How to Research Careers
This activity aims to demonstrate how to research labor market information.
Discuss
Throughout Job Exploration Counseling, we have completed activities to gather ideas of who you are, what you like to do, what you value and skills you have. Some jobs and careers require a lot of experience or knowledge, while others do not. One of the ways you can find out more information about a job or career is through on-line research. Often you can find information about the tasks of a job, the skills or education needed, even if there are jobs available near you.
Navigate
Navigate to Career OneStop and ensure students can see and follow along.
- I am going to show you how to find this kind of information. This is just an example, but you can also find information for any career or job you may be interested in. I’m on Career OneStop and for this example, if type ‘zoo’ and hit enter in the ‘Search by Occupation’ box, a list of related occupations will appear, which is why you see Animal Caretakers, Veterinarians, and General and Operations Managers.
- We also need to type in our city and state or zip code. This makes sure it gives us information specific to where we are.
- For this example, lets click on Animal Caretakers. There’s a description of what they do and other types of career or job titles. There’s also a short video (transcript also available) we can watch about this career. If you continue to scroll down the page, you will see statistics or data related to job openings in this area of Ohio, wage information, and educational, certificate, or licensure requirements. As I continue, it lists activities, skills, abilities, knowledge. So, as you go through this information, you may decide this is not the right career for you or want to explore similar careers. There’s a section at the bottom of each page listing related occupations that you can explore.
Click and Explore
A great Ohio resource to explore is Career Clusters through OhioMeansJobs.
This link lists occupations by career fields. For this example, scroll down and click on Agriculture, Food & Natural Resources. This will take you to different jobs in this career field, ranging from Entry level to Intermediate to Expert. Click on an occupation to learn more about that career pathway, education, stacking credentials, and experience needed.