Career Exploration: Where to find Career Associations
This week we look at Career Associations; we will focus on where one can go to find out what career associations may exist for a particular profession.
Career Associations – National/Regional
Career Associations are people grouped together related to a particular career.
You can have both national career associations and regional career associations.
The regional career association may have different career resources than the national career association; When looking at career associations for job openings; look for job possibilities at both the national and regional career associations (sometimes the job positions will be different). Both the national and regional career associations may have different websites.
National Career Associations focus on the entire nation
Regional Career Associations will focus on a particular region of the nation.
Differences in the number of remote job positions found may exist between National and Regional Career Associations.
How to find career associations in a particular field
You may not know the career associations of the profession you are interested in.
You may have different ways to find career associations in the profession you are interested in.
Here are some different ways to find career associations in your particular field:
(1) Online Search (Search engine like Google and A.I. tool)
You can do a Google Search (or some other type of search engine) and type in the word “career associations” and the name of the profession you are trying to find. “Career associations” could have other names like “Career groups”. And see what other options you may have.
You can also use A.I. tool to create a question where you ask A.I. on what career associations may exist for a particular profession.
As with any online search, just spend some time verifying the results of the search; sometimes the results of a search can be wrong.
(2) Occupational Outlook Handbook–how to find career associations
One way to find career associations is by using the Occupational Outlook Handbook.
The Occupational Outlook Handbook is a government publication that describes career fields.
Sometimes the Occupational Outlook Handbook will list career associations when describing particular professions
A job seeker can look at https://www.bls.gov/ooh/
A job seeker could search for the profession of interest. Let’s say, for example, Training and Development Specialist.
You can do a browse or keyword search to find your profession
Let’s say, for example; you want to do a browse search to find information on the Training and Development Specialist Profession
We look at the different categories on the left part of the screen:
You click the link that says Business and Financial
You then get a screen called “Business and Financial Occupations.”
You get more detailed information about the occupations in the Business and Financial area.
You will have a list of occupations in the Business and Financial area on the left side of the screen.
You can then scroll to the bottom part of the screen
Click the link called Training and Development Specialist
(The link is at the very bottom of the list of career categories; you will have to scroll down the page)
You then have a more detailed job description of the Training and Development Specialist profession
You get a screen called “Training and Development Specialist.”
You will have different categories boxes on the top part of the screen
Click the category link called “More info” (the link to the farthest right side of the screen)
You can see a listing of career associations for the Training and Development profession
(3) Informational Interviews
An informational interview is where you talk to a person going into a career you are interested in. You can ask the person you are interviewing if they know about any career associations in their profession.
(4) Librarians
In your local library, trained informational professionals, can help answer your question about career associations for a particular field.
You may find information on your remote career using career associations. You can have different sources that give you information on where to find career associations.