Career Exploration
Psychology is not so much a discipline as it is a family of disciplines with far-reaching range in science and practice. To get a better sense for this range in relation to career options, students are encouraged to explore O*NET, which is a U.S. Department of Labor database that provides information on a vast variety of occupations as well as the “Psych Mic” podcast, which helps students explore career paths in psychology through candid conversations with leaders across the family of psychology disciplines.
With respect to O*NET, the information provided on this website is standardized so that occupations may be easily compared to each other. You can click the button below to be taken to the website for O*Net.
Knowledge Search by Psychology and Psychology Occupations
You may be interested in occupations where psychology is important. The video guide will show you how to search for occupations that involve knowledge of psychology and how to search for occupations within the field of psychology.
PDF Guides
Click on the pdf guides below to learn more about using O*NET.
What is O*NET? The following guide provides an overview of O*NET. Information on each occupation is provided for the knowledges, skills, and abilities needed, along with the activities and tasks performed while on the job.
Want to know all the details about O*NET? The following guide combines all of the other guides listed on the website into one. It includes topics from key terms to how to access reports to how to search within O*NET to resources for career searching and more.
Want to know more about the terms used on O*NET? The following guide provides a description of the key terms used on O*NET. Terms include, but are not limited to: bright outlook, green enconomy, job families, and job zones.
What reports are provided on O*NET? Each occupation in O*NET has its own summary report page. Summary report pages provides a glimpse into the occupation, giving you information such as: knowledge, skills, education, wages, and more.
What resources are provided on O*NET? This section of O*NET is dedicated to practical sources of information that can aide people in the job hunt. One such resource is the interest profiler, which gauges interests and gives suggestions regarding potential career paths.
What searches can be conducted within O*NET? O*NET gives you the option to search by any of the key terms (e.g., bright outlook, green sector, job zone). In addition, advanced searches can be conducted in O*NET to search by categories or multiple elements.
Video Guides
The video guides below will walk you through how to conduct searches on O*NET. Click through the video guides to learn more about specific types of searches that can be conducted in O*NET.
Typing in your keyword into the search bar will bring you to a list containing all the occupations that match your keyword, listed with closest matches shown first. Clicking on any occupation name will bring you to a page with more information about that occupation. There are also icons that denote whether the occupation has a Bright Outlook or is in a green industry.
O*NET allows you to search for occupations that match multiple items for both the interest criteria and the work values criteria. O*NET will give you the option to search for one, two, or three items at a time. The more items included in your search, the more specific and tailored your results will be.
O*Net allows you to search for occupations in many different ways, including searching for occupations with a bright outlook, in a green industry, or in a stem field. You may also sort occupations by career cluster, industry, job family, or job zone.
By Categories with Elements
Interests, knowledges, work styles, and work values are all categories in O*NET that do not have a multitude of elements. Rather, they consist of several broad subdivision. Starting a search by interest, knowledge, work styles, or work values will bring you to a page that lists the main categories of the selected search criteria.
By Categories without Elements
Some categories, specifically abilities, work activities, and work context, have sub-categories that are comprised of several elements. These elements add one additional step to the search process.
Career Services and Handshake
We strongly encourage our students to visit Career Services on campus! Career Services offers a variety of services, including but not limited to: resume critiques, mock interviews, and career planning. To learn more, visit: http://www.ou.edu/career/
In particular, Handshake is an invaluable tool for all students! Handshake allows you to search for job opportunities based on your interests and other information. We strongly encourage all students to create an account on Handshake. To learn more, visit: https://www.ou.edu/career/students/services/handshake.
