Jobworksaz.com - Job Seeker Tips

Finding Your Life's Calling With Low-cost Tools
By Joyce Lain Kennedy

Dear Joyce: I am 91. I'm writing to you about two nieces in their 40s and 50s. One was an interior decorator, now trying to change careers. The other was a private investigator, now downsized. Out of work for a very long time, both are breaking their hearts trying to connect. Neither have the finances to go into business on their own. Help? -- I.W.H.

Dear I.W.H.: Both nieces need passion for their chosen work as fuel to keep on keeping on until they succeed in their quest for midlife repotting.

I suggest they start over and rethink everything. Yes, I can imagine their immediate response: "Is she nuts? The costs of private counseling for decision-making and coaching for a job search are beyond my jobless budget." So let's look at free or modestly priced quality help available in the public sector.

Dream, Find, Get It For free -- jobs, career information and a directory of learning programs are posted online by the federal government: America's Job Bank, Career InfoNet and America's Learning eXchange. The actual formal learning programs indexed typically are not free.

New Top Resources Additionally, your nieces should consider using either of two new superior government career products.

PAPER CACTI The Core Adult Career Transition Inventory, seven paper pages, by Martin Elliot Jaffe. $4.02 per copy; order from Public Relations Division, Cuyahoga County Public Library, 2111 Snow Rd., Parma, OH 44134.

Jaffe, a certified career counselor, manages the library's InfoPLACE, a top-rated free career-counseling service located in the Cleveland area.

Adults can use the CACTI instrument at home, as can counselors working with adults in midlife career transition and discouraged job seekers.

Nieces, the get-to-the-point CACTI helps you to understand your motivation and the direction in which your skills point. It prompts you to determine what's best -- a long-term career change backed with education or an immediate move to a better job-search strategy.

CD-ROM OSCAR The Occupation and Skill Computer-Assisted Researcher, desktop software by Texas Career Development Resources director Richard Froeschle. The CD-ROM will cost you about $30, including mailing costs. Make a check payable to the Texas Workforce Commission, and send to Career Development Resources, 9001 IH-35 North, Suite 103B, Austin, TX 78753; 1-800-822-7526 for questions.

OSCAR, developed with a U.S. Department of Labor grant, is virtually the full monty -- an A-Z computer counseling program with numerous links and report-writing features.

Nieces, you could spend days exploring OSCAR's richness, and you probably should. The state of Arkansas will put OSCAR online next year, but for most people across the nation, it's available only by purchasing the CD-ROM. There are exceptions.

OSCAR, or its spin-offs, is free in three states (more coming) at schools, colleges and public "one-stop" career centers. In Texas, the program is OSCAR; in Washington state, the spin-off is called ORCA; in Virginia, it's known as VO*NET.

After using OSCAR to get a fix on how you might like to earn a living, plus the supporting skills and education required, you can find related jobs by clicking to several employment databanks, including America's Job Bank.

The original version of OSCAR appeared two years ago; the 2001 update is vastly improved, adding a couple of excellent self-assessment inventories.

Also new: a feature to stretch your horizon of choices called "career clusters." Suppose you know you might like Occupation A, but you hadn't heard about Occupation B and Occupation C, which have similar characteristics that you might like even better than your original choice, Occupation A.

The revised OSCAR software is labeled "School-to-Work" and targets working in Texas. But as a way to untangle your career life, I think OSCAR serves just as well for adults in transition and that the information generally works on a national basis.

Summary: Deciding at midlife whether to head off in a new direction or to just find a job quickly are basic decisions that cause many smart people in emotional turmoil to stumble. That's what these public, inexpensive or free tools -- online, paper and desktop software -- are designed to prevent.

Send career questions for possible use in this column to Joyce Lain Kennedy at Box 368, Cardiff, CA 92007, or e-mail her at jlk@sunfeatures.com. Sorry, the volume of mail makes personal replies impossible.