Hostos' own Career Services Office (room 210, D bldg) offers many resources, both online and in-person.
Want help writing your resume? Top-notch advice about job interviews? Guidance from a coach about exploring your career options? Hands-on help finding internships and jobs? All this and much more can be found at Career Services!
Please check out their webpage and their quick guide describing their many services.
Job listings let you examine real-world jobs, even before you're actually at the point of applying for one.
Understanding what real-world jobs look like can help you think about what career path you want to start now.
Job listings show things like: what kinds of duties would you have? What kinds of skills and experience would you need to qualify? The more job listings you look at for a particular kind of job, the more well-rounded your understanding will be of what is typically required.
Please note that when searching for job postings, it's easiest when you already have a sense of job titles -- but if you don't yet, it's fine to experiment with searches to discover what job titles exist in your field of interest.
Take advantage of LinkedIn's search filters - for example, jobs at different experience levels, to get an idea of how your career could move forward.
For jobs in education and non-profit work, Idealist.org is a good site - notice that they also have a filter that allows you to look for jobs at different professional levels.
The NYC Department of Education of course is a good source for NYC public school jobs.
Career-based discussion boards are a good place to see what people in the profession really talk about!
Google the name of your profession + "discussion board" or "forum" and poke around to see what you find.
Some questions to ask yourself about a discussion board:
Some examples:
In Reddit, discussion boards are called "subreddits". A few sample subreddits:
You can Google subreddit plus whatever profession interests you to see if one exists for your chosen profession.
You can skim through the most recent or the most commented-on posts, or search for particular words, like this:
Many kinds of jobs have professional associations. These groups provide the opportunity for workers within a field to share knowledge, to network, and often to advocate for legislation and policies that benefit their profession.
Although to become a member of a professional organization you must pay dues and are usually already employed as a member of the profession (or studying to become one), the organization's websites are a good place to get an idea of:
Try this search tool at Career One Stop, which is sponsored by the US Dept. of Labor.
Start by typing in a profession and see what you find.
You can use OneSearch, Hostos Library's big-net search engine, to find articles and ebooks about different professions.
To make sure that what you find is something you can read online, make sure "full text online" is checked off:
Click here for more on how to use ebooks - remember that you may find one chapter or one section of a book that's relevant and interesting to you, you do not have to read the whole book!
If you specifically want only books or book chapters, you can also open the "resource type" menu to select those:
SEARCH TIPS:
In addition to typing the name of the job in the search box, try different searches, adding words like:
Try adding more specific information if relevant to your interest (e.g., child psychiatrist instead of psychiatrist, high school teacher instead of teacher, etc.)
What is a trade publication?
A trade publication (sometimes called a professional journal) is a magazine written for people who work in a particular profession (teachers, architects, engineers, nurses, etc.). They often (but not always) have the name of the profession in their title.
How hard are trade publications to read? What are they good for?
Since trade publication articles are written for people in a profession, they assume some specialized knowledge. However, they are usually not as difficult, specific, or long as peer-reviewed articles (also called "scholarly articles") in academic journals.
The articles are often meant to let readers know, in ordinary language, how something important (a theory, invention, trend, or law, for instance) will affect them as members of their profession.
How do I find a trade publication article?
First, find a database that is relevant to the field you're interested in by going to the front page of the library website.
To view databases by subject:
Choose a subject, and then choose a database. For example:
Within each database, there will be source type filters. They may look like this:
-- or they may look like this, or they may look like something else - the important thing is to look for how you can filter by resource type.
PLEASE NOTE: If the results for your search don't include articles from trade publications, that category won't appear in the list of source types.
Also, some databases do not have a "trade publication" filter - but their "magazine" filter includes some trade publications. Try both and see what you get.
Some examples of databases that include trade publications are below, to get you started.
This is NOT a full list - for a full list of databases relevant to your field, follow the directions above.
O*NET is run by the US Dept. of Labor and provides good overviews of many professions. Search here!
The Houston Chronicle's website has some good overview articles on careers, but they don't have a good search function. One way to see if they have articles on a job that interests you is to do a site-specific Google search, by typing in (without spaces)
site:work.chron.com
and then put a space, and type your search terms (in this case, a profession or job). Here are some examples - try it with whichever job/profession interests you!
Traditionally, an Associate Degree in Liberal Arts has been a stepping stone to earning a Bachelor's Degree at a four-year college.
But at a four-year college, "liberal arts" doesn't exist as one major! Instead, it's a very broad category that includes:
When four-year colleges talk about a "liberal arts education", they generally mean a well-rounded and diverse education that includes courses in the humanities, natural sciences, social sciences, and arts.
According to the Census, almost three-fourths of people with a college degree end up in a job that is not the same as their undergraduate major, partly because it's the skills you develop in college that matter more than your major. Some of the best colleges in the country are small liberal arts colleges, and they offer many many many majors.
Some students go on to graduate school to deepen their studies at the Master's or Doctoral level, which may be required for some jobs (like psychologist or engineer).
The four-year CUNY Colleges also over a variety of liberal arts majors - for example at City College, Lehman, and Hunter.
Takeaways: A "liberal arts" education is a well-rounded one and includes many kinds of majors. Some majors may be directly linked to a profession, but most people do not end up in jobs that are the same as their major.
