Career Cruising is an online planning tool for career exploration that young adults can use if they want to explore career and college possibilities or to develop a decent career plan. You can access Career Cruising from your home or your school.
Why is Career Cruising important?
Studies have demonstrated that students who were using the self-assessment of Career Cruising, in combination with proper advice, were achieving far better results and accomplished their career or college graduation goals earlier.
They possess, what scientists call, “a higher level of career decision self-efficacy.” Or, in common words, taking a Career Cruising assessment helps to make better career-related decisions, and will lead to highly effective career development.
The skyrocketing tuition costs have urged universities and colleges to ensure Career Self-efficacy, and that the student’s college experience will result in viable careers. So when you use Career Cruising, you will benefit not only yourself but also your parents and the schools.
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How can you use Career Cruising efficiently?
Just take a look at how you have the chance to explore several careers that could match your interests and skills. The interest inventory Career Matchmaker and the assessment My Skills will help you to get started.
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See also these free MyCareerTools online GED practice tests.
- Create your username and password, and go to the box ‘Login into My Plan’ in the top left corner of your screen, and click on ‘Create My Plan.’
- Fill out the ‘My Information’ form for creating your personal account. When created, this is what you use if you want to log in to Career Cruising.
Start your personal Assessment
- Click on the tab ‘Explore My Interests’
- Take the ‘Matchmaker / My Skills’ assessments
- ‘Matchmaker’ includes 116 questions – please complete all!
- When you’ve answered the first 39 questions, you will receive preliminary results. Click ‘Start Now’ to take the ‘My Skills’ assessment.
- After you’ve finished ‘My Skills’, you can complete ‘Matchmaker’ if you click on ‘Improve My Results – Answer More Questions.’ Now you can continue to respond to the rest of the 116 questions.
Before you examine your results, select your Level of Education (e.g. 4-yr College-University) and ‘Update Results.’
You may also take the ‘Learning Styles Inventory.’
This tool is self-guided, and completion will take you less than 30 minutes, and please don’t over-think your answers! You will receive a list of possible careers that are matching your responses. For each separate career, there will be multi-media profiles, such as job descriptions, required education & training, working environments, interviews with practicing professionals, expected earnings, and links to a couple of related careers.
Explore Your Personal Results
You can click on any of the careers on your list if you want to learn how your answers were matching with the skills required for that job. Maybe some skills need your extra attention if you want to continue in those fields of interest?
- Learn all about the careers included in your list, just click on the links on the career pages
- Save the jobs that you are interested in ‘My Plan’ (upper right corner).
- The ‘Career’ tab allows you also to explore career fields that are not on your list.
- Click ‘Suitable for You’ to see in what way your answers are matching with the job.
- The tab ‘Education’ lets you find graduate programs that are reflecting your interests.
You can at any time retake the ‘Matchmaker / My Skills and compare your results.
From the results page of ‘Matchmaker’ you also have the option to browse through other functions and features of Matchmaker:
- View the recommended career pathways or clusters.
- Review and possibly change your responses.
- Limit the suggested career pathways or clusters to a particular education level.
- Check out how careers that are not included in your suggestions may also match your answers.
Click on ‘Assessments’ in the top menu bar if you want to access other available assessment tools. You can also take the ‘My Skills’ assessment if you want to see in how far your skills are matching up with those required for the careers that are matching your interests. The ‘Ability Profiler’ is a series of timed tests, scheduled in a way that they are helping you to identify your level of aptitude and ability in 6 key areas. The ‘Learning Styles’ Inventory is developed to support you in understanding how you are learning and how you best can retain information.
Explore Your Career Options
Career Cruising includes hundreds of career and occupation profiles, and several ways to identify them, for example by keyword, school subject, index, or career track or cluster, and you can also use the ‘Career Selector.’ There’s also a lot of information about career options available in the military. Let’s now see how the ‘Search By School Subject’ option works:
- Click on the ‘Careers’ link (menu bar, top of the page).
- Click on ‘School Subjects.’
- Select your subject.
- Choose a particular occupation title. You can browse through the occupation profile when you use the links on the left side to get information about many aspects of that career, such as job description, earnings, working conditions, a sample career track, and all sorts of related resources.
The ‘Education’ section of all profiles comes with links to related university and college programs.
All career profiles have printer-friendly versions. You can access this function if you are clicking on the icon ‘Printer Friendly’ near the page’s top on the right.
After High school
Career Cruising is providing highly detailed school profiles for numerous 2- and 4-year colleges, universities, and career and technical schools across America. You can look for particular programs or classes, or use the ‘School Selector’ to discover schools that are meeting some of your criteria.
Another great help is available at no cost on this website, free career assessment tests, also based on the Holland Method. You can take one test or as many as you like.
Let’s see how it works if we use the ‘School Selector’ tool.
- Click on the link ‘Education’ in the menu bar (top of the page).
- In the section ‘School Selector’ (right side of the page) click the button ‘Undergraduate Schools
- Under ‘Type Of School,’ choose ‘Public-Private,’ and select ‘2-Year or 4-Year’.
- Click on’ Location and Setting’ to select your state.
- Fill out other criteria as well that you want to your search to include.
- Then click on ‘View Results’ (in the menu on the left).
- Select one of the listed schools.
Career Cruising also contains information about private financial support programs and helps students find the funding they require to start or continue with their studies.
- Click on the link ‘Financial Aid’ (menu bar at the top of the page).
- Choose ‘Start Selector’ under ‘Financial Aid Selector.’ Submit all the information you can (the more details you provide, the more search results you will receive).
The Career Cruising Theory and Philosophy
Career Cruising was designed in England by a group of career advisors in 1969. Career Cruising is featuring more than 15,000 professional and vocational traits, all related to Holland codes, a well-established method that is used to provide the best career guidance.
The Career Cruising self-assessment method is measuring skills, levels of education, vocational likes and dislikes, and offers possible career paths and opportunities. Career Cruising is available as an Internet-based tool for career exploration and planning. It is allowing individuals to identify and view occupations that are relating to their preferences and contains job descriptions, employment outlooks, professional advice, salary ranges, testimonials, and information on educational options, costs, and programs.
Academic advisors are using the Career Cruising self-assessment tool, to begin with, career exploration rather than as a definitive vocational or occupational analysis. If students complete Career Cruising in combination with appropriate advising, they may be better able to make decisions that will benefit them. They will not only have an increased self-efficacy, but they will also enjoy long-term benefits thanks to their engagement in university communities, through co- and extra-curricular activities that will enhance their collegiate experience, and they will develop decision-making skills that will benefit them throughout their careers and lives.
If academic advisors integrate Career Cruising into the advising experience, they will better be able to evaluate a student’s personal abilities, aptitude, and interests, which will be helpful to come up with realistic professional and academic goals. Academic advisors can easily use the findings of Career Cruising’s assessment to understand their students better and to come up with adequate educational and professional advice and programming. Quality career self-assessments like Career Cruising may result in better time management and greater advising effectiveness.