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How to Explore Your Dream Career
By Shannon | March 29, 2008
Whether you are changing careers or choosing a career, exploring your dream career can take some work. Luckily, there are plenty of resources, both online and offline, to find out about careers.
Online Resources
Someone compared the internet to the Library of Congress, only with all of the books on the floor in no particular order. While it is getting easier to find information on the web, it still requires patience and persistence to find exactly what you are looking for.
Career Sites
A good place to start is with one of the career-oriented web sites like The Riley Guide, Vault or WetFeet. These sites specialize in providing real-world information about careers, and at some, you can purchase detailed information, including profiles written by people who actually work in the field.
Professional Associations
If you can find a professional association for the career or even for a related field, the web site will often include educational requirements, relevant trade journals or magazines, salary information, and sometimes, insights into the challenges and rewards of the career.
Colleges and Universities
The web site for the career center at your alma mater (or another university) can be a great source of information about careers, job opportunities, and salary expectations.
Online Bookstores
Depending on the career, it may be included in a career-oriented book or in a compilation of related careers. Online book stores, such as Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com are a good resource for finding publications to help in your research.
Offline Resources
Reference Librarians
The reference librarian at your local library can be a great resource for finding information about a specific field or career. Reference librarians specialize in research, and they have plenty of reference materials at their disposal. Even if a particular book is not available in your local library, you can usually get it on loan from a cooperating library through your librarian, or even online in some libraries.
The Career Center at Your Alma Mater
Your alma mater’s career center probably has a significant library that includes many reference books about different careers.
Local Chapter of a Professional Association
Many professional associations have local chapters that plan local or regional events. These may be networking events or educational events or both. Often the events are open to non-members who are considering joining the organization and want to learn more about it.
In a community that has a newspaper, these events are often listed on a specific day that the newspaper has designated. For example, some papers have a “Monday Business” section. Also, in cities that have local business journals, the event listings may appear in that journal.
Classes
Enrolling in a workshop or class in the field is another good way of learning more about that career. If you are taking the class or seminar at a community college or through a private educational organization, the instructor will likely be a professional in the field, and can answer many of your questions about the realities of that career.
Networking
The most effective way to research a career is to talk with people who work in the field. While you can learn a great deal about a career by reading about it, only the people who actually work (or have worked) in the career can give you the insights you will need to understand the positive and negative aspects of that career.
As you know, there can be big differences between the “official story” about a career and the everyday reality. A professional association might provide a comprehensive overview of a particular career, the qualifications needed to enter the field, and the opportunities it offers, but many will not talk much about the negative aspects of the career.
To find out the everyday reality of a career, you need to have the opportunity to ask questions of people who are working (or who have worked) in the field.
Topics: Changing Careers, Choosing a Career |