One of my favorite parts of having a student advisory group of sixteen to eighteen years-old students was talking with them about their college and career aspirations. One of the great things about the web is that students can quickly discover and research career options as opposed to having to consult a few books in the school library or career center. Here is a handful of sites that students can use to learn about career options.
Career Thoughts
is a site that aims to help students make informed career decisions. On
Career Thoughts students can find career profiles that outline what a
person in a particular career field actually does, the education
requirements for that field, salary ranges, and employment prospects.
The Career Thoughts YouTube channel
provides even more information through video profiles of careers.
Students who are ready to start applying for jobs will find plenty of
resume writing, job hunting, and interviewing tips on Career Thoughts
too.
iCould is a UK-based website that
features videos of people sharing their career stories. The stories
cover people in all types of careers and at all phases of their working
careers. One of the the main purposes of iCould
is to expose viewers to what different types of jobs really entail.
Visitors to iCould can search for stories by job type, life theme, or
keyword tags.
Inside Jobs is a
site that offers information about careers and the training required
for them. On Inside Jobs visitors can search for career information by
keyword or browse through categorized collections of information. Each
career in the list has a short video featuring someone in the industry
explaining what they do and how they got into the field. Inside Jobs
provides lists of schools that offer programs related to the careers
that students are interested in. (Note that the schools do pay to be
included on Inside Jobs).
Career Sighted
is a new website designed to help students learn a bit about jobs in
careers they have an interest in. The videos introduce students to the
essential functions of each job and education needed for it. The videos
feature real people talking about their jobs and what they like about
them. Career Sighted is only a couple of months old so at this point it
only has a few dozen videos, but hopefully they’ll be adding more over
the next few months.
The Atlantic has a great article titled What People Don’t Get About My Job.The
article is comprised of 26 contributions from readers explaining what
most people don’t understand about their jobs. There is one job for
every letter of the alphabet. In the article you will find jobs like
Kindergarten Teacher, IRS employee, zookeeper, and even unemployed.
