Vote at USDOL to Recommend The Career Key Website to Career and Job Seekers

If you like our career advice and help for people making career decisions, please recommend The Career Key website in the U.S. Department of Labor's Tools for America's Job Seekers Challenge. You can use the link above or look for Idea #34. You can also type "Career Key" into the search box.

Nearly all of our website is free, with the nominal test fee ($1 per test for group purchases of at least 30) supporting the site's operation. Plus we donate 10% of website sales to charity and no advertising.

We rely mostly on word-of-mouth recommendations (it's worked since 1997) so your vote and comments really count.  Thank you!

Students Choosing a College Major: What Employers Want from Colleges

If you're considering your college major and education options, you've probably seen at least one media source talk about the purpose of college and whether college is still worth it. And whether any liberal arts degree other than business (is that a liberal art?) has a path to financial greatness.  The hype is enough to make anyone unsure of how to make a financial investment in education.

I think the issue has been oversimplified, overly alarmist - with little helpful or practical information for students and parents of students wondering if their retirement funds are being sucked into a black hole of irrelevance.

But the good outcome of all this handwringing is the attention given to making well-thought out career and education decisions.  That doesn't mean you have to decide on day 1 of your college education what your graduation job will be.  But it does mean that you should pay attention to what interests you, what you want to learn, and how you can fit that into the first career step of many after graduation.

So as you choose your college major, you might consider what you'll learn from your chosen program in these skill areas employers believe are important outcomes for college students:

Intellectual and Practical Skills

•Written and oral communication	89%*
•Critical thinking and analytic reasoning	81%
•Complex problem solving	75%
•Teamwork skills in diverse groups	71%
•Creativity and innovation	70%
•Information literacy	68%
•Quantitative reasoning	63%

*% of employers surveyed by the American Association of Colleges and Universities who say colleges should place more emphasis on "learning outcomes" in these skills.

If you've paid attention to anything Daniel Pink has written about the coming of the Right Brained Thinker, then you'll see that there is more to life than a business degree (not that there is anything wrong with that).  There are plenty of other liberal arts options (yes, philosophy is one of them) that will teach you the skills to excel in business or any field.  It is possible to take business courses while you study philosophy. It IS possible to think outside the college major/career path box. What a concept!

Advice for Changing Careers from the Change Experts

Making a career change is not easy. Make sure you don't overlook helpful resources from outside the career advice world.  For any life change you want to make, I highly recommend Dr. James Prochaska's "Changing for Good" book that I read over the holiday break. It was recommended to me by a fellow career development professional. (Thanks Kate Duttro! Author of the Career Change for Academics Blog)

If you are emotionally invested (like most of us) in our careers and jobs - and you're forced or by choice want to make a career change, "Changing for Good" has some great advice.

Like we do in The Career Key's "High Quality Decisions" article, Dr. Prochaska bases part of his advice about making good decisions on Irving L. Janis and Leon Mann's decisional balance research.

The free Decision Balance Sheet from our High Quality Decisions article would be an excellent companion exercise to this book.  If you can recommend any other helpful, high-quality resources like this one related to making life changes, please let me know.

Happy New Year from The Career Key!

Happy New Year! I've been taking some much needed vacation - I hope you have been too.

I got addicted to cross-country skiing back when I was too poor to downhill ski (and I'm still too cheap to spring for a season pass). So when I had the opportunity to ski near Mt. Hood, Oregon over the Christmas holiday - I took it. Wow - what a couple of hours in the bright sunshine and snow will do for you!

I also have been using the down time to work on a few Career Key projects that you'll be hearing about soon:

• the 2010 update to What Job is Best for Me?
• preparing my presentation for the CANNEXUS 2010 conference in Ottawa later this month, and
  
• New licensing options for organizations who want to use our new Holland personality type match with College Majors and Career Clusters/Career Pathways tailored to the programs they offer.

Dr. Lawrence K. Jones, Career Key's author, is finishing up the final touches on our new Education Key website for launch in the next month or so.

I hope you have a great, prosperous New Year - with healthy family and friends.

2 Positive Steps to Handle Family and Friends’ Influences on Your Career Planning

Your relationships with family and friends have a big impact on your career choices and career decisions – and the holidays focus on these relationships more than any other time of year. Are you stuck in career indecision and feel your friends or family might judge you for it? Are you considering a career they might not approve of?

Especially in the U.S., where so much focus is on your job (think social gathering and the typical opening question – “how’s the job search?” or “how’s work (or school)?”), handling career questions or opinions about your choices from those close to you can be awkward.

Here are 3 steps to positively anticipate and handle those questions and influences using The Career Key’s High-Quality Decisions self-help article:

1. Identify any pressure you feel from family or friends – positive or negative – about your career plans. To help you, download a free “Decision Balance Sheet” and complete it for the job or career options you’re considering. Check out this list of Career Choice Consequences to help you “see” what issues may be weighing on you. Your choice may be so welcomed by your friends or family that you feel uncomfortable pressure to be successful or “perfect.” Expectations may need to be lowered.
2. Make a plan for how you will handle each person’s concerns or reactions to your career choice or career indecision. That way you’re not left unprepared (and maybe anxious).

For example, if you’ve been laid off and you haven’t decided if you will go back to school, then prepare and practice a script for how you will answer your mother’s well-meaning but loaded question at the holiday dinner table, “how ARE you?” Instead of saying “things are fine,” which you know will result in cool or hurt silence, wouldn’t it be better to say:

“I’m deciding on whether to go to grad school. I had two informational interviews last month with graduates of the ___ school I’m considering and I’ve got two more scheduled for after Christmas. It’s pretty interesting what’s I’ve learned about _______(the post-graduation job market, financial aid, interesting classes)."

Imagine how your mom will brighten at hearing about what you are doing. With mothers, sometimes giving them more information is better than less, right? (I hope my mother is not reading this post.)

Or if you are seriously considering a career change from a more secure (if such a thing exists anymore) career like a civil-service government position to starting a business – how have you planned for the risks or consequences and your significant others’ reaction to it?

Take advantage of family and friends well-meaning interest in you to make sure your career plans and research are as organized and “on track” as you would like. It may have the side benefit of forcing you to set goals for yourself – short-term, realistic and achievable – to get things moving in a positive direction.

New NCDA Article on Using Career Interests to Organize Matching College Majors, Career Clusters, and Career Pathways

If you're a career counselor, school counselor, or career development professional, please visit the National Career Development Association's Career Convergence web magazine feature article this month, "Relating Interests to College Majors, Career Clusters, and Career Pathways."

The Career Key's author Dr. Lawrence K. Jones and I wrote the article to discuss the challenge of this project (using Holland's Theory with these other classification systems not based on interests), its importance, and how it can be used. We also hope to get your feedback.

How one classifies or organizes occupations and educational programs by Holland interests and work groups can sound boring to many people (but not to us!) - and yet it is a major reason that The Career Key is so practical and useful. You can see our classification system for matching careers at our website article, "Match Your Personality with Careers."

We want to thank the NCDA and Career Convergence editors for working hard with us to make the article possible.

3 Ways to Use Twitter to Explore Careers and Job Options

Now that I have been sucked into Twitter, I am surprised to discover some valuable ways it can be used for career exploration. I admit to being skeptical in the past, but I am starting to change my mind.

Just like “lurking” in a forum or following a blog, following someone on Twitter can teach you lingo, show you trends, and even get you contacts through direct email. You can use it as a way for you to follow your “community” of people interested in similar occupations or industries.

1. Find and follow Twitters who work in and talk about a career that interests you.

While you can use Twitter’s “search” box, I found it quicker and more helpful to use lists of Twitterers already generated by others that are organized by occupation or career interest.

For example, the social media guide Mashable has several lists organized that way, like:

Designers, broken down into subcategories like Web Designer, Graphic Designer, etc.
Environmentalists (for people interested in Green Careers)
Musicians
Foodies
Entrepreneurs
You can see all of Mashable’s Mega Lists here.

You can also use your favorite search engine to find a list. I “googled” “best lawyers on Twitter” and got a useful hit, “20 Twitterers Lawyers Should Follow on Twitter” at the Legal Intelligencer Blog.

Using Bing, I found a result for “Twitter Lists for Journalism and PR” at the Journalistics Blog.
Talk about great information if you’re interested in becoming a journalist – this post alone tells you a lot about the industry and trends.

2. Find and use #hashtags related to your career interest.

According to Twubs, a #hashtag is:

A user-created standard for identifying tweets belonging to a topic. Simply include the tag in your tweet and other people searching for the same tag will be able to find it. A user-created standard for identifying tweets belonging to a topic. Simply include the tag in your tweet and other people searching for the same tag will be able to find it.

Sites like Twubs organize them into groups and allow you to search for #hashtags. So for example, there are #hashtags for everything from #photography to #astronomy. I just started one for #choosecareer.

3. Think about how you use Twitter (or the Internet for that matter) and what that behavior tells you about yourself.

What topics do you search for? Who do you “follow”? Who on Facebook do you “fan”? What political or social issues are you passionate about? For more activities, go to “Learn More About Myself” at The Career Key website.

Use what you learn about your interests and passions to move forward in your career exploration and decision. If you want more career choice tips and want to follow me on Twitter, please do! I'm "thecareerkey" - which you can see in the box at the top right of this blog's homepage. I welcome your feedback! Twitter icon above courtesy of webdesignerdepot.com.