to explore health careers. They include a Work Importance Profiler, designed to help you understand what attributes are important to you in a career; a Career Interest Profiler that includes a series of questions to help match your broad interest areas with careers you might want to explore further; and a section called Browse by Job Family which includes more than 900 career profiles categorized by job family. This web site is also loaded with information to help in planning for college. You will find interactive calculators, a variety of information guides, articles and advice about choosing and attending colleges.
Education Planner by American Education Services:
This easy to use site includes a career assessment tool, a self assessment quiz and a list of fastest growing occupations. Be sure to check out the other sections of the site, as well, which include tools to help prepare you for college, as well as advice for how to select and apply to schools and find financial aid.
This page was last updated by Janice Troyer on October 26, 2007