il(Legal) Barrier to Career Well Being Webinar May 24

Do your clients have legal concerns preventing them from achieving career well-being? Learn ways to help them by joining me for a webinar I’m giving next Thursday May 24, 12 Noon Eastern at CEUOneStop. Learn more.

Hope to see you there!

Career Assessment Matches Students to a College's Majors with New Career Key for Higher Education Tool

Holland career assessment leader Career Key announces a new "My College's Majors" tool that enables admissions, first year experience (FYE) and student success programs to match students to the programs and majors their school offers.

Career Key Discovery for Higher Education, "Leveling Up," includes this new tool. My College's Majors encourages greater student engagement and leads to more long-term benefits because students choose from and make their personality-major match to the most relevant education options to them - the ones offered by their institution.

Studies show students who make this close Holland personality-major match are more likely to:

1. Get higher grades,
2. Stick with their major, and
3. Graduate on time.

More details about personality-major match research and how students can benefit are available on the Career Key website and in two popular, free eBooks:

• Match Your Personality to College Majors: what does the research say? (For students and parents)
• Personality Major Match and Student Success: Professionals' Guide (For counselors and educators)

Strengthening Career Well-Being: New tips and eBook from Career Key

Interested in strengthening your career well-being? Learn how with the new “Guide to Strengthening Career Well-Being”, a free downloadable eBook from Career Key. 

Career well-being: what is it and how do I strengthen it? (PDF)

In it, Career Key career assessment author Dr. Lawrence K. Jones and Juliet Wehr Jones, GCDF describe:

• What career well being is, and
• How it impacts your overall well-being, including your health and relationships.

Then they recommend practical ways to strengthen your career well-being to improve your overall health and happiness. 

Both the website article and eBook link to additional resources and recommended self-help activities on the Career Key website.

More resources for professionals:

•   “Strengthening Career Well-Being and Well-Being:A Primer for Professionals” is a special eBook version for counselors, practitioners and professionals with additional references and citations.
• Using Holland's Theory of Career Choice to strengthen career well-being

 

Catch Up with Recent Career Key Newsletters

Happy New Year! If you haven't signed up for our newsletter or missed our most recent ones, feel free to catch up with these links.

• Your Students' Priorities and Holland, September
• Avoid College Ranking and Scorecard Tricks, October/November
• Happy Holidays and Special Offer, December

I try to put career development research, humor, Career Key news, cool links and downloads in one short package!

If you like what you read, sign up here.

New College and Career Readiness Infographic from Career Key

Career Key's new college and career readiness infographic shows the American School Counselor Association's (ASCA) new ASCA Mindsets and Behaviors for Student Success covered when students take the Career Key's career interest inventory. Counselors can use the infographic to easily visualize how their use of Career Key aligns with these research-based standards.

The assessment, based on Holland's Theory of Career Choice, helps middle and high school students make sense of career choices and choosing classes by identifying careers that match their personality and interests.  Research shows this match leads to higher levels of engagement, satisfaction and success.

Find your academic tribe! July's Free Agent, the Career Key Newsletter

Is helping others find their academic tribe, the right college major environment on your Fall list for working with high school or college students? Good for you - research says it's worth the extra time to delve into. To read the feature article about it, visit the July 2015 issue of our enewsletter, The Free Agent.  Be sure to subscribe on Career Key's home page, www.careerkey.org, if you like what you see.

The newsletter has Career Key news, humor, and research you can use.  There are links we've come across we think are worth sharing, in addition to free downloads.  Enjoy!

Recent Career Development Research on Physical Disabilities

In honor of National Disability Employment Awareness Month and Veterans Day November 11, I gleaned some practice tips from recent research studies on physical disability and career development.

The goal is to inform and link career development practitioners working with disabled clients to research and resources they may not be aware of. 

Why should we pay attention to disability in career development? 

1. In 2005, one in five U.S. residents reported some level of disability (U.S. Census 2008) with the number rising with large numbers of returning veterans. 
2. Individuals with disabilities comprise the largest minority group in the United States, with almost half the population living with one or more chronic health conditions. (Foley-Nipcon and Lee, 2012)

Finding: Severity of the disability and age of disability onset matters

When counseling physically disabled individuals, “the perceived severity of the disability and the point in the life span at which it occurred are not negligible details…”*

Study authors found that:

• Disability severity and age of onset significantly relate self-efficacy with Realistic, Artistic, Social and Conventional domains. Only the Investigative domain had insignificant relation – perhaps because of its focus “on mental tasks performed alone and that require minimal physical mobility."
•  “[S]elf-rated disability severity does not have a detrimental relation with vocational self-efficacies among those who become disabled early in life.”
•  By contrast, “individuals who become disabled later in life show a steeply negative relationship between self-rated disability severity and self-efficacies.”

*Tenenbaum, R. Z., Byrne, C. J., and Dahling, J. J. (2014). Interactive Effects of Physical Disability Severity and Age of Disability Onset on RIASEC Self-Efficacies, Journal of Career Assessment, Vol. 22(2) 274-289.  Note: this study did not include anyone with blindness. Please see any other limitations the authors list.

This study supports recommendations in the diverse populations chapter of NCDA’s Career Development Facilitator “Facilitating Career Development: Student Manual (Rev. 2^nd Edition). It recommends that practitioners consider when in the lifespan the disability occurred – taking into account possible feelings of loss, guilt and grief.

Additional resources:

National Career Development Association website’s List of Resources for People with Disabilities

Eby, L. T., Johnson, C. D., & Russell, J. E. A. (1998). A psychometric review of career assessment tools for use with diverse individuals. Journal of Career Assessment, 6, 269–310.

Feldman, D. C. (2004). The role of physical disabilities in early career: Vocational choice, the school-to-work transition, and becoming established. Human Resource Management Review, 14, 247–274.

Foley-Nicpon, M., & Lee, S. (2012) Disability research in counseling psychology journals: A 20-year content analysis. Journal of Counseling Psychology 59, 392–398.

Peterson, D. B., & Elliott, T. R. (2008). Advances in conceptualizing and studying disability. In S. D. Brown & R. W. Lent (Eds.), Handbook of counseling psychology (4th ed., pp. 212–230). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons Inc.

If you know of other research or resources I have not included, please leave a comment and I will add it to the post.

Choose a Career and College Major with Holland's Theory, New Career Key Video Series

Learn how to choose a career or college major with Holland's Theory of Career Choice in a new YouTube video series "How to Achieve Career and College Success" from Career Key.

These short videos cover Dr. John Holland's six main ideas, including the Holland personality types (also known as Holland codes), Holland's work and education environments, and how to use the Holland hexagon. It's based on the popular Career Key web article on Holland's Theory of Career Choice.

How to Achieve Career and College Success Video Series

• How to Achieve Career and College Success: Introduction
• The Six Holland Personality Types
• The Six Holland Environments
• Holland Environments: searching for and interacting with them
• The Holland Hexagon
• Congruence: Making a Good Match

The series is created and presented by Career Key author and nationally recognized counseling psychologist, Dr. Lawrence K. Jones, NCC. It is followed by a series on good career decision making.

All these videos will appear soon in a new section of the Career Key website.

Subscribe to The Career Key's YouTube channel to get notified of new videos as they appear.

Holland Personality Type Patterns That Are Inconsistent - and Their Advantages

One part of using Holland's Theory of Career Choice to choose a career is the concept of choosing a compatible work environment, one that matches your strongest personality types. Most people are a combination of types, most often found close to one another on the Holland Hexagon. The hexagon shows the relationship between the types - the closer they are to one another, the more compatible.

But what if your strongest personality types are opposite each other on the hexagon, like Realistic-Social (RS) Investigative-Enterprising (IE), or Conventional-Artistic (CA)? These are sometimes referred to as inconsistent personality patterns. But don't be alarmed.

While these combinations are less common, they are normal. In fact, Career Key's author Dr. Lawrence K. Jones has an inconsistent pattern himself: Realistic-Social. His personal story also shows these characteristics.

To learn more about understanding and taking advantage of these kinds of personality type combinations, visit Career Key's articles:

• The Inconsistent Holland Personality Pattern and Its Advantages
• Dr. Jones's advice to a Career Key user about these types of patterns, using his own experience as an example.

If you're new to Holland's approach, then start with our Holland's Theory of Career Choice article. We plan on adding a short video about inconsistent personality patterns soon to Career Key's YouTube channel so please subscribe if you want to be notified when that comes out.

Help Choosing a Major Needed More Than Ever

Statistics show that students need help choosing a major now more than ever.  The November 2013 ACT College Choice Report found that only about one-third (36%) of college bound students taking the ACT are choosing majors that fit their interests or Holland personality. And we know from personality-major match research, this will very likely negatively impact these students' success.

Research shows that students who do choose a major that fits their personality and interests, what we call a close “personality-major match,” are more likely to succeed in college with:

(1) higher grades;

(2) greater persistence in a major; and

(3) higher on-time graduation rates.

College completion rates continue to be low. According to the U.S. Department of Education, only 38 percent of students entering a 4 year college graduate in 4 years, 59 percent in six. About 40 percent drop out. (National Center for Education Statistics, 2013).

And there is a steep financial penalty to those who switch majors and delay graduation.  One study showed that those working toward a bachelor’s degree lose in earnings, on average, $50,000 (adjusted for inflation) for each additional year it takes to finish their degree.  In addition, many studies support increased salary and job satisfaction for people who choose a career that matches their personality.

So how can students make better decisions about majors? Career Key has several affordable resources students can use to make good education decisions:

Match Up! EBook, available in the Career Key Store

1. Free eBook downloads: “Choosing a College Major Based on Your Personality: What does the research say?” We also have a special Professionals’ Guide to Personality College Major Match and Student Success for counselors, career development professionals, and educators.
2. Career Key's unique eBook, Match Up! Your Personality to College Majors and Training Programs 2014. Used with results of the Career Key career test, it offers the only complete list of U.S. and Canadian majors and programs of study scientifically classified by Holland personality type – enabling a close personality-major match.
3. Self-help articles like What is a College Major, Personality Major Match, Holland College Major Environments, and What are Liberal Arts Majors.

New 2012-2022 BLS Employment Projections: What Career Counselors Need to Know

The U.S. 2012-2022 Employment Projections provide new data for career counselors and career development professionals to rely upon in helping people make career and education choices.  I put together a summary of resources to help you incorporate this new information in your work. You can make your own expert “take” on the data based on your experience and geographic area.

Start with the Basics and the Big Picture

You will find helpful summaries about the projections in the Winter 2013/14 issue of the Occupational Outlook Quarterly. The graphics are great for people (like me) who need a visual boost to understand data. If you are short on time, read the Introduction and the Occupational Employment section (the PDF versions are easier to read).  For those of us who do not work with these numbers every day, it helps to get reminders on how to interpret the data.  For example, “faster growth” does not necessarily mean a greater number of new jobs.

Trends and Highlights 

• Occupations related to healthcare are projected to have the fastest growth and add the most new jobs.
• Most growing occupations require a degree or post-secondary training/certification.
• Workers make more money with a degree or post-secondary training/certification.
• More older people will be working and working longer (the 65-75 age group more than any other group).
• The labor force continues to become more diverse with Caucasians’ share declining and Hispanics’ share to rise.
• The construction industry is recovering, but not yet to 2007 levels.
• Most job growth is coming from replacing workers, not new jobs. 

Most of the trends are unsurprising given technology advances and the state of our economy.  Issues continue with unemployment, underemployment, and most job creation in poorly paid retail and service occupations.

Best Graphs to Look At

The best graphs to understand job outlook by occupation are in the Occupational Employment Section of the OOQ I mentioned earlier.  If you want to drill down to promising occupations by degree level, scroll down to the last half of the article (page 13 on the PDF).

Differences between the 2010-2020 and 2012-2022 Projections

Laurence Shatkin nicely summarizes in his Career Laboratory Blog the differences between the employment projections two years ago and the new ones just released.

Help Others with Critical Thinking

It pays to help people evaluating career choices take a hard look at how “promising” and growing certain occupations are. For example, lawyers continue to get a high growth and median wage marks in the BLS data.  But the legal profession is going through big upheaval and change, due to technology, the Internet, offshoring, and businesses’ willingness to pay the high cost of using large law firms.  There is also a wide gap between the number of middle-class and low income people needing legal representation and lawyers who can afford to serve them. For example, the Washington State bar association magazine has had a number of articles about these changes and the difficulties for young lawyers to get hired.  So people should not just immediately look at the graph and say, hey – lawyers is a promising career. It may be for some but there are many variables to consider.

New Projections and Occupations Added to the Occupational Outlook Handbook (OOH)

The new job outlook information is now available for specific occupations in the Occupational Outlook Handbook, just out yesterday (January 8, 2014).

As a consequence, Career Key updated its career interest inventory to include several new occupations added to the Handbook (see the Teacher’s Guide below) along with the new job outlook projections for all the test’s occupations.

There is a new version of the OOH “Not just for teachers” Teacher’s Guide, that includes a list of the new occupations listed in the Handbook. Counselors and other career development professionals will find the explanations and context for data helpful.

Funny Note: The OOH's occupational profile for legislators has been deleted, gone the way of textile occupations.  Hmmm. 

We are huge fans of both the Occupational Outlook Handbook and the Occupational Outlook Quarterly. As Mr. Shatkin points out in his blog, we are extremely lucky to have government resources like these. Even Canada, Great Britain and other countries you would think have similar resources - in fact, do not.  So give a cheer for OOH and OOQ author, the Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics and have fun with numbers! It only comes once every two years…

New Career Key Career Test Booklet Available

Career Key's popular career test is now available in a printed booklet form, the Career Key Test and Activities Booklet! Sets of 35 cost $75 (about $2 per booklet) and are available for sale on Amazon.com and in the American School Counselors Association bookstore.

This 20 page booklet includes Career Key's scientifically valid career interest inventory as well as activities covering career development's most important concepts, such as how to make a good decision. At the Career Key website, there is also a free PDF guide to using the Career Key Test and Activities Booklet to meet ASCA's National Model Student Standards.

Released with a new design and content in September 2013, it is full color and environmentally friendly, made with 100% recycled bright white paper and soy inks.

Free shipping and more sample pages are available at the booklet's product page on Amazon.com.

Military to Civilian Transition: Making It a Success

If you are making a military to civilian career change or advise people who are, Career Key has published a new online guide to making it a success.

In it, Career Key author Dr. Lawrence K. Jones, NCC recommends five strategies for making the transition a success:

1. Anticipate potential emotional and psychological challenges - make a Military to Civilian career plan to minimize the adjustment.
2. Know yourself and your Military to Civilian Career Change- understand why you're leaving the military and what job satisfaction really means. 
3. Know your options in a Military to Civilian Career Decision - and identify career options that fit you best. Our valid career assessment can help.
4. Make a Good Decision using a science-based career decision-making method; and
5. Prepare for Cultural Differences - learn how military and civilian employers differ.

According to recent studies, one of the biggest challenges to veterans is translating their military skills to the civilian work world.  In addition to several government sites that do an automated military to civilian skills translation, we recommend our job skills article:
Be Job and Work Skills Smart
It walks you through the process of identifying your skills, including ones you enjoy using most, and how to communicate them to employers. It includes a free, interactive "My Work Skills List" to fill out.

Other related articles that might interest you:
Choosing a Military Career
Career Change
Job Satisfaction

Career Key Career Test Overview Video

Career Key's YouTube channel now features a video overview of The Career Key career test. Take two and a half minutes to watch if you'd like to learn more about our valid career test or you are a new user who wants to get the most out of the experience:

If you are a Career Key career test group discount customer, feel free to share the link with your test takers as a quick introduction.

I plan on adding to our Career Key Demos and Tutorials video playlist so feel free to suggest more ideas...

Career Key Career Test & New Career Information Links to the 2012-2013 Occupational Outlook Handbook

The Career Key's valid career test and online career assessment now links to the latest career information from the new 2012-13 Occupational Outlook Handbook (OOH) released late last week. When Career Key test takers create their personal job option list of matching occupations, each job or career is linked with career information (job requirements, education and training, salary, etc) from the new OOH.

New entry and look for "High School Teachers" in the Occupational Outlook Handboook.

Our career information update was also made to one of our most popular articles, "Match Your Personality with Careers." It shows hundreds of occupations by Holland personality type and Career Key work group.  Users of our paper-pencil Career Key career test often use this article to get online career information about matching careers and jobs that interest them.

Best features of the new OOH, in my opinion:

• It's easier to read, with the most important information clearly up front in the summary. (Pay, Education, Job Outlook);
• A Tab format for browsing with easy to understand labels like "What They Do" and "How to Become One";
• More attractive, photo-heavy listing of "Similar Occupations,"
• The content in "What They Do", "Work Environment," and "How to Become One" - the details are practical and helpful, truly giving a flavor of the work environment.

We have preferred the career information in the OOH to the O*NET for quite some time. There are some content differences and advantages to using both, which I explained in a June 2011 post:

"Comparing Top Career Information Resources: Occupational Outlook Handbook and O*NET's My Next Move."

Taking into account the new OOH look, my advice for exploring government career information is still the same: 

• Start with the OOH for better detail and quality of information; the new OOH format just makes it a lot easier to explore and navigate. 
• Use the O*NET (or America's CareerInfoNet) for links to more specific, local (state and metropolitan area) salary and education information.  

Join Career Key on Facebook to Share Fun, Interesting Career Choices

Starting today, Career Key is inviting our fans on the Career Key Facebook page to share success stories about people and their career choices who they think showcase Holland's Theory of Career Choice in action.  Our first suggestion is a person who combines his Social/Artistic personality with an occupation he created --  "Educating Rapper" - come watch the video! Sound interesting? Come and participate (we are offering free Career Key products to early birds). 

Embracing Facebook's new timeline look, Career Key's Facebook page has recently changed so if you haven't visited in awhile or haven't visited us yet, please do! I worked hard to figure out Facebook's new look so I appreciate any feedback.

Finally, if you "Like" us or leave comments, I promise we won't spam you (Honestly, we don't know how. I'm too afraid to offend people anyway).  We post about 2-3x a week - but we try for quality, not quantity.  So you won't be bombarded with messages in your news feed.

If you're big on social media, we have a Twitter Account too:  @TheCareerKey

Thank you for engaging with us!

Personality-College Major Match Research in NCDA's February Career Convergence

The National Career Development Association (NCDA) looks at "personality-college major match" in the February issue of its web magazine Career Convergence, in the feature article, "Research Reveals that Personality-Major Match Strengthens Students' College Success."  In it, Career Key author Dr. Lawrence K. Jones, NCC describes the impact that personality and Holland's college major environments have on college performance.

The article also refers to two important, free white papers in an e-book format that explain the research and how to apply it to career and education decisions:

• "Personality-College Major Match and Student Success"(2011), (cover at left), a 28-page guide for professionals, and
• "Choosing a College Major Based on Your Personality: What does the research say?" (2010), a 29-page guide for students, adults returning to school, and parents.  

Career Clusters, Career Pathways & Our Updated E-Book

"5 Steps to Choosing a Career Cluster, Field, or Pathway" has just been updated. It includes the most recent updates to The Career Key test and the most recent assignments of Career Clusters and Career Pathways found on O*NET OnLine.

Found in our eBookstore, "5 Steps" costs $9.95 with a special discount for purchasing both the Career Key test and the e-Book together.

Career Key's approach is to use its valid assessment of Holland's six personality types to match students to occupations, then to the clusters and pathways related to those occupations.

Our e-book is the only one that matches students' interests in this way. We also have a free online article called "Choosing a Career Cluster, Field or Pathway" with a free downloadable Career Key Map of the 16 Career Clusters.

The 16 Career Clusters and 79 Career Pathways are not organized by interests (but by industries and required skills, knowledge). So it's important to give students a scientifically valid way to match their interests to occupations within those clusters and pathways.

I uploaded to YouTube a video overview of Career Key's Career Clusters and Career Pathways resources, including the new version of the e-book.



If you are interested in Career Clusters and Career Pathways, you might read these related blog posts:
Career Clusters Interest Survey Validity Questioned by Study
NCDA Article on Using Interests to Organize Matching College Majors, Career Clusters and Pathways
NCDA (National Career Development Association)

Please see the related press release, "Career Key's Updated e-Book Enables Students to Choose the Best Career Cluster and Career Pathway."

Career Key Offers New College Match Up! Service: New Participant, Community College of Rhode Island

We're pleased to announce our new service, College Match Up! for U.S. and Canadian college/university career services, academic advising, offices of retention and admissions. 

For each college or university participating in this new service, we create on The Career Key website a Match Up! page that will:

• Publicly display online that college's majors by Holland personality type and Career Key work group, helping students scientifically match their personality to majors,
• Provide information about each major,
• Link visitors to important departments like Advising, Career Services, and
• Give sound advice based on best practices and research in the field.

As usual, our websites have no ads, no registration requirement, or marketing to students.

Community College of Rhode Island, the largest community college in the Northeast, is the first to take advantage of the service. This is their new Match Up! page:

"Choose a Community College of Rhode Island Major and Related Career That Matches Your Personality"

To see a short YouTube video overview of the new service...

It's easy to participate and affordable. If you'd like to learn more, please contact me!

Excellent Review for Career Key E-Book "Match Up! Your Personality to College Majors"

Choosing a college major? "Match Up! Your Personality to College Majors"(Canadian link), a popular Career Key® and Career Key Canada e-book, will help you make smart career and college major choices. Thanks to an excellent review from National Career Development Association President, Dr. Debra Osborn, you can be confident of our e-book's quality and helpfulness. 

The American Counseling Association just published Dr. Osborn's review in its July 2011 issue of Counseling Today.  Click on this link to see her Match Up! review at our website.

According to Dr. Osborn, 

“Match Up! will be of great use to students and counselors who quickly need a list of options related to personality.” 

She also found “the e-book makes reading not only easy and enjoyable but reader-centered.” She continues...

"The authors state that their goal is to “help young people and adults make the best career and educational decisions possible.” Jones and Jones have created an interactive book that provides a strong framework for accomplishing this goal. I wholeheartedly recommend this book for busy school counselors, and others who work with adolescents and young adults and have that same goal. It is a great resource that provides solid information necessary for making effective career decisions."

 In “Match Up!” readers see:

• Which majors fit their personality, 
• A description of each major,
• Related occupations, and
• How to find colleges that offer those majors.

 “Match Up! Your Personality to College Majors” contains over 1,400 college majors in the U.S. and Canada. It is available for sale in the Career Key eBookstore: Adobe® PDF, 343 pages, US $14.95, 2011. There is a special discount when you purchase both The Career Key test and the "Match Up!" e-book together.  For information on group discounts, please contact me.

More information...

“Match Up!”, by Dr. Lawrence K. Jones, NCC and Juliet Wehr Jones, J.D., GCDF, is the first publication to show students and adults returning to school all college majors matching their Holland personality types.  All of the majors (1400+) currently used by the U.S. Department of Education (and Canada) were scientifically analyzed and organized according to the Holland personality types.  Studies show that the closer the personality-major match, the more likely students will earn good grades, persist, and graduate on time.