Choosing a Career – For Job Satisfaction

Preamble: I started writing this blog a long time ago , the summer of 2019, after finishing my Certification in Career Services. The most valuable thing learned was this simple, free and effective way to help people choose a career. I followed the process myself and also “tested” it a lot on others. If they already knew what they wanted to do, this process aligned incredibly well. It validated their career choice. In other words: IT WORKS.

I was finally inspired to hurry up and post this while teaching a college marketing course. I asked my students, after learning that they all graduate this year, if they knew what they were going to do with their business degrees. Not one raised their hands.

Oh, no! No more procrastinating! Here it is! DIVE IN and give yourself the gift of a motivating goal and purpose!

First, choosing a career is a process that involves a lot of self-awareness and reflection.  You’re not going to decide in one sitting.  But you may be pressured to choose before you feel really ready, for example, so you don’t waste time and money taking college classes that you won’t end up applying to degree or certification. 

Karen and I launched “No Filter…” because we saw too many students “forced” to choose their careers at a pretty young age without a lot of information.  We’ve also repeatedly heard students say that they took assessments that were NOT helpful: “My assessment said I should be an artist.”  Could that be any more vague?

The goal of this blog is to give you some tools to get a better idea of SPECIFIC options and then give you some tips on how to explore them to find, hopefully, a really good FIT for you. Best of all, this method (specifically the assessment), besides being free and easy, is actually proven to lead to job SATISFACTION.

Here are the steps:

STEP ONE:  Go to www.MyNextMove.org.  

You can explore this site any way that you like, but I recommend you start out by clicking on the blue square button to search by “Interest” in the upper right (it’s a little face). You can go directly there through this link:  www.MyNextMove.org/explore/ip.  This website is part of O*Net Online, a site run by the US Department of Labor and Statistics using huge amounts of data to help people select a career!  It’s amazing. (Yes, i just said “Government and amazing” in the same breath.)

It will take you to the Interest Profiler, which is based on a theory created by John Holland, called The Holland Assessment, Holland Personality Test, Holland Code, RAISEC, etc.  Basically, it identified six personality types related to career and vocational choice. They are Realistic, Artistic, Investigative, Social, Enterprising, Conventional (RAISEC). 

Take this assessment (10 minutes, max) and then write down or print out your score for your career portfolio. You will have a number by each of the six types.
YOUR HIGHEST THREE SCORES, IN ORDER, ARE YOUR “CODE.”
Example, my code is SAE: I scored highest in Social (shock), Artistic, then Enterprising. 

STEP TWO:  With your code in hand, go to www.ONetOnline.org.

You are going to use your code to find SPECIFIC careers or jobs to match it.

From the home screen, go to “O*NET DATA, and select the drop down “interests”.  (Note, they changed this, so I just updated this 9-18-22.)

Then it will show you the screen with the six words.  Click on the one that you scored highest on.

For example, I would click on “Social”, because my highest number was 26 in Social.  If you want, you can go straight to this page:  https://www.onetonline.org/find/descriptor/browse/Interests/  and then click on your highest-scoring word. That will take you to the page that shows your highest letter in the first position and then you can enter the next two letters in the boxes that say “None selected.”

ISNT THIS EXCITING! Look! It says I should be an Annoucer! LOL! YES! Or a Teacher, Teacher, Teacher. WHAT A COINCIDENCE, I’M A TEACHER!

STEP THREE:  The next thing you will need to do is select your job zone. 

That means HOW MUCH preparation you would be willing to do/plan to do/have done to get a job. If you just want an entry level job, straight out of high school, choose Zone 1.  If you’re willing to go get your PhD, choose Zone 5.  If you get an Associate’s degree or a Vocational Certification, maybe Zone 2 or 3.  A Bachelor’s Degree, 3 or 4.  You can play with it. You’ll see what I mean when you see the results.

STEP FOUR:  Play around!

If the list you see at first doesnt excite you, try different things. Enter different job zones. If there aren’t enough choices for you or you don’t like these choices, try entering just TWO LETTERS OF YOUR CODE!  Play around with one Job Zone or all 5. 

Review the different job titles and click on the ones that intrigue you. Read about them.  Note whether this is a job labeled as “Bright Outlook” which means there will be lots of these jobs open… or not!  Look at the salary range.  Can you get all your needs (and wants) met with that salary range?

Be sure to explore a few or more of the job titles that appeal to you.  This website has lots of interesting information, but you will want to do your own research too on other websites.  Have fun finding the options that you’ll want to look into further.

Even if you think you already know what you want to do, I still encourage you to take the assessment to learn your code (and print it out/write it down, save it for when you want to come back so you wont have to do it again. And, incidentally, if I didnt already say so, I have taken this assessment several times and it always comes out pretty similarly, so dont think it was just because you are ain a bad mood or something.)

But if you know, for example, that you have your undergraduate degree in, English or History and you’re thinking you might want to get a Master’s Degree in Library Science, do a key word search for Librarian or similar to see what specific jobs are related! There are SO MANY! Trust me! Have fun and…

GET TO IT!

P.S. If you have any feedback on how this process worked for you, or how to make it better, let us know in the comments below.