Summary

The CareerZone system is a new interactive career exploration resource for students, youth and job seekers. CareerZone can help students choose entry-level jobs and explore future career options as well as information about an occupation's wages or job outlook. CareerZone on-line provides up-to-date career information for more than 1,100 occupations found in O*NET system.

Resources for students and job seekers include: On-line job preparations tools -- resume builder, cover letter builder, job application practice form, reference list maker and more. Resources for educators include: newly developed lesson plans based on CareerZone, a link to "eXploring Careers" -- a new Web site with thousands of career links for students, and a CareerZone Bulletin Board for sharing ideas with other educators. CareerZone also includes an interactive tutorial as well as multimedia videos for a hundred occupations.

CareerZone organizes O*NET occupational data around the framework of New York's six School-to-Work career clusters. Students can investigate the wide range of occupations found in each cluster. As they discover connections between occupations, students become aware of new career opportunities. The CareerZone system was developed by the New York State Department of Labor with a grant from the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment, and Training Administration.
 

How is O*NET being used?

To create CareerZone, the NYS DOL used the data from O*NET (job definitions, skills, education, interests, etc.), as the basis of a user-friendly career information tool.
 

Who is your target population?

• Students
• Youth
• Guidance counselors
• Educators
• Teachers
• Librarians
• Program administrators.

What kind of results is O*NET helping you to achieve?

Feedback from educators at pilot schools indicate that CareerZone is being used as the impetus to rethink the way they provide information and guidance to students. CareerZone, at its most basic level, has empowered students to get involved in planning their future and has given educators a tool to ensure that students received quick, valid career information. Using CareerZone, students can access and print career information at any computer in the school and take it to their guidance counselor as a basis for discussing their future options. The five schools that piloted CareerZone have built curriculum around the system so that it is integrated into lesson plans.

Over 800 schools and training centers in New York incorporated CareerZone CD-Rom version into their programs.

More than 150,000 inquiries have been received since CareerZone was posted on the Web a few months ago.

CareerZone has been used to empower clients with disabilities and has prompted collaborative efforts from Cornell University's School of Education as well as several private companies.
 

What are the related program initiatives?

Other initiatives to which this study have application include School-to-Work, Welfare-to-Work, skill standards, Job Corps, and programs for persons with disabilities.
 

Is your product, program or service available for others to use?

CareerZone is on the Internet at http://www.labor.state.ny.us/careerzone and is also supplied on CD-Rom by contacting:

New York State Department of Labor, State Office Building Campus, Building 12, Room 488
Albany, NY 12240. Tele: 518-457-6182
 

What other strategies make your product, program or service successful?

Among strategies for program success are customer buy-in, feedback from pilot sites and focus groups of users. Strategies include linking to other related sites such as America's Job Bank and the use of bit stream video to present occupational briefs and guided tours.
 

Do you have other pertinent information?

Career Zone on the Internet also provides information on jobs, training providers and other related resources.

In New York, students looking at a specific job title can now jump directly from CareerZone to the job listings posted by New York State employers in America's Job Bank.

CareerZone won the JETT*Con 99 Technology Award.
 

Contact information.

Doug Reamer
Principal Statistician
New York State Department of Labor
State Office Building Campus
Building 12, Room 488
Albany, NY 12240
Tele: 518-457-3800, Fax: 518-457-6199
email: careerzone@labor.state.ny.us