3 Super Tools for Brainstorming Career Options

With the turmoil of the past few years, many people are searching for their next steps. For some, especially millennials, that includes thinking about changing their career paths entirely. ? What steps should you take when attempting to brainstorm a new career avenue for yourself when your traditional career path just isn’t cutting it or meeting your needs anymore?

Throughout Visium’s 20-plus years in the staffing and recruiting industry, we’ve seen little in the way of useful, actionable tools offering practical help with the challenge of changing or better yet, even finding a career path.?Of course, there are many feel-good inspirational books that will encourage you to follow your passion and tell you that is the key to figuring out the job of your dreams.? There are also many personality tests and assessments that will validate who you are, in general, and whether you prefer a workplace that’s more structured or perhaps more fluid.? But at the end of the day, many people changing their careers try all of these resources and still find themselves no closer to answering the important underlying questions: which specific, current career paths would fit them best?and?which industries they might have a realistic shot of breaking into.

Getting meaningful answers to these questions usually requires a great amount of effort and research — and isn’t something that is best done in one overnight coffee binge or when you’ve found yourself between jobs. In this situation, your career planning efforts usually get thwarted by the more immediate need for a paycheck and the insecurities that can go along with being unemployed.?

But, of course, we live in a world of instant gratification, and I know some of you are still holding out hope for an easy answer!? Or perhaps, just looking to do some initial quick brainstorming, at the very least, just to see if you can turn up a suitable option for yourself?? In those cases, check out the following three websites, which in our opinion are the current best-in-class online offerings for helping people explore new career options and possibilities…

Chegg Career Center?(www.chegg.com/career-center)

While there are dozens of similar and more well-known career research tools out there, largely sponsored by colleges and government agencies, this “hidden gem” seems to have a far deeper pool of modern career options than most sites.?In fact, many colleges and universities around the country are starting to turn to Chegg when attempting to find internships for their students. However, this site isn’t just for those in college, it has a vast variety of jobs that could be a fit for you! While most sites would tell a person with writing skills that their main options are novelist, copywriter, or technical writer — for example — this tool turns up a whopping 116 options including blogger, literacy coordinator, and content strategist.? For best results, try searching it by specific keywords representing your skills, strengths, and interests versus using the rather limited built-in choices on the left side of the page.

PayScale “Best Jobs” Tool?(www.payscale.com/data-packages/best-jobs)

This site is not nearly as far-reaching or comprehensive as the Chegg site above, this simple tool is operated by Seattle company Payscale.com. It does have the distinct advantage of being able to draw on a wealth of real-time career data generated through the site’s salary survey functionality.? To get started, you answer a six-question quiz about your career interests and the site displays some jobs it thinks might be a good fit.? Make sure you note that there’s a slider on the top right of the results page (it’s easy to miss!) that lets you advance through a list of suggested positions and see if anything strikes your fancy.

Indeed Path?(https://path.indeed.com)

The newest entry on the radar, the powers-that-be behind the world’s largest job database have thrown together this compelling new tool that allows users to either see where their current job might eventually lead — or pick a job they’d one day like to hold and see what the typical job progression is to break into it.? The results are presented in a very colorful and visual way — along with a breakdown of the skills/education it usually takes to attain a certain position, as well as the typical salary a given role commands.? It’s a pretty neat concept.?

No matter what kind of career you end up moving towards, you can count on us at Visium Resources to be here to help you. After taking a look at those above links, why not see if we can help start you on your way? We have open positions in a variety of fields, all over the United States. Let Visium Resources be your partner when you are looking to start or restart your career!