Your efforts as a Career Champion to help students connect their education to career possibilities and empower them with resources for vocational success aids in their persistence and positive post-graduate outcomes (Wilkins-Yel et. al 2018, Peterson & Delmas 2001). A tool you can use as you continue on this path that helps students make informed career decisions is our Job Market Insights (JMI) database. It uses real life employment from across the country to provide information about careers of interest among several categories.
After searching by either keyword or filtering by industry and occupation, JMI will provide the following information about the career of interest:
Core Tasks, Core Competencies and Technical Skills
While JMI provides Core Tasks, Core Competencies and Technical Skills in separate categories, they all contribute to an understanding of what responsibilities an individual can expect to perform and skills employers are looking for. This can help students have a better understanding of what might be expected of them in a chosen career.
For faculty, reviewing these sections for careers that align with your field of study and incorporating some of these competencies and skills in your curriculum can be a step towards ensuring that your students are graduating ready to enter the workforce.
Employment Trends
In this section, JMI provides the number of jobs in a career of interest for the past two years, current year and projections for the next ten years.
Top Employers
Top Employers details which companies are currently hiring in the career of interest.
Education Levels
This section helps students have a better understanding of what academic pathways might look like by providing the breakdown of educational attainment for the specified career.
Annual Earnings
JMI provides data on annual earnings, sourced from the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics program which is under the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Job Titles
By having a list of the most frequent job titles, students can more easily envision pathways from where they are now with an academic plan of study, to a career of interest, and then possible occupations that lie ahead in their career journey.
Click here to access our Job Market Insights database.
Sources:
Peterson, S. L., & Delmas, R. C. (2001). Effects of Career Decision-Making Self-Efficacy and Degree Utility on Student Persistence: A Path Analytic Study. In Journal of College Student Retention: Research, Theory & Practice (Vol. 3, Issue 3, pp. 285–299). SAGE Publications. https://doi.org/10.2190/4d9v-dfw1-vdlx-k7gf
Wilkins-Yel, K. G., Roach, C. M. L., Tracey, T. J. G., & Yel, N. (2018). The effects of career adaptability on intended academic persistence: The mediating role of academic satisfaction. In Journal of Vocational Behavior (Vol. 108, pp. 67–77). Elsevier BV. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2018.06.006
