The views of this article are the perspective of the author and may not be reflective of Confessions of the Professions.
Find a Job Today! Use the ONET OnLine Career and Job Analysis Tool!
Confused about your job? Confused about your career? Confused about your life? There is a tool listed on Confessions of the Professions which was given to me when I went to the Student Resource Center in college, courtesy of ONET OnLine (The Occupational Information Network). They introduced me to a website that I wanted to share with you and it has been listed on Confessions of the Professions under Resources as Career & Job Analysis Tool.
Whether you are still in college studying and figuring out what you want to do with your life, or if you are currently in the work force, still dreaming about your career or just returned home from the military, and are a veteran looking for a way to put those military skills to use in a civilian world, or even if you are looking for a green career or green company to work for, ONET Online has plenty of information and knowledge available for you in order to help you understand what you need to do in order to establish your career!
ONET provides Workforce Development Professionals with comprehensive occupational information and tools when they need them most. Because ONET is maintained by the U.S. Department of Labor, Workforce Development Professionals can count on ONET to provide the most current and accurate information!
NOTE: ONET ONLINE IS AN EVER-CHANGING WEBSITE WITH NEW FEATURES BEING INTRODUCED AT A RAPID RATE WHICH MAY MAKE THIS ARTICLE OUT OF DATE.
ONET Online is very resourceful with millions of man hours into researching the job economy and job market. ONET Online is very good and quick at keeping up to date with all the latest trends, technology, tools, and workplace information and is a trusted resource of many job placement services and career centers with estimates on what jobs will be available and how many jobs will be available now through the next 10 years.
This article provides an extremely detailed analysis and overview of the ONET Online website.
What is the Career & Job Analysis Tool?
The Career & Job Analysis Tool is from ONET OnLine, developed for the United States Department of Labor by the National Center for ONET Development. It is a large powerful database that is frequently updated with the latest career and job trends.
This is an in-depth analysis of the features on the ONET OnLine website.
The ONET The Occupational Information Network program is the nation’s primary source of occupational information. Central to the project is the ONET database, containing information on hundreds of standardized and occupation-specific descriptors. The database, which is available to the public at no cost, is continually updated by surveying a broad range of workers from each occupation. Information from this database forms the heart of ONET OnLine, an interactive application for exploring and searching occupations. The database also provides the basis for our Career Exploration Tools, a set of valuable assessment instruments for workers and students looking to find or change careers.
If you are curious about an occupation or the work activities involved with a job or a career, this will remove all doubt from your mind. You will get an abundance of valuable information including the national average wages including the high and the low for job salaries, the amount of schooling and education required to perform a certain job, the skills and talents you will need to perform the job, and the work you will actually be performing on the job.
You can search any occupation in any field including plumbers, school teachers, principals, lawyers, doctors, pharmacists, judges, store clerks, managers in any field, supervisors in any field, zookeepers, construction workers, actors, models, human resource specialists, inspectors, truckers, program directors, fight attendants and pilots, military officers, engineers, therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, janitors, computer programmers, web designers, news reporters, writers, analysts, and many more occupations. If there is a job that exists, you will be able to find it on ONET OnLine.
You can also search by any specific category.
You may receive a summary, detailed, or custom report for each occupation that you choose to discover. These reports include:
Tasks: This provides all the tasks you are expected to perform within this occupation such as designing, building, reporting, managing, writing, and analysis of information.
Tools & Technology: This provides all the types of equipment and technology that you will have to familiarize yourself and use within the occupation.
Knowledge: This provides the type of principles you are expected to have for this occupation including:
Administration and Management – business and management principles involved in strategic planning, resource allocation, human resources modeling, leadership technique, production methods, and coordination of people and resources.
Biology – plant and animal organisms, their tissues, cells, functions, interdependencies, and interactions with each other and the environment.
Building and Construction – materials, methods, and the tools involved in the construction or repair of houses, buildings, or other structures such as highways and roads.
Chemistry – chemical composition, structure, and properties of substances and of the chemical processes and transformations that they undergo. This includes uses of chemicals and their interactions, danger signs, production techniques, and disposal methods.
Clerical – administrative and clerical procedures and systems such as word processing, managing files and records, stenography and transcription, designing forms, and other office procedures and terminology.
Communication and Media – media production, communication, and dissemination techniques and methods including alternative ways to inform and entertain via written, oral, and visual media.
Computers and Electronics – circuit boards, processors, chips, electronic equipment, and computer hardware and software, including applications and programming.
Customer and Personal Service – principles and processes for providing customer and personal services including customer needs assessment, meeting quality standards for services, and evaluation of customer satisfaction.
Design – design techniques, tools, and principles involved in production of precision technical plans, blueprints, drawings, and models.
Economics and Accounting – economic and accounting principles and practices, the financial markets, banking and the analysis and reporting of financial data.
Education and Training – principles and methods for curriculum and training design, teaching and instruction for individuals and groups, and the measurement of training effects.
Engineering and Technology – practical application of engineering science and technology including applying principles, techniques, procedures, and equipment to the design and production of various goods and services.
English Language – structure and content of the English language including the meaning and spelling of words, rules of composition, and grammar.
Fine Arts – theory and techniques required to compose, produce, and perform works of music, dance, visual arts, drama, and sculpture.
Food Production – techniques and equipment for planting, growing, and harvesting food products (both plant and animal) for consumption, including storage/handling techniques.
Foreign Language – structure and content of a foreign (non-English) language including the meaning and spelling of words, rules of composition and grammar, and pronunciation.
Geography – principles and methods for describing the features of land, sea, and air masses, including their physical characteristics, locations, interrelationships, and distribution of plant, animal, and human life.
History and Archeology – historical events and their causes, indicators, and effects on civilizations and cultures.
Law and Government – laws, legal codes, court procedures, precedents, government regulations, executive orders, agency rules, and the democratic political process.
Mathematics – arithmetic, algebra, geometry, calculus, statistics, and their applications.
Mechanical – machines and tools, including their designs, uses, repair, and maintenance.
Medicine and Dentistry – information and techniques needed to diagnose and treat human injuries, diseases, and deformities including symptoms, treatment alternatives, drug properties and interactions, and preventive health-care measures.
Personnel and Human Resources – principles and procedures for personnel recruitment, selection, training, compensation and benefits, labor relations and negotiation, and personnel information systems.
Philosophy and Theology – different philosophical systems and religions including their basic principles, values, ethics, ways of thinking, customs, practices, and their impact on human culture.
Physics – prediction of physical principles, laws, their interrelationships, and applications to understanding fluid, material, and atmospheric dynamics, and mechanical, electrical, atomic and sub- atomic structures and processes.
Production and Processing – raw materials, production processes, quality control, costs, and other techniques for maximizing the effective manufacture and distribution of goods.
Psychology – human behavior and performance; individual differences in ability, personality, and interests; learning and motivation; psychological research methods; and the assessment and treatment of behavioral and affective disorders.
Public Safety and Security – relevant equipment, policies, procedures, and strategies to promote effective local, state, or national security operations for the protection of people, data, property, and institutions.
Sales and Marketing – principles and methods for showing, promoting, and selling products or services. This includes marketing strategy and tactics, product demonstration, sales techniques, and sales control systems.
Sociology and Anthropology – group behavior and dynamics, societal trends and influences, human migrations, ethnicity, cultures and their history and origins.
Telecommunications – transmission, broadcasting, switching, control, and operation of telecommunications systems.
Therapy and Counseling – principles, methods, and procedures for diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation of physical and mental dysfunctions, and for career counseling and guidance.
Transportation – principles and methods for moving people or goods by air, rail, sea, or road, including the relative costs and benefits.
Skills: This provides you with a list of the developed capacities that facilitate learning or the more rapid acquisition of knowledge for the occupation. These include:
Basic Skills: facilitate learning or the more rapid acquisition of knowledge.
Work Activities: This involves the kind of interactions and behaviors for this occupation including:
Information Input: Where and how are the information and data gained that are needed to perform this job?
Interacting With Others: What interactions with other persons or supervisory activities occur while performing this job?
Mental Processes: What processing, planning, problem-solving, decision-making, and innovating activities are performed with job-relevant information?
Work Output: What physical activities are performed, what equipment and vehicles are operated/controlled, and what complex/technical activities are accomplished as job outputs?
Work Context: This provides a list of the working conditions and work environment you may find yourself in, including:
Physical Work Conditions – describes the work context as it relates to the interactions between the worker and the physical job environment.
Structural Job Characteristics – involves the relationships or interactions between the worker and the structural characteristics of the job.
Job Zone: This tells you how much education is required for the job.
Job Zone 1: may require a high school diploma or GED, little or no previous experience needed.
Job Zone 2: may require a high school diploma, little or some previous experience needed.
Job Zone 3: require high school, vocational school, on-the-job experience, or an associate’s degree, require some previous work, and an understanding of the job; possible apprenticeship may be associated with the occupation.
Job Zone 4: require some college, possible four-year degree is needed; some on-the-job experience, or prior work experience needed.
Job Zone 5: Most of these require an advanced education such as a Master, Ph.D, or Law Degree. Extensive knowledge and understanding of the job.
Education: Education level requirements; bachelor, associates, some college, or no degree.
Interests: A code is assigned to those interested in this occupation.
Related Experience: The type of experience that helps with qualifications for the job.
Job Training: The type of training necessary to qualify or work in this job field.
Job Zone Examples: The preparation for the job that can be related to other similar job fields.
SVP Range: Specific Vocational Preparation, as defined in Appendix C of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles, is the amount of lapsed time required by a typical worker to learn the techniques, acquire the information, and develop the facility needed for average performance in a specific job-worker situation.
Short demonstration only
Anything beyond short demonstration up to and including 1 month
Over 1 month up to and including 3 months
Over 3 months up to and including 6 months
Over 6 months up to and including 1 year
Over 1 year up to and including 2 years
Over 2 years up to and including 4 years
Over 4 years up to and including 10 years
Over 10 years
The ONET Interest Profiler measures six types of occupational interests:
Realistic: involve activities that include practical, hands-on problems and solutions.
Investigative: involve activities that have to do with ideas and thinking more than with physical activity.
Artistic: deals with the artistic side of things, such as forms, designs, and patterns.
Social: assist others and promote learning and personal development.
Enterprising: have to do with starting up and carrying out projects, especially business ventures; and may involve risk-taking for profit.
Conventional: frequently involve following set procedures and routines.
Work Styles: This provides a list of the work style personal characteristics that can affect how well someone performs a job. These include:
Achievement Orientation – requires personal goal setting, trying to succeed at those goals, and striving to be competent in own work
Achievement/Effort: requires establishing and maintaining personally challenging achievement goals and exerting effort toward mastering tasks.
Persistence: requires persistence in the face of obstacles.
Initiative: requires a willingness to take on responsibilities and challenges.
Social Influence – requires having an impact on others in the organization, and displaying energy and leadership.
Leadership: requires a willingness to lead, take charge, and offer opinions and direction.
Interpersonal Orientation – requires being pleasant, cooperative, sensitive to others, easy to get along with, and having a preference for associating with other organization members.
Cooperation: requires being pleasant with others on the job and displaying a good-natured, cooperative attitude.
Concern for Others: requires being sensitive to others’ needs and feelings and being understanding and helpful on the job.
Social Orientation: requires preferring to work with others rather than alone, and being personally connected with others on the job.
Adjustment – requires maturity, poise, flexibility, and restraint to cope with pressure, stress, criticism, setbacks, personal and work-related problems, etc.
Self Control: maintaining composure, keeping emotions in check, controlling anger, and avoiding aggressive behavior, even in very difficult situations.
Stress Tolerance: accepting criticism and dealing calmly and effectively with high stress situations.
Adaptability/Flexibility: being open to change (positive or negative) and to considerable variety in the workplace.
Conscientiousness – dependability, commitment to doing the job correctly and carefully, and being trustworthy, accountable, and attentive to details.
Dependability: being reliable, responsible, and dependable, and fulfilling obligations.
Attention to Detail: being careful about detail and thorough in completing work tasks.
Integrity: requires being honest and ethical.
Independence – requires developing one’s own ways of doing things, guiding oneself with little or no supervision, and depending on oneself to get things done.
Practical Intelligence – generating useful ideas and thinking things through logically.
Innovation: creativity and alternative thinking to develop new ideas for and answers to work-related problems.
Analytical Thinking: analyzing information and using logic to address work-related issues and problems.
Work Values: This provides a list of the global aspects of work that are important to a person’s satisfaction. These aspects are:
Achievement: Occupations that satisfy this work value are results oriented and allow employees to use their strongest abilities, giving them a feeling of accomplishment.
Independence: Occupations that satisfy this work value allow employees to work on their own and make decisions.
Recognition: Occupations that satisfy this work value offer advancement, potential for leadership, and are often considered prestigious.
Relationships: Occupations that satisfy this work value allow employees to provide service to others and work with co-workers in a friendly non-competitive environment.
Support: Occupations that satisfy this work value offer supportive management that stands behind employees
Working Conditions: Occupations that satisfy this work value offer job security and good working conditions.
Related Occupations: This provides a list of occupations that are similar to the current chosen occupation.
Wages & Employment Trends: This provides the State and National average, median wages, current numbers employed, projected growth for a ten year span, projected job openings, and top industries.
Job Opening on the Web: This provides a way to search for this current occupation in your current state.
Sources of Additional Information: This provides the references to all the information you just read about the occupation.
This tool is very valuable and can help you in deciding which job or career you want to pursue. With this much information, you can learn about and enter any job confidently. It will provide information on how much you can make, the skills and type of environment you will work in, what kind of education you need to have, and even provide you with a way to search for jobs.
Job Accommodations: ONET OnLine allows you to search and explore a wide variety of occupations. If your search identifies occupations that require skills or abilities that may be difficult to use because of a health problem or disability, please consider job accommodations. Accommodations may involve a change in the work environment, the way a specific job is performed, or the use of special equipment.
Crosswalk Search: allows you to use codes from other classification systems to find the corresponding ONET-SOC occupations. This function can save time when you are familiar with occupations in other systems and want to explore corresponding occupations in ONET.
Apprenticeship: Search codes or titles from the Registered Apprenticeship Partners Information Data System (RAPIDS).
DOT: Search codes or titles from the Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT).
Education: Search codes or titles from the 2010 Classification of Instructional Programs (CIP).
Military: Search codes or titles from the Military Occupational Classification (MOC).
Occupation Handbook: Search titles from the 2012-13 Occupational Outlook Handbook (OOH).
SOC: Search codes or titles from the 2010 Standard Occupational Classification (SOC).
FIND OCCUPATIONS – BROWSE BY
Green Economy Sector: The green economy will cause a change in occupations’ employment demand or work and worker requirements such as tasks, skills, knowledge, and credentials. Green occupations are linked to Green Economy Sectors.
Green Occupations: The impact of green economy activities and technologies is an increase in the employment demand for an existing occupation. However, this impact does not entail significant changes in the work and worker requirements of the occupation. The work context may change, but the tasks themselves do not.
Green Enhanced Skills Occupations: The impact of green economy activities and technologies results in a significant change to the work and worker requirements of an existing ONET-SOC occupation. This impact may or may not result in an increase in employment demand for the occupation. The essential purposes of the occupation remain the same, but tasks, skills, knowledge, and external elements, such as credentials, have been altered.
Green New and Emerging (N&E) Occupations: The impact of green economy activities and technologies is sufficient to create the need for unique work and worker requirements, which results in the generation of a new occupation relative to the ONET taxonomy. This new occupation could be entirely novel or “born” from an existing occupation.
The Green Economy Sectors include:
Renewable Energy Generation: This sector covers activities related to developing and using energy sources such as solar, wind, geothermal, and biomass. This sector also includes traditional, non-renewable sources of energy undergoing significant green technological changes (e.g., oil, coal, gas, and nuclear).
Transportation: This sector covers activities related to increasing efficiency and/or reducing environmental impact of various modes of transportation including trucking, mass transit, and freight rail.
Energy Efficiency: This sector covers activities related to increasing energy efficiency (broadly defined), making energy demand response more effective, constructing “smart grids,” and other energy efficient activities.
Green Construction: This sector covers activities related to constructing new green buildings, retrofitting residential and commercial buildings, and installing other green construction technology.
Energy Trading: This sector covers financial services related to buying and selling energy as an economic commodity, as well as carbon trading projects.
Energy and Carbon Capture and Storage: This sector covers activities related to capturing and storing energy and/or carbon emissions, as well as technologies related to power plants using the integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) technique.
Research, Design, and Consulting Services: This sector encompasses “indirect jobs” to the green economy which includes activities such as energy consulting or research and other related business services.
Environment Protection: This sector covers activities related to environmental remediation, climate change adaptation, and ensuring or enhancing air quality.
Agriculture and Forestry: This sector covers activities related to using natural pesticides, efficient land management or farming, and aquaculture.
Manufacturing: This sector covers activities related to industrial manufacturing of green technology as well as energy efficient manufacturing processes.
Recycling and Waste Reduction: This sector covers activities related to solid waste and wastewater management, treatment, and reduction, as well as processing recyclable materials.
Governmental and Regulatory Administration: This sector covers activities by public and private organizations associated with conservation and pollution prevention, regulation enforcement, and policy analysis and advocacy.
STEM Discipline: Find occupations that require education in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines.
Keyword or ONET: Enter a word, phrase, or title to search for an ONET-SOC occupation. Enter a full or partial ONET-SOC code to look up occupations by code.
Career Cluster: Career Clusters contain occupations in the same field of work that require similar skills. Students, parents, and educators can use Career Clusters to help focus education plans towards obtaining the necessary knowledge, competencies, and training for success in a particular career pathway.
Industry: Industries are broad groups of businesses or organizations with similar activities, products, or services. Occupations are considered part of an industry based on their employment.
Bright Outlook: Bright Outlook occupations are expected to grow rapidly in the next several years, will have large numbers of job openings, or are new and emerging occupations.
Job Family: Job Families are groups of occupations based upon work performed, skills, education, training, and credentials.
Job Zone: Job Zones group occupations into one of five categories based on levels of education, experience, and training necessary to perform the occupation.
Job Preparation: Different careers need different amounts of preparation. Each ONET career is in one of five Job Zones, which are groups of careers that need the same level of experience, education, and training.
Testing and Assessment Consumer Guides: Good Practices for Workforce Investment Professionals, Helping You Make Better Career Decisions, An Employer’s Guide to Good Practices.
ONET® Products at Work: provides examples of the widespread use of ONET OnLine, the ONET database, the Toolkit for Business, and the ONET Career Exploration Tools.
Resume Building with ONET® Information: Job seekers introduce themselves to potential employers through resumes, showcasing their accomplishments and skills to potential employers and highlighting why they are a good fit to the advertised position.
Career Ladders and Lattices: devices that help people visualize and learn about the job options that are available as they progress through a career.
ONET Podcasts: Employment professionals from around the country use ONET information to help job seekers and others needing career guidance.
ONET® Reports and Documents: provides detailed reports and information on specific features of the ONET OnLine website.
Related Sites: ONET OnLine has a list of related websites that are not affiliated with ONET OnLine but may help you or point you in the right direction on your mission towards finding a job or a career, being up to date with the latest laws and regulations regarding employment, and other information regarding occupations and job services. These websites are in correlation with the U.S. Department of Labor, U.S. and Bureau of Labor Statistics, Electronic Tools, Job Accommodations, Federal Government Sites, and Other Resources.
If anyone wants to know anything about any job, ONET OnLine is the most valuable tool you will ever come across. You can learn anything about any job you want to know about.
ONET OnLine also offers ONET Academy which offers high quality training offered through courses and tutorials, to live webinars, and podcasts available 24 hours a day.
My Next Move is another on-going project, in association with ONET OnLine, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Labor, and is a user-friendly electronic career exploration tool that helps users identify potential career choices by keyword search, industry, or by taking the Interest Profiler Assessment.
Are you a veteran looking for work? My Next Move for Veterans helps you find a civilian career similar to your military job. In addition, ONET OnLine offers a detailed Military Transition Search document for military veterans who are seeking options for career exploration, providing information on civilian occupations and tools to discover, and compare the variety of career opportunities.
Align organizational development with workplace needs.
Refine recruitment and training goals.
Design competitive compensation and promotion systems.
Job seekers use ONET to:
Find out which jobs fit with their interests, skills, and experience.
Explore growth career profiles using the latest available labor market data.
Research what it takes to get their dream job.
Maximize earning potential and job satisfaction.
Know what it takes to be successful in their field and in related occupations.
ONET OnLine is the ultimate resource for anyone looking for information about any type of job that exists in the world.
The ONET Online database contains several hundred descriptions of work and worker characteristics, including skill requirements. The entire ONET Online Production database is available for download and is constantly updated. To download or receive a summary of the constant updates, you may visit the ONET Online Production Database page.
Keep up to date with ONET Online’s What’s New section so you will never be left in the dark about what is new on the website!
A two-page documentation resource is available for download on the ONET OnLine website and provides a ready and useful overview of the key search features and content available in ONET OnLine.
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