The Transfer & Career Center is committed to providing our students with Career Exploration and Planning strategies to assist you in making an informed decision on your career goals that meet your interests, skill levels, personal values, and lifestyle. Career exploration can be done through an informal self-guided approach or through formal approaches with the Career Counselor. If you are not sure what major or career path to take? Complete the interest form below, and our staff will reach out to you about our Career Exploration workshops! 
Self-Guided Career Exploration: If you want to explore on your own, below are tools you can start utilizing at your convenience:
Self-assessments:
Students must first start with a Career Coach Interest assessment to discover majors, in-demand careers, and education based on their interests. Students are encouraged to take the 60 questions to see which top 3 occupations they are matched with.
Once you complete Career Coach, students can go to Eureka to identify their personalities, interests, and more. You will need to create an Eureka account. The COS Site ID Code is: QDXMCLC. Complete the personal information, select instructor if applicable, and choose a login and password. We recommend students click on the Self-Assessment tab and take True Colors. Once you have the results, it will match you with careers that align with your colors. Students will need to determine if this also aligns with the Career Coach assessments.
Research and Planning: After taking the self-assessments, it is time to explore majors and related careers. Students can use O*NET and What Can I Do With This Major.
O*NET allows you to search over 900+ occupations based on your career goals. The occupation will show you the requirements (type of education needed, skills, work activities), characteristics, and available opportunities.
The What Can I Do With This Major allows students to learn more about the major, typical career areas, types of employers that hire in these fields, and strategies to make you a more marketable candidate.
Decision: The decision should be clear once you rank your careers according to how they meet your needs.
Create a short list of values that must be part of your future career. Take into consideration your hobbies, family, and location. Not everything in life will depend on your career. Needs can be narrowed down to the top 3 priorities you can't live without. Examples are:
- Employment prospect - do you like changing and fast-growing fields?
- Income & benefits - do you need health insurance coverage for your family?
- Education - do you want to obtain a bachelor's, master's, or Ph.D. degree? How long do you want to stay in school?
- Opportunities - do you want to move up in positions?
- Interests - is the occupation including the population you want to work with? Such as children, adults, teenagers, and families.
- Work conditions - do you want to work in an office all day, in a classroom, outdoors, in a hospital, clinic, etc?
Once you have identified a career goal and major, you can meet with a COS Counselor to update your Student Education Plan (SEP).
For formal assessments with a Career Counselor after completing the self-guided career assessments and exploration, please call the Transfer & Career Center at (559) 737-6110 for a one-on-one appointment.
