Occupational Tools

To begin this job seeking process, I assisted Matt in outlining the skills that he currently had developed throughout his schooling and job experience. In utilizing ONET's skills search, we began to understand the areas in which Matt was highly skilled. Also, we now had an understanding of what areas did not interest Matt. There were three main areas in which his skills were highly developed: basic skills, social skills, and technical skills. After identifying his interests into the inventory, Matt's interest code was identified as Enterprising Realistic and Investigative (ERI). His interest code allowed us to find appropriate jobs that involved working with ideas that involved intensive thinking, jobs that involved hands on activity, and an occupation that dealt with beginning and finishing a project. In completely the skills inventory, ONET listed the top jobs in which his skills would be best suited, including Respiratory Therapy Technicians, Nuclear Engineer, and Sales Engineer. The table below lists the 16 skills that match his profile to the job he chose to further explore: Sales Engineer.

Importance

Level Matched Skill

94 79 Active Listening

92 81 Operations Analysis

92 79 Persuasion

90 82 Reading Comprehension

89 72 Writing

89 76 Social Perceptiveness

88 76 Critical Thinking

88 79 Judgment and Decision Making

86 69 Negotiation

86 75 Monitoring

84 77 Complex Problem Solving

84 78 Coordination

83 76 Active Learning

82 70 Technology Design

81 83 Mathematics

80 72 Speaking

79 73 Science

77 74 Time Management

77 74 Learning Strategies

76 80 Equipment Selection

75 72 Instructing

70 68 Service Orientation

After we had identified his career of interest, we then began to explore the labor market in order to evaluate if this was a growing field of employment. Using ONET, we explored the state and national trends for the occupation of Sales Engineer. Although this web site did not have available information on this particular career for the state of West Virginia, it did provide information on the National level. The projected growth on the national level for this career over the next ten years was approximately 14% (see graph below). Statistically speaking, that would mean that over the next ten years, 3,200 new employees would be needed in order to meet the demand. This particular occupation was listed under indemand on the ONET web site. This means that Matt advancing in a career that is economically critical and substancially adding jobs into the labor market. The main point of concern dealt with is the idea of relocating for this particular career; however, just because the information was not available through this web site did not mean that this job category was not available within the state. Using ONET, we also searched for annual salaries to