Researching Career Opportunities
High school students may be busy researching colleges to attend, but researching a future career and matching career aspirations with the right college is also important.
This post will cover how to research your future career like a pro as a follow-up to my previous post, Researching Colleges like a Pro.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics provides a free online Occupational Handbook. This is a quick and easy site to use to research careers. It’s so easy that this post will be super short!
Simply type a career in the handbook’s search bar and click Go.
To illustrate what happens next, I typed “teacher” in the handbook’s search input box. Once you type in a career, choose the career that is most appropriate to your search. For instance, I’ll choose High School Teachers.
Next, read about the career. There are tabs at the top you can click through as well as a helpful summary box you can review.
Make sure to review the following key points for your research:
Job Outlook – the growth rate of the profession. This gives you an idea of whether your degree will place you in a career that is in demand or not.
Entry-Level Education – understand the educational commitment involved.
Median Pay – I’m not even going to describe why you may be interested in discovering this. 🙂
What They Do / Work Environment – these tabs will give you a sense of what a typical work day looks like. You may think you will enjoy the career you are researching, but take a look and make sure.
Good luck and have fun learning about your future career!
Post by Sarah Powers, Former Instructional Designer at FLVS