What Am I Qualified For?

By Robert, Ticket Counselor 

As we assist our ticket holders in completing their applications for the Ticket to Work Program, we are often faced with people who aren’t sure what they are qualified for.

One of the best resources we have found to help with this is a government website, Career One Stop.

There is lots of valuable information on this site including:

• Career exploration
• Education and training
• Resumes and interviews salaries and benefits and so much more

Possibly the best resources on the site is the Skills Profiler.

The profiler is a series of forms that helps you identify skills and activities you have used on the job or elsewhere.  This will create a Custom Skills profile for you including:

• A summary of identified skills and work activities.
• A list of occupations matched either to skills or work activities.
• A link to Occupation Profiles for more detailed occupation information, as well as links from there to the Employer Locator for names of employers in their area.
• A "Compare to Another Occupation" feature that identifies similarities and differences between the selected occupation and another occupation of interest.

Your Skills profile will help you:

• Prepare for interviews;
• Write resumes and cover letters; and
• Explore career paths and training options.

Having used the profiler myself, as part of my research for this article – I was impressed by its level of detail.

You can either start by selecting a job type, or if you are not sure what kind of job is right for you, start by rating your own skills to find a job type match.

Choosing a job type gave me a detailed list of work activities – that are common in my field to help me start creating my profile.

This helped me to think about what I had done before.  Having the list really helped me to focus on the things I had done throughout my career

This then takes you into a General Skills Section where you can select skills from a wide range of different areas.  It highlights the skills that it knows are important for the job type you selected earlier.

Once you have selected your skills, you will be given the opportunity to rate your level with a particular skill from 1 (Low) to 7 (High).

Having completed your profile you are given the opportunity to save it in a variety of different formats (Word, Html, XML, or you can bookmark your profile so you can return to it later).

The site then suggests different job types that might be good for you based on your custom skill profile.

You can then research these jobs. – This takes you into employment data for the various jobs, showing you the skills recommended for those jobs even watch sample videos of people doing these jobs. It also provides employment data around salary and job growth both at a national and state level.

Good luck with your searching I hope this helps you find the path that is right for you.  If you are a ticket holder and need help please give us a call.