Hey everybody, this is Jennifer Gonzalez for Cult of Pedagogy.
I wanted to share with you a really great career searching tool
called the Occupational Outlook Handbook, which is put out by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
So I would like to just show you real quickly how to use it.
This is fantastic for someone who is really struggling with trying to figure out what they want to
do when they graduate from high school, or maybe somebody who's already
out of high school and is just at a crossroads in their career.
This is a really robust tool for learning a lot more about different kinds of jobs,
what is required to get those jobs in terms of education and training,
and salary, and growth projection, and all kinds of stuff.
So if you go to www.bls.gov/ooh...
that's for the Occupational Outlook Handbook,
you will be taken here.
From this page you can explore a lot of different occupations.
You could look at...Arts and Design.
Once you click on that you'll be taken to
a long list of different jobs. It lists the kind of education
that you need, it gives you a summary...
From here you can click into an even more in-depth description.
So if we look at "Floral Designers," for example...
we get all kinds of information about what floral designers do,
their work environment, and if you look at all these different little
small bits of text, you can click on each one and go to a more lengthy article.
For example,
This description of what floral designers do
gives you lots and lots of information about what the
work day is like and the skills that are required.
There's also information on how to become one.
It talks about the education and the training...
and also information on pay.
So you really get an in-depth look at what each job looks like.
The Occupational Outlook Handbook also has a tool called an Occupation Finder,
which I think is especially helpful to people who really just don't have
any idea what they want to do.
So let's take a look at that.
From up here...
click on "Occupation Finder"...
So you'll be taken to a long list of all of those different articles that they have
that describe each of those jobs.
What you can do is start filtering down on this list. So let's suppose you're a high school senior,
you're a few weeks away from graduating and you have no idea what you want to do you really are
sort of lost -- you're not even sure you want to go to college.
So what you can do is start by filtering this list down by...
say you said, "Let me see what I can do without getting any college education at all."
so you can go right over here, under "Entry-Level Education,"
and you can select just "High School Diploma or Equivalent," no college at all.
What that does is, it filters down the list only to jobs that
require just a high school diploma, so you can start exploring those...
...and it's a pretty good list.
You could add another filter:
Let's say you want to see what is going...
what's a really growing profession that, you know, there's going to be
lots of new jobs. We can go right here to
"Projected Number of New Jobs"
Let's go to 50,000 or more.
It gives you quite a few jobs
still -- with no college -- and there's a pretty good number of new jobs that are coming.
Say you want to look at salary next.
Let's look at between 35 and 54.
Once you start filtering down, then you can start exploring each one
and basically clicking on each of these will take you to
that same article that describes, you know, what the job is like.
So I'll show you right here...
"Bookkeeping, Accounting, and Auditing Clerks"...
and you get that same article:
what they do, what the work environment is, how to become one, the pay...
So if you've got someone in your life or if you yourself are
wanting to explore careers, consider the Occupational Outlook Handbook
put out by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Thank you so much.