A note about career exploration and career tests… Career tests (or assessments) are not meant to tell you “what you are going to do.” Rather, they are a way of focusing and clarifying what is important to you as a person and what you are looking for in a job. Do not take these tests too seriously.
Assessments that are available online usually have a large margin of error and have not necessarily been validated or tested for reliability. If you are unsure what you want to do and don’t know how to answer the question, “What do I want to be when I grow up?” take some of these free online instruments and take your results with you when you see a career counselor.
General Career Websites
- Career One Step - Sponsored by the US Dept of labor, offers career resources and workforce info to job seekers, students, and businesses
- Career Development and Guidance - Compilation of existing career and technical online resources
- Assesment - MAPP Career Assessment (Values/motivators)
- Quint Careers - General career resource with job information, links to job sites, and a job search portal
- O-Net - Contains hundreds of standardized and occupation-specific descriptors. Also contains some free career assessments
- University Counceling Center - George Washington University website with helpful career exploration websites
- JobHuntersBible - Richard Bolles’ website, coincides with the book What Color is Your Parachute?
- The Riley Guide - Job resources on net and job search tools
- BLS - US Dept of Labor (Bureau of Labor Statistics)
- www.hoovers.com – Information on companies
- www.vault.com – Articles, discussion forums, etc. describing many careers and industries
- MonsterTRAK - Articles on Job Search
- Jobweb - Career development and job search information for college students and new college graduates sponsored by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE)
- Career Cornerstone - Profiles of real people in science, engineering, technology, and medicine
Values
Skills
- Work Values - Skills checklist
- O-Net Skills Search - Based on skills you check off, generates a list of occupations that use that skill (taken from the Bureau of Labor Statistics)
- Monster - Interesting assessment from Monster – Job Assets & Strengths Profiler – JASPER. Free registration to Monster required.
- Stewart, Cooper and Coon - Online version of the Motivated Skills Card Sort by Richard Knowdell
Personality
- Human Metrics -Similar to the MBTI – Keirsey- Bates Temperament Sorter
- TypeLogic - Description of the 16 personality types
Goal-Setting
Informational Interviewing
