Career Journeys video series now spans 16 different career clusters
Our library of Career Journeys videos now includes interviews with more than 50 professionals whose jobs span all 16 career clusters that the U.S. Department of Labor uses to track employment. That’s up from just a handful of interviews last spring when we launched the series to expand options for virtual career learning after COVID-19 closed schools and canceled opportunities for career exploration at employer work-sites.
The videos proved an instant hit. Counselors and teachers quickly began signing up for email notifications of new videos, and the series has since logged more than 2000 views!
To make the collection more user-friendly, we’ve now organized the videos by category on the Consortium’s website. When using them, students and teachers should be aware that many careers can overlap different clusters. We also recommend that students look at least at a couple of careers in fields that aren’t high on their lists of interests.
“We set the web page up so that it would be easy for students to immediately identify interviews in the fields that most interest them,” said Program Director Debbie Pixton, who oversees Career Journeys and conducts most of the interviews.
“But students also should look at clusters outside their main areas of interest because there are so many jobs they might not even know about,” she added. “If they browse the categories, they may stumble across careers that pique their curiosity, or require skills they’ve cultivated and enjoy using. Or, they might just identify with one of our interviewees.”
Pixton also said there are many ways students and teachers can use the videos beyond merely exploring careers.
For example, students might use the video interviews as models for talking with adults about careers. Among other ways, teachers might use videos to illustrate how their own academic specialties come into play in different jobs and industries. The video introduction to our Career Journeys web page offers more suggestions for students. And, for teachers, there’s a downloadable PDF of ideas and tips in our introductory text for using the videos in classrooms.
