New Career Information Resource - InsideJobs.com

I recently found a new career information resource called InsideJobs “Career Day Every Day” that I would recommend. After matching your personality to careers using The Career Key, you can supplement the recommended activities in our articles “Learn More About Occupations” and “Learn More About the Jobs that Interest Me” by looking at career information at the InsideJobs website.

What I like about it is that in addition to offering easy to read job descriptions, InsideJobs gathers quality career information in one spot. For example, they use government sources like the Occupational Outlook Handbook and the O*NET, as well as Web resources like Wikipedia. They also add interactive media like informational interviews from YouTube.

While I did not read all the job descriptions, the ones I read were informative and well-balanced. Some career information resources are, in my opinion, too simplistic or gloss over the "real world" aspects of an occupation - but I did not find that true of InsideJobs' listings.

I would be cautious about taking at face value online information about salary and working conditions (including career information Career Key provides). There is no substitute for conducting informational interviews with regional people working in that job. For example, for InsideJobs' description for "Public Defender", typical salary is listed as $113K and the schedule as Monday through Friday. That is a little optimistic (on both counts) for many lawyers, including public defenders on contract with a government agency. But the point is to help you learn about a variety of career options and this website definitely succeeds. And there is also some limitation to how any website can describe work schedules - basically, anyone "salaried" has the potential to work well over 40 hours a week (Monday through weekend) - some jobs (any lawyers) work more than others.

It’s a challenge to make career information fun and substantive at the same time - and I like how InsideJobs does that.

As always, our recommendations are just that - no affiliate links, etc.