Episode: 145

Episode Title: A Tool to Research the Future

Researching detailed information about a future career can be a daunting task for a young person, but it’s absolutely essential. Here’s one tool to make it easier, coming up next. 

Ep 145 show:

Welcome to The Perna Syndicate, and happy Friday! It’s so important for young people to research the careers they’re interested in, to get a real picture of what the job is like. But finding all that information can be a bit overwhelming. Where do you even start to find out all the education and training requirements, responsibilities, salary, and other details about a particular job? Where do you get that information?

One of my favorite websites for this, that I share with all my Career Tree clients, is OnetOnline.org. It’s a comprehensive, up to date, and easy-to-use database of exactly the kind of job information that young people need to know. 

OnetOnline allows all the searches you might expect: keyword, career cluster, job family, even industry type and level of experience – in fact, you can search, sort, and filter on just about anything. There’s two searches that I especially like: the Skills search, where a young person can input their skills to find relevant careers, and the Technology Skills & Tools search, that brings up job results based on specific tools or technology that a person has mastered. 

What a great way to make this research interesting and relevant! It all connects to the young person and what they’re good at, what they love to do. And it’s even better when students do this kind of research together, comparing notes and sharing what they’re learning. 

Researching the future doesn’t have to be a hugely daunting task when you know where to start. Point young people in the direction of OnetOnline.org and other similar sites to make this a positive experience that furthers their future. 

Thanks for being a part of The Perna Syndicate this week. For more episodes, visit MarkCPerna.com. We’ll see you back here next week!