Career Cruising

career exploration and planning tool

By Karen Ruder

August 15, 2007

What is Career Cruising?

Career Cruising is an Internet-based career exploration and planning tool your child uses to explore career and college options and develop a career plan. Career Cruising can be accessed from school, from home, or wherever your son or daughter has access to the Internet. Features of the program include:

Interest and Skills Assessment - a world-renowned career assessment tool to help people identify suitable career options based on their interests and skills

Career Profiles - thorough and up-to-date information about hundreds of different occupations, including direct links between careers and related college programs

Multimedia - Interviews - interviews with real people in each occupation, which add depth and realism to career profiles

College and Financial Aid Information - comprehensive college and financial aid information, with a number of useful search tools to help students find the right college and the right scholarships

Electronic Career Portfolio - available online, so students can develop their education and career plans from wherever they access Career Cruising

Resume Builder - integrated with the portfolio to help students format and print professional-looking resumes quickly and easily

To find out more about Career Cruising, we encourage you to login using the school’s access information:

Login at www.careercruising.com

School Username: seneca307

School password: irish

Summary of Features

Career Matchmaker is an internationally respected interest assessment tool. It is a great place to start the career exploration process.

You can answer as few as 39 questions, or as many as 116 - depending on your needs
Additional details are available for each question by clicking on the “More Info” button
The resulting career suggestions list includes 40 occupations ranked in order of suitability
By clicking on an occupation, you can receive clear feedback on exactly why the occupation is considered to be a good match for you
You can tailor your list of career suggestions to match your education goals by specifying the level of education you plan to complete
The “See how other careers match up with my answers” feature helps you understand why other careers don’t appear on your career suggestions list
The “My Skills” component allows you to see if you have the skills necessary for the careers that match your interests

The Explore Careers section gives you several different ways to search for careers:

Keyword search
Search by school subject
Career cluster search
Career Selector

Each in-depth occupation profile includes the following information:

Job Description
Working Conditions
Earnings
Education & Training
Direct links to related college and university programs
Sample Career Path
A list of related occupations
Links to other sources of information
Multimedia interviews (2 per occupation)

The Career Portfolio Tool allows you to keep track of all of your career exploration activities. You can:

Bookmark careers and schools of interest
Store Career Matchmaker interest assessment results and your results from other career assessments
Create a personalized high school education plan
Maintain a diary of your thoughts on your career and life goals
Document work and volunteer experience, as well as skills, abilities, and extracurricular activities
Build a customized resume

Explore College and Universities

This section of Career Cruising provides comprehensive college, university, and vocational school information to help you plan your education and training. You can:

Search for schools by name or by state
Search for college, university, and vocational school programs by name or by using a cluster search tool
View detailed information on 2 and 4-year colleges, graduate schools, and vocational schools
Use School Selector to find schools that match your criteria
View detailed information on thousands of financial aid programs
Use Financial Aid Selector to find programs you may be eligible for