Is it a good idea to change careers? Well, it depends. If you make coal-fired steam engines then it might be a good idea to look into a new industry. If you just pulled in a million dollar bonus then maybe you ought to stick with what you’re doing. For those of us in between there’s O*net.

This is a cool site that gives vital statistics on jobs and industries. You’ll be able to find related fields so you can transfer the skills and experience you have into new areas with a better future. They have lists of required skills and tasks sorted by frequency along with descriptions of what they actually mean. No more trying to figure out what exactly is meant by a “results focused, go-getter with a rock-star attitude.” Now you’ll know what you have to do and how often you have to do it.

You can see average wages in the fields you’re interested in, so you’ll know which ones can feed your family or just pay better than what you’re doing. They also show how many people are in these jobs already. You’ll know what kind of competition you’ll be up against and if it’s worth competing.

They’ll show you key personality traits. You can actually figure out if you’d be happy and fit in doing a job without having to first land a job and then discover it sucks. You can compare yourself and your style of interaction to a position. After all, how much can you love a job where you hate your co-workers?

Finally, they have entries on projected job growth. You can get into a job that’s going somewhere without trying to guess what’s going to happen in the future. The experts have already done the studying and trend analysis for you, you just harvest the fruits of their labor. And maybe other fruits, you never know you might find that agriculture is right where you belong. You lose nothing by looking.

So, is it a good idea to change careers? Take a look at you career, compare it to others that you could have.
Weigh the pros and cons and decide for yourself. All the tools you need are right here. If I’d had something like this when I was young I wouldn’t have wasted so much time on vertebrate paleontology before discovering I can’t do the math (I was a weird kid)

Adapted from original article written by none (http://online.onetcenter.org/find/quick)