Career Guidance
Career Guidance Programs
Here are some of our favorite websites for career assessment and information. The descriptions may seem redundant, and there is some overlap. But each program has its strengths. If unsure which will best serve your needs, please contact the CEC staff.
Pathful Explore
An excellent video-based career guidance program, Pathful Explore Includes career assessments, occupational information such as salaries, job market trends, and training requirements. PE also contains Virtual Job Shadow which is a collection of brief videos of workers who describe their experiences on the job and answer commonly-asked questions.
Pathful Explore is available to Santa Fe College students and staff through Canvas. On the Canvas home page look in the left-hand menu at the bottom to find the Pathful Explore link.
ACINET is an outstanding general career information resource which includes job descriptions, salary levels, educational requirements, links to schools and colleges, and to current job openings through their listings of State and Federal Job Banks.
Career Coach lists the programs of study offered at Santa Fe College and links them to descriptions of the occupations for which they prepare you. It provides salary levels and occupational demand for those occupations in this region of Florida.
Ferguson's Career Guidance Center
This is an online version of Ferguson's Encyclopedia of Careers and Vocational Guidance, the most comprehensive career reference that we know. Includes descriptions of 1100 occupations, more than any other site listed here. There are videos of 252 career fields, each 10 to 20 minutes long, which go into much more depth than the videos in MyPlan or ACINET. Ferguson's includes instructions on creating resumes, handling interviews, and other job seeking topics.
ACT's comprehensive career planning program. MyACT has many features, including well-normed assessments of career Interests, Abilities, and Values. It contains an excellent database on college Majors and Programs of Study, and links to good descriptions of the occupations to which various programs lead. MyACT is based on Dr. John Holland's theory of career personality. Dr. Holland worked for ACT while developing his theory, thus MyACT is based on one of the best-recognized and widely researched theories of vocational personality. If you have taken the ACT, you should already have access to MyACT through your ACT account. If you have not taken the ACT, you can still create a free ACT account and have access to MyACT. The career materials are in the PLANS tab.
A simplified version of O*Net (below), with brief, clear descriptions of many occupations.
We license MyPlan so that Santa Fe College students can use it for free. It is an excellent program for assisting students in making career decisions and academic and career planning. MyPlan offers four assessments: Personality, Interests, Skills and Values. Upon completing an inventory, and the program will suggest occupations that "match" that factor. It will then offer descriptions of the occupations including pay scale, job duties, training requirements, and likely employers. It will offer to describe the training programs and college majors, and list some schools in the US that offer those programs of study. For the MyPlan assessments to be used for free, you must enter our license code when creating your account. The login code can be found in eSantaFe, under Advisement /Career Planning. Alternatively, you may contact the Career Exploration Center staff and we will provide the login code to qualified individuals. Personal assistance is available in using this program and interpreting the results. Please contact us!
From the U.S. Department of Labor, delivered via America's Career InfoNet. Recently revised and updated. Videos are concise, from 1 to 2 minutes in length. These provide a good way to learn about many occupations without having to do much reading.
Occupational Employment Statistics
From the U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, this is the best site for getting detailed local information on salaries and growth rates for occupations in the United States. Suggested path: OES Data, Occupation Profiles, select a category, then select an occupation of interest.
Good descriptions of hundreds of occupations. Highly recommended! Try the A-Z alphabetical index or a Search for keywords.
Offers detailed information on many occupations in the United States. It is especially good for displaying the skills and activities required in many occupations. Once you have found a job description, click on "Details" to see a bar-graph representing the importance of each factor in that occupation, and the "+" sign to see more factors. O*Net data is also available in Excel and other formats.
This is the most comprehensive site for salary data. Also includes job descriptions and training requirements. Gives low, medium and high salary ranges for occupations, sorted by occupation and state, zip code, or metropolitan area.
U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Market Statistics
This site may appear overwhelming at first, but can be very useful. If you have a question about the job market, growth trends, salaries, demographics, etc. the answer is probably here. If you need assistance in using this or any online career resource, feel free to contact the CEC staff.