Twenty or thirty years ago, finding the right career was limited by lack of global internet tools, limited by more old fashioned values and opinions, and less important than ‘finding yourself.’ I recall when my counselor, the savior of all saviors as far as I’m concerned, laughed with me over how I had gone about finding the right career I had taken all the courses I found interesting and many I hoped were somehow related, then tried to decide on a major or career.

She gently joked that many people decide first, then do the footwork of taking the required and necessary and important courses, doing internships, and getting in at some entry level. Clearly, I didn’t have the tools we do today for finding the right career, or I didn’t know about their existence and value, at least.

For example, a lot of students will use personality testing and employment or goal evaluation for finding the right career right from the start of their semesters in college. ERIK, sychometric testing tools, and career skills assessment batteries will help to define aptitude and save you time futzing around with majors and minors that you THINK you MIGHT like when six years later decide you need to start all over finding the right career, as offshore tool is not for you or interplanetary travel studies will take too long or anthropological studies of tribes now wiped out of the college catalogs three quarters of the way into your educational plan.

A unbelievable implement of guidance, information, and statistical projection for finding the right career is the Index to Careers Guide, created, updated or maintained, and provided both online and off (in college and high school career centers, for instance) by the U.S. Department of work or agency of Labor Statistics.

If finding the right career is a task you feel or think requires a knowledge of salaries, working conditions, descriptions of the nature of the work involved, training and other qualification requirements, the number of jobs or positions held in that field and the competition involved, and projected job openings, then go to http://bls.dol.gov and type in any career title or browse the index of thousands of positions or job types.

Another brilliant tool is one that comes in workbook form and accompanies the What Color is Your Parachute and The Boxes of Life books by Richard Bolles. The workbooks (and books) have you take intensive (but interesting, fun) question that lead you to slowly but surely work out or do a process of illimination experiment that helps you in finding the right career FOR YOU. not your Mom, your dead Grandfather, or the culture around you who has all kinds of opinions about who you are and who you should be but who does not pay your rent or feed your kids when push comes to push. Nor are they the ones who need to live in your skin, sleep through the night, or answer to your higher needs and greater consciousness.

Luke T. Axton provides readers with up-to-date commentaries, articles, and reviews for education, learning and other related issues.

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