By Mario Montalvo/ne news editor
A new service on TCC’s website allows current and prospective students access to local job and career information.
Career Coach gives students the tools necessary to find out what education and training are needed to get a job in their desired field.
Students can view local job postings and build résumés. The website provides current information about local jobs, wages and career trends so students can determine which field of study to pursue.
Students can search the website by job title or by field of study. If a student searches by job title, Career Coach will return actual local data on earnings, employment trends, required education and training and job openings within a 25-mile radius.
A search by field of study will return a list of the programs TCC offers in that area as well as jobs and salaries available with that particular degree or certificate.
Coordinator of public information services Rita Parson said some people don’t know what they want to do for a living. And some people choose a career path and then find out later that it’s not for them, she said.
Career Coach is an easy tool to help students do the research they need to make some of those career choices, Parson said.
“It allows you to tie your interest in a particular career to specific information – earnings, employment, education, job postings,” she said. “And you can actually build a résumé.”
NE student Ashley Roberts said job searching as a college student can be overwhelming.
“If you Google ‘job search,’ you’re going to get jobs in Washington, you’re going to get jobs in all kinds of other places, and sometimes it doesn’t give you the exact things you’re looking for,” she said. “This simplifies it down to the point that it’s just a lot easier for someone who has no idea where to start.”
Roberts also said that many websites charge a fee to access the same information available on Career Coach.
“Nobody wants to pay a fee when you don’t have a job,” she said. “If you don’t have a job, you don’t have the money to pay a fee.”
NE career and employment services coordinator Sandra Walker said it puts all the information students need in one place.
“If she [Roberts] was to do this market research on her own as far as the jobs go, she’d have to go to Texas Workforce or the labor market,” she said. “And she’d have to go to four or five different places to try to figure out what all that meant.”
Roberts said the website puts it all into one package.
“You know that you want a job in college administration or something like that, but you don’t know where to start,” she said. “So this way, you’re able to go right through the college website and find out what degree you need and just get started. It’s like step one, but it simplifies it.”
Roberts said what she liked best about Career Coach were the projected employment trends because many students get degrees in a field of study only to find out that there are no jobs when they graduate.
“If you had had this, you could see that the projected job growth was going to be less,” she said. “You might have changed your mind.”
Career Coach is located on TCC’s main Web page at http://www.tccd.edu. For more information about Career Coach or for help getting started, contact career services on any campus.
