Most people struggle when looking for a job or a career transition. They start by looking at postings on job boards, or related resources, and they start asking three main questions. One: Can I do the job? Two: How much money can I make at this job? And Three: Will I be happy doing this? Now, those are all valid questions when you are looking for a job, but they are not the first questions you would ask if you are designing a good-fit career.

The My Career Design Studio (MCDS) program helps you to describe who you are. 

By gaining a better understanding of who you are, you will then be able to answer design questions like, will this work make me happy? Does it fit into my ideal work/life balance? And, Does this work utilize my strengths and minimize the tasks that make me frustrated or that are tedious to me? In a nutshell, the program gets at the key question, is this job a good fit for me?

The Raw Materials section in MCDS drills down into who you are and what you want. Once you have that clarity the job titles that are a good fit for you will begin to fall in line. New jobs are always created due to new market segments and advancing technologies.

MCDS and the databases that offer you good-fit job options to expand your exploration.

MCDS is connected to the U.S. Department of Labor’s O*net Online jobs database. This database is a great resource to start exploring your job options. In fact, in MCDS, after you’ve completed your “Career Priorities,” the section called “My Exploration” begins to take the items you identified as most important to have in a job and cross-references them with the extensive O*net Online database of job descriptions and provides you with some potential job title matches.

If you click on each potential job title provided in “My Exploration,” it will take you to the corresponding detailed job description in O*net Online. This description tells you more about the specific tasks, skills, abilities, and work activities involved in this line of work. O*net, also, has a comment section you can derive firsthand accounts from. Additionally, O*net has a list of Related Occupations which might be good fit possibilities for you as well. 

The next step:  Using the MCDS “My Interests” list to look for job openings on Indeed.com.

MCDS has a section called “My Interests” which is a result of the information you provided about yourself in the “Raw Materials” section. You can take the job titles, locations, shifts, schedules, and salary ranges from the My Interests information section and put it into Indeed.com to search for job openings.  Indeed.com even offers the ability to apply to the company directly from their website for a position that piques your interest.

Internet searches only take you so far and the old saying “You don’t know what you don’t know” should be taken to heart. Begin your career exploration with My Career Design Studio and what you need to know will come naturally.

If you have not signed up for My Career Design Studio, take this opportunity to sign up for a free seven-day trial.