Using the Department of Labor’s “My Next Move” to Improve Career Preparedness

Abstract

The Department of Labor’s Occupational Information Network can help students prepare for their careers because it contains information on over 900 occupations. Occupational Information Network includes a tool called My Next Move that is designed to help people learn about those occupations. This research uses a pretest/posttest design with a treatment group and a control group to determine if an exercise based on My Next Move improves career preparedness. Results show that the exercise produces significant increases in career awareness and in perceived career preparedness skills. The positive results indicate that this tool can help students be more knowledgeable about their career options after graduation. This article can help instructors use the My Next Move exercise to help students in their job search process.

Keywords

career preparedness assessment Occupational Information Network O*NET My Next Move job search career management

Helping People Prepare for Careers

Many people go to college to get a better job than they could with just a high school diploma, but many are not sure what kind of occupation they want. This article describes an exercise designed to aid undergraduate students as they prepare for their careers. It is about understanding career interests, finding occupations that fit those interests, and learning about those occupations.

Other researchers address this type of career preparation. For example, Gerard (2012) uses exercises based on LinkedIn® to help students improve networking skills for career building. Laker and Laker (2007) show how writing a resume as it would appear 5 years hence can help students discover where they want to be and create plans on how to get there. de Janasz and Forret (2008) use exercises on networking to help improve career success.

It is not enough for management educators to have material to improve their students’ career preparedness; we must know if that material is effective. An issue of the Journal of Management Education was devoted to assessment in management education. In the guest editors’ introduction to the special issue, they state, “what we are trying to measure (construct), why we are assessing (purpose), and how are we approaching and implementing assessment (methodology) can determine assessment’s effectiveness” (Sigler & Rhee, 2014, p. 306). In this article, I assess the usefulness of an exercise called My Next Move. I measure student perceptions of their career preparedness (construct), to determine if my college should continue using the exercise (purpose), and I use a quasi-experimental design (methodology).

The Occupational Information Network (O*NET, 2016c) contains information on 974 occupations in the United States. Among the information included are each occupation’s tasks, knowledge and skills required, interests, work values, wages, and employment outlook. Part of the O*NET website (www.onetcenter.org) includes a tool called My Next Move to help job searchers explore those occupations.

In a comprehensive study about O*NET, the National Research Council (Tippins & Hilton, 2010) finds that the most common uses of the database are in job analysis and job descriptions in support of different HR activities, primarily recruitment and selection. For example, O*NET’s Generalized Work Activities are used as job analysis data in an effort to identify potential employee selection tools (Jeanneret & Strong, 2006).

O*NET is also used to help people explore career options. Librarians use it to help patrons explore career possibilities and vocational readiness (Bird & Williams, 2014). Veterans use it to help them find civilian jobs (Davenport, Richardson, & Perkins, 2012). It is used as a source of occupational information for systematic person–occupation matching (Converse, Oswald, Gillespie, Field, & Bizot, 2004; Kasper, 2004).

Some U.S. colleges are using the O*NET database to help their students. For example, one college uses it to help map out a plan for curriculum development and assessment (Thompson & Koys, 2010). Another college links college majors in the United States to the 27 knowledge areas in the database (Freeman & Hirsch, 2007). A third college uses the database to develop a career and education information website for its students (Robinson, Meyer, Prince, McLean, & Low, 2000). As a final example, academic advisors use O*NET to help students select majors with an eye toward careers (Igou, 2012). While there are many examples of how O*NET is used, an important contribution of this article is that it is the first to provide empirical evidence of the effectiveness of the O*NET tool called My Next Move.

O*NET’s My Next Move

O*NET includes many tools to help managers, employees, and students learn about the occupations in its database. One of those tools is My Next Move (http://www.mynextmove.org/), “a web-based interactive tool for new job seekers, students, and other career explorers to learn more about their career options” (O*NET, 2016a). This tool provides different ways to search the O*NET database, one of which begins by asking the person about his or her career interests.

Career Interests

A meta-analysis covering over 60 years of research and 60 empirical studies concludes that career interests are related to performance and persistence in work and academic settings (Nye, Su, Rounds, & Drasgow, 2012). Researchers take two different approaches in studying the relationship between interests and performance. The first correlates the strength of one’s interest to job performance. The second determines the match between an individual’s interests and the interests characterizing an occupation; it then correlates the strength of that match to job performance. The meta-analysis shows that both approaches produce significant correlations, but the latter produces larger correlations.

Nye et al. (2012) say that the most widely researched vocational interest theory is that of John Holland (1959, 1997). His theory includes six interest types, which he named realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising, and conventional (Holland, 1962). These six interests characterize both individuals and occupations. Holland argued that people will be more satisfied and more successful when their occupations match their interests.

The literature consistently reports the interest types in a certain order, using the first letters of each type to form the word RIASEC. Here are the six dimensions as defined in My Next Move (O*NET, 2016b):

“Realistic—People with Realistic interests like work that includes practical, hands-on problems and answers. Often people with Realistic interests do not like careers that involve paperwork or working closely with others.

Investigative—People with Investigative interests like work that has to do with ideas and thinking rather than physical activity or leading people.

Artistic—People with Artistic interests like work that deals with the artistic side of things, such as acting, music, art, and design.

Social—People with Social interests like working with others to help them learn and grow. They like working with people more than working with objects, machines, or information.

Enterprising—People with Enterprising interests like work that has to do with starting up and carrying out business projects. These people like taking action rather than thinking about things.

Conventional—People with Conventional interests like work that follows set procedures and routines. They prefer working with information and paying attention to details rather than working with ideas.”

Holland depicts the interest types in a hexagon to illustrate the degree of similarity among the types (see Figure 1). Types that are adjacent to each other on the hexagon (e.g., realistic and conventional) are most related. Alternate types (e.g., realistic and enterprising) have an intermediate relationship. Types on opposite sides of the hexagon (e.g., realistic and social) are least related. Researchers have supported the hexagonal ordering of the RIASEC types in the United States (Day & Rounds, 1998; Tracey & Rounds, 1993).

Figure 1.

Holland’s hexagon model of vocational interests.

My Next Move includes an Interest Profiler that measures a person on Holland’s six career themes (see O*NET, 2016b). The Center for O*NET Development did not use the 291-item Strong–Campbell Vocational Interest Inventory (Harmon, Hansen, Borgen, & Hammer, 1994) because it wanted a measure that could be completed in the short time period commonly used in counseling sessions. Therefore, it developed a 60-item inventory with acceptable levels of reliability plus convergent and discriminant validity (Rounds, Su, Lewis, & Rivkin, 2010). This measure also has the practical benefit that it does not require people to seek out a certified career counselor. Because it is taxpayer-supported, it is free to users.

Occupations

Once people complete the Interest Profiler, My Next Move asks them to choose a job zone that reflects the amount of preparation needed for a job. They can either choose a zone that matches their current education, experience, and training or select one that will match the education, experience, and training they plan to have in the future. My Next Move has five discrete job zones from which to choose. These five were developed by job analysts based on data supplied by job incumbents (O*NET, 2016c). Table 1 summarizes O*NET’s explanations of these five zones.

Table 1.

O*NET’s Job Zones.

Job zone	Previous experience	Education	Training
Little or no job preparation	Little to no experience required	Possibly a high school diploma	From a few days to a few months of on-the-job development
Some job preparation	Some experience required	High school diploma	From a few months to a few years of on-the-job development
Medium job preparation	Some work-related experience required	Vocational school or an associate’s degree	One or two years of on-the-job development
High job preparation	Long-term, work-related experience required	Most occupations require a 4-year bachelor’s degree	Several years of on-the-job development
Extensive job preparation	Extensive experience required, for example, more than 5 years	Most occupations require a master’s or doctoral degree	Person will have all the skills needed before starting the job

All of the occupations in the O*NET database are rated on the six RIASEC interest types (Rounds, Armstrong, Liao, Lewis, & Rivkin, 2008). Most of the occupations have three-letter codes representing the three highest rated interest types. For example, the Human Resource Manager occupation has ESC (enterprising, social, conventional); the Business Teacher—Postsecondary occupation has SEI (social, enterprising, investigative); and the Landscape Architect occupation has AIR (artistic, investigative, realistic).

Once My Next Move knows the person’s interests and intended job zone, it supplies the person with a list of occupations with similar interest profiles. By clicking on any one of those occupations, the person sees a description that includes tasks performed, knowledge and skills required, education usually needed, and the job outlook.

Career Preparedness

My Next Move is designed to help people move into a first career or into a different career. To be prepared for careers, people need to develop many competencies. Some of those are knowledge areas like management and organizational behavior, and some are cross-functional skills such as critical thinking and written communications. Career preparedness also includes the abilities needed to engage in the self-management of one’s career, for example, career reflection, work exploration, and networking (Kuijpers, Schyns, & Scheerens, 2006). My exercise addresses those later competencies.

Career Preparedness Competencies

Career preparedness was operationalized by a team of my business school’s faculty members. This team obtained information from our undergraduate Career Center’s Employer Advisory Board, from the Job Outlook report of the National Association of Colleges and Employers (2011), and from Michigan State’s Recruiting Trends report (Gardner, 2011). The team reviewed the career programs at our AACSB (Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business) aspirant schools and peer schools. Finally, the team conducted focus groups with our Career Center’s advisors, employers who hire our students, and alumni. The team defined the following career preparedness competencies.

Self-management:

Career awareness—self-awareness of one’s career interests, career-related abilities, career-related values, and career-related goals.

Ability to identify opportunities—one’s ability to identify career opportunities that align with one’s career interests, career-related abilities, career-related values, and career-related goals.

Career building—being familiar with one’s industry, knowing how to apply for employment, representing one’s skills and abilities in a way that is attractive to employers, creating social capital (networking), and identifying and choosing best opportunities for advancement.

General career preparedness skills—demonstrating initiative, organizing and planning, and technology awareness and utilization.

A team within my department decided to put “career building” in a new course and to cover self-management and career preparedness skills in the current Principles of Management class. I developed the My Next Move exercise for Principles of Management to address three learning objectives: to improve career awareness, to improve the ability to identify career opportunities, and to improve career preparedness skills. Because “external stakeholders are more loudly than ever asking for evidence of learning” (Forray & Lund Dean, 2014, p. 483), I collected data on the learning objectives before and after students did the exercise (see the methodology below).

Implementing the My Next Move Exercise

The exercise consists of two parts (see Appendix A). Part I requires the students to use O*NET’s My Next Move tool. Part II is a homework assignment that requires them to reflect on that use by answering nine questions related to their career preparedness. I suggest that instructors tell the students about the assignment on the first day of class and give them a due date for its submission.

The exercise can be administered at any time during a course. At a reasonable time before the due date (e.g., 2 weeks before) spend about 20 minutes of class-time to clarify the assignment (see Appendix B).

Grading the answers to the nine questions in Part II of the exercise involves ensuring that the answers are clear and thoughtful. The students should give specific information obtained from My Next Move. For example, they could mention specific knowledge areas like human resources or specific skills such as negotiation. The students should connect My Next Move’s information to past experiences or future behaviors. For example, they could state how the occupation’s employment outlook influences where they will look for a job.

After returning the graded papers to the students, I debrief the exercise by discussing these issues: the types of occupations the students chose, the knowledge and skills needed for those occupations, and salary ranges.

Assessment Methodology

To assess the effectiveness of this exercise, I gathered data to determine the accomplishment of the learning objectives:

To increase students’ career awareness.

To increase students’ ability to identify opportunities.

To increase students’ career preparedness skills.

Students

The students were in the six undergraduate sections of Principles of Management offered during the Spring Quarter of 2014-2015 at my college of business. The college is part of a private, Midwestern university with the Carnegie classification of a doctoral university with moderate research activity. The university has about 23,500 students, with 6,000 of those in the college of business.

I randomly assigned three sections of Principles of Management to the treatment group and three sections to the control group. The sections’ instructors asked their students to volunteer for this study. They offered extra credit points of up to 3% of their courses’ total points for completing two research surveys (e.g., 6 points in a 200-point course). They offered a different extra credit assignment to those who did not want to participate in this study.

Of the 280 students in the six sections, 252 (90%) signed forms agreeing to participate in this study. However, several students did not follow through on that agreement. Some did not complete the pretest survey by its due date, some did not submit the exercise, and some did not complete the posttest survey by its due date. The final sample consists of 218 students (78% of the students in the six sections). It just so happened that there was an equal number of students (109) in the control group and in the treatment group.

Table 2 presents the characteristics of the sample. The control and treatment groups are very similar on class standing, college major, gender, and racial/ethnic group. In comparison with enrollments in our College of Business for that year, the subjects are very similar on college major, gender, and racial/ethnic group.

Table 2.

Demographics of the Students.

Demographics	Options	Control	Treatment	College of Business
Class standing	Sophomore	24 (22.0%)	29 (26.6%)	n/a
	Junior	78 (71.6%)	68 (62.4%)	n/a
	Senior	7 (6.4%)	12 (11.0%)	n/a
Major	Accountancy	27 (24.8%)	26 (23.9%)	1,051 (24.4%)
	Business administration	7 (6.4%)	14 (12.8%)	394 (9.2%)
	Economics	1 (0.9%)	4 (3.7%)	175 (4.1%)
	Finance	27 (24.8%)	31 (28.4%)	937 (21.8%)
	Hospitality	8 (7.3%)	1 (0.9%)	184 (4.3%)
	Management	10 (9.2%)	10 (9.2%)	520 (12.1%)
	Management information system	5 (4.6%)	1 (0.9%)	77 (1.8%)
	Marketing	15 (13.8%)	11 (10.1%)	612 (14.2%)
	Real estate	1 (0.9%)	0 (0.0%)	38 (0.9%)
	Other	8 (7.3%)	11 (10.1%)	315 (7.3%)
Gender	Male	57 (52.3%)	59 (54.1%)	2,522 (58.6%)
Gender	Female	52 (47.7%)	50 (45.9%)	1,781 (41.4%)
Race/ethnic group	Black	7 (6.4%)	9 (8.3%)	211 (5.2%)
	Asian	21 (19.3%)	24 (22.0%)	534 (13.2%)
	White	65 (59.6%)	56 (51.4%)	2,300 (56.9%)
	Hispanic	11 (10.1%)	17 (15.6%)	717 (17.7%)
	Multiracial	3 (2.8%)	2 (1.8%)	130 (3.2%)
	I’d rather not say	2 (1.8%)	1 (0.9%)	141 (3.5%)

Measures

A colleague and I designed a 13-item questionnaire designed to measure the three dependent variables: career awareness (six items), ability to identify opportunities (four items), and career preparedness skills (three items). All items used a 7-point Likert-type scale where 1 = strongly disagree and 7 = strongly agree (see Appendix C).

To confirm that I had good measures of the three dependent variables, I performed a confirmatory factory analysis using the 13 pretest items from the 218 subjects. The three-factor solution showed that there was something slightly wrong with the measures; three of four fit indices did not meet the standards provided by Schreiber, Stage, King, Nora, and Barlow (2006). When I examined the standardized regression weights (factor loadings) of the items, one item was relatively low (.60). I eliminated that item and reran the confirmatory factor analysis. The fit indices then met the standards: the ratio of χ² to degrees of freedom was 1.65 (it should be less than or equal to 2.0), the root mean square error of approximation was .05 (it should be less than .06), the Tucker–Lewis index was .97 (it should be greater than or equal to .95), and the comparative fit index was .98 (it should be above .95). The path diagram for this revised solution is shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2.

Revised path diagram from confirmatory factor analysis.

The final measures of three dependent variables are a five-item scale on career awareness (α = .89), a four-item scale on ability to identify opportunities (α = .91), and a three-item scale on career preparedness skills (α = .78).

Given the random assignment of class sections to the control group and the treatment group, the two groups should be initially equivalent on the three dependent variables. One-way analyses of variance (ANOVAs) show that this is true for “ability to identify opportunities” (F_{1, 216} = 2.96, p = .09). However, the control group was higher than the treatment group for “career awareness” and “career preparedness skills” (F_{1, 216} = 7.29, p < 01 and F_{1, 216} = 4.21, p < .05, respectively; see the Analyses and Results section).

Manipulation Check

The pretest and posttest surveys each included four items to measure the students’ knowledge of the My Next Move tool. I recoded the answers to these multiple-choice items to incorrect and correct (0, 1). The resulting four-item scale has acceptable internal reliability (α = .79). One-way ANOVA shows that there is no significant difference in knowledge between the control group and the treatment group at the time of the pretest (F_{1, 212} = 1.66, p = .20). The manipulation was successful because there is a significant difference between the control group and the treatment group at the time of the posttest (F_{1, 208} = 192.62, p < .01).

Analyses and Results

Accomplishment of the Learning Objectives

I tested for the accomplishment of the three learning objectives in two ways: by using paired-sample t tests and by using analysis of covariance (ANCOVA).

Table 3 shows that paired-sample t tests indicate that the My Next Move exercise produces a significant increase in how students’ perceive: (a) their career awareness, (b) their ability to identify opportunities, and (c) their career preparedness skills. Unexpectedly, the control group also shows a significant increase in how students’ perceive their ability to identify career opportunities.

Table 3.

Testing the Hypotheses Using t Tests.

Dependent variable	Group	Pretest, M (SD)	Posttest, M (SD)	df	t
Career awareness	Control	5.68 (1.03)	5.73 (0.84)	96	0.63
Career awareness	Treatment	5.18 (1.35)	5.91 (0.96)	87	5.80**
Ability to identify opportunities	Control	5.56 (1.03)	5.79 (0.84)	96	2.82**
Ability to identify opportunities	Treatment	5.23 (1.25)	5.87 (1.00)	87	4.47**
Career preparedness skills	Control	5.60 (1.11)	5.75 (1.01)	96	1.63
Career preparedness skills	Treatment	5.15 (1.34)	5.81 (1.01)	87	5.16**

Note. df = degrees of freedom.

p < .01.

Some researchers claim that ANCOVA is a more rigorous test of before and after data than the t test (e.g., Luthans, Luthans, & Avey, 2014). This method is very useful here because the control group and the treatment group were not initially equivalent on the three dependent variables. ANCOVA is used to statistically control for the initial level of the dependent variable. I conducted three ANCOVAs, one for each dependent variable (measured at the posttest). Each analysis uses the independent variable (control group vs. treatment group) as the fixed factor and the pretest measure of the dependent variable as the covariate.

The ANCOVAs indicate that two of the learning objectives were accomplished after students participated in the My Next Move exercise. These students report an increase in their career awareness and career preparedness skills. As seen in Table 4, there is a significant difference between the control group and the treatment group when controlling for the pretest measures of the respective dependent variables. However, one learning objective was not accomplished: When controlling for the pretest level of the perceived ability to identify opportunities, there is no difference between the two groups.

Table 4.

Testing the Hypotheses Using ANCOVA.

Dependent variable	Source	df	F
Career awareness (posttest)	Corrected model	2	52.89**
	Intercept	1	184.45**
	Career awareness (pretest)	1	102.78**
	Group: control or treatment	1	14.31**
	Error	182
	Total	185
Ability to identify opportunities (posttest)	Corrected model	2	22.15**
	Intercept	1	176.96**
	Ability to identify opportunities (pretest)	1	43.87**
	Group: control or treatment	1	2.58
	Error	182
	Total	185
Career preparedness skills (posttest)	Corrected model	2	40.63**
	Intercept	1	137.86**
	Career preparedness skills (pretest)	1	80.98**
	Group: control or treatment	1	4.69*
	Error	182
	Total	185

Note. ANCOVA = analysis of covariance; df = degrees of freedom.

p < .05. **p < .01.

Post Hoc Analysis

The fact that there was a significant difference between the control group and the treatment group on two of the pretest measures made me think that some students needed the My Next Move exercise more than others. The standard deviations on those initial measures seemed high, over 1.0 on the 7-point scale. If I could determine which students did not need the exercise, I might be able to figure out why and then revise the exercise accordingly.

I performed a series of one-way ANOVAs for each of the pretest measures of career awareness, ability to identify opportunities, and career preparedness skills. Each ANOVA used a demographic variable (see Table 2) as the factor. Neither gender nor racial/ethnic group explains a significant amount of variance.

Two demographic variables do explain a significant amount of variance in one dependent variable; class standing explains a significant amount of variance in initial career awareness (F_{2, 215} = 3.29, p = .04). A post hoc Bonferroni multiple comparison test indicates that seniors have significantly (p = .04) higher initial career awareness than do juniors. Seniors’ initial career awareness is higher than sophomores’ but the difference is not statistically significant (p = .06).

The other demographic variable of interest is college major. The six sections of Principles of Management had many students in these business majors: Accountancy, Business Administration, Finance, Management, and Marketing. College major explains a significant amount of variance in initial career awareness (F_{4, 173} = 4.09, p < .01). A post hoc Bonferroni multiple comparison test indicates that Accountancy majors have significantly (p < .01) higher initial career awareness than do Finance majors. Accountancy majors’ initial career awareness is higher than Business Administration majors’ career awareness, but the difference is not statistically significant (p = .09).

It makes sense that seniors and Accountancy majors would report higher initial career awareness. Seniors are closer to the job market, so they may have thought more about their career-related interests, abilities, and goals. The Accountancy curriculum prepares students to be accountants, but other majors prepare students for many different occupations. I discuss the implications of these post hoc analyses in the Discussion section.

Discussion

Results Support Using the My Next Move Exercise

The results of this quasi-experiment show that the My Next Move exercise is a worthwhile tool in the undergraduate management classroom. Student participants perceive that they become more aware of their career interests, abilities, and intended occupations. They also perceive an increase in their career preparedness skills in initiative, planning, and technology use. The use of pretest and posttest measures with a control group and a treatment group gives strong evidence that My Next Move is a useful exercise.

The results do not provide evidence that the My Next Move exercise increases students’ abilities to identify opportunities. Both the treatment group and the control group show an increase in those abilities. I checked with the professors who taught the control group and found that none of them gave instruction on how to identify opportunities in their classes. A student in a subsequent Principles of Management section noted that the university requires juniors to do an experiential learning course, and many do an internship. Most of the subjects in my study were juniors, so it is possible that searching for that internship helped all of them improve their ability to identify opportunities.

Adapting the Exercise

This exercise can be adapted to different situations by changing the first two steps in Part I of the exercise. Instead of using the Interest Profiler and Job Zone to find occupations, users can search the O*NET database with keywords, by industry, or by military job. In the keyword method, people type in a short description of what they want to do (e.g., human resource management, online marketing, or defend employee rights). For the industry method, people choose from among the 20 categories used in the North American Industry Classification System (e.g., government, manufacturing, or service) plus a self-employed category. Veterans can enter their service branch and military job to explore civilian careers.

Search With Keywords

Several situations can be addressed by searching the O*NET database using keywords. Two such situations became evident in my post hoc analysis. Recall that I found some significant differences based on class standing (seniors) and major (Accountancy). Such students may already know what occupation they want. Instructors can give them the option of searching the database by using keywords for desired occupations. Nonetheless, I have found that most of these students use the Interest Profiler.

One problem that arises is that a few students complete the Interest Inventory and obtain possible occupations, but none are related to their majors. If those students are relatively early in their college programs, they can change their majors to fit their interests. If they are near graduation, I advise them to finish their major but look for a semirelated occupation by searching with keywords related to their majors.

Nontraditional students with work experience may not need the Interest Profiler. Most nontraditional students I know are back in school for one of two reasons: either to move up in their current career or to change careers. The former would search the database using keywords from their current or most recent positions. They can then explore some of those, looking for upward moves. Nontraditional students who want to change careers may or may not know what new career they want. If they do know, they skip the Interest Profiler and use the new occupation in the keyword search. If they do not know, they can do the Interest Profiler.

Browse by Industry

Some nontraditional students may wish to change jobs but stay in the same industry. Instead of using the Interest Profiler, these students can browse occupations by choosing their current industry (e.g., finance and insurance, retail, or transportation). They can then explore occupations common in that industry.

Although many business degrees are aimed at functional areas (e.g., accounting, marketing, or human resources), some programs focus on certain industries. For example, in additional to functional majors, my business school includes programs for health sector management, hospitality, and real estate. Instructors can give these students the option of using the Interest Profiler or browsing occupations within their major’s industry.

Entrepreneurship is neither an occupation nor an industry. Some students majoring in Entrepreneurship know the industry within which they wish to start a business, but some do not. One of the options within My Next Move’s industry search is called self-employed. Searching under that “industry” gives students occupations where people are in business for themselves.

My Next Move for Veterans

Instructors teaching military veterans should direct them to use My Next Move for Veterans (www.mynextmove.org/vets/). Vets can search with keywords, by industry, or by entering the name or code of their military classification. If necessary, they have the option of completing the Interest Profiler.

Mi Próximo Paso

Spanish speaking students can use the Spanish translation of My Next Move (www.miproximopaso.org/). Mi Próximo Paso is used in Puerto Rico (www.mercadolaboral.pr.gov/) and Chile (www.psu.cl/2015/08/29/conoce-tu-carrera-con-mi-proximo-paso/).

One must be cautious in adapting this exercise for use outside the United States. The job information in the O*NET database “is likely to transport quite well across countries” (Taylor, Li, Shi, & Borman, 2008, p. 69). However, studies on the validity of Holland’s theory outside the United States have produced mixed results. The theory is supported by studies in Iceland (Einarsdóttir, Rounds, Ægisdóttir, & Gerstein, 2002), Korea (Tak, 2004), Croatia (Šverko & Babarović, 2006), and Germany (Nagy, Trautwein, & Lüdtke, 2010). However, validity is not supported by studies in Hong Kong (Law, Wong, & Leong, 2001; Leung & Hou, 2005) and South Africa (du Toit & de Bruin, 2002). Instructors outside the United States who are concerned about that validity issue can bypass the Interest Profiler and have their students find occupations using the keyword search or the industry search. Students can then do almost all of the exercise, except for the questions about salary and employment outlook (those are U.S.-based).

My Experiences With the Exercise

In this section, I present some of my observations from reading my students’ reports.

Positive Observations

I see many good things in the reports. Almost all the students say that they find useful information via this exercise; they often mention the list My Next Move provides for occupations matching their interests. The most common occupations they identify are Accountant, Financial Manager, Marketing Manager, Sales Manager, Human Resource Manager, Administrative Services Manager, Investment Fund Manager, Financial Analyst, and Bookkeeping Clerk.

The students also say that it is useful to learn about the knowledge and skills required for desired occupations, the employment outlooks, and the salary ranges. The most commonly mentioned knowledge areas are English language, administration and management, mathematics, computers, customer service, economics and accounting, sales and marketing, and law. The most commonly listed skills are complex problem solving, active listening, judgment and decision making, systems analysis, reading comprehension, speaking, social perceptiveness, and coordination. Most of my students are relieved to see that their chosen occupations are projected to have average to above average growth with good salary ranges.

Negative Observations

I see two common problems in the students’ reports: they do not contain all of the material from Part I of the exercise, and they do not discuss salary ranges. Part I has students find career-related information. If the reports do not include all of required material, it is hard to grade Part II. This can produce a lower grade for the exercise. If the students ignore salary ranges and only write about salary averages, I have to explain that some starting salaries are in the lower quartiles of the salary range.

Other problems are that some students make infeasible occupation choices, discuss only interesting job tasks, and incorrectly decide to relocate for more money. To address these problems, I remind students that choosing managerial occupations will require years of experience in related, nonmanagerial roles. I tell them that realistic job previews include both the interesting and uninteresting parts of jobs. If students say that they can make more money if they move to a different state, I inform them that different parts of the country have different costs of living (see Cover, 2016, for a good method of comparing wages across U.S. areas). To avoid these problems, I suggest that instructors use class time to clearly explain the exercise when making the assignment (see Appendix B).

Limitations

This study has several limitations. First, I randomly assigned the six sections of Principles of Management to the treatment and control groups because I wanted to make it easy for the volunteer professors to handle. Future researchers should consider random assignment of individuals to the groups. This would decrease the chances of an extraneous variable affecting the results.

Some people may consider the use of volunteer subjects to be a limitation. I used volunteer subjects because my university’s institutional review board required it to study students in class. Future researchers should consider using a university’s subject pool where students are required to participate in a research study. Not only would that make it easy to randomize by individual it would decrease the possibility that volunteers have different biases than do nonvolunteers.

Another limitation is that I collected self-report data for the dependent variables and therefore have students’ perceptions of their learning. Stronger evidence of the usefulness of My Next Move would come from measuring behavioral outcomes. For example, future researchers should consider outcomes such as how well students perform on a future career management assignment, demonstrate their ability to find several appropriate career opportunities, or actually find employment within 6 months of graduation.

Conclusion

This article describes an exercise based on O*NET’s My Next Move tool. That tool measures one’s career interests via Holland’s (1959, 1997) typology: realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising, and conventional. Using a person’s top three interests, My Next Move provides the person with a list of appropriate occupations. I build on My Next Move, asking students to choose one occupation and to report its knowledge and skill requirements, educational level, salary range, and employment outlook. Self-report data from a quasi-experimental assessment indicate that the exercise enhances undergraduate business students’ career preparedness in two ways: (a) it increases their awareness of careers that match their interests and (b) it improves their career planning skills.

Instructors can incorporate the exercise in courses such as Introduction to Management, Human Resource Management, and Career Management. I have successfully used it in all three at the undergraduate level, although it may help MBA students, too. Many Introduction to Management courses cover the managerial tasks of planning, organizing, leading, and controlling. My Next Move can be used as an individual aspect of planning. Additionally, students can consider the extent to which their interest profile relates to their affinity to lead others. In a course on Human Resource Management, the exercise can be assigned in conjunction with either recruitment or career development. Likewise, in a Career Management course, My Next Move can support the topics of individual career development and its early career stage. Speaking of career management, college and university career centers can encourage students to use My Next Move as freshmen or sophomores so they can choose majors with occupations in mind. I hope that instructors and career counselors find other applications for this exercise.

Footnotes

Appendix A

Appendix B

Appendix C

Acknowledgements

I acknowledge Grace Lemmon and Yvette Lopez for allowing me to collect data from their students. I acknowledge Jaclyn Jensen for her input on the questionnaire.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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