All About CareerOINK.com
We're Not Just a Funny Name
We like to have fun and think "CareerOINK"
is a fun and memorable name--don't you? But CareerOINK has also been designed
to do some very useful things, like
- Give you substantial information on ALL major job titles,
from all major information sources,
- Cross-reference one job title to all related titles,
and,
- Keep the whole thing very easy to use.
Doing these three things well may not sound like a big
deal, but it is, as you will soon see. That's because CareerOINK contains
detailed information on about 14,000 job titles, and it's easy to get
lost in the details. Instead, we've taken lots of time to make complicated
career information systems, well, simple to use.
Who can use CareerOINK.com?
CareerOINK.com can be used by job seekers, students,
hiring managers, human resource executives... basically anyone who needs
to do some serious occupational research! You can use our comprehensive
system to conduct all kinds of occupational related research, including:
 Search
career options by interests, job groupings, titles or job numbers
Find related
job titles through hyperlinked cross references
Learn specific
skills or education/training needed
Prepare for
a job interview
Identify
skills needed for promotions or job changes
Write resumes,
cover letters
Read Job
Profiles from REAL PEOPLE - JIST JOB PROFILES (coming
soon!)
Research
employments trends
Volumes of
information to help write job descriptions
Assessment
tools for your workforce
Find related
job titles to help properly allocate you human resources
Where does all this
information come from?
A variety of government
and other sources were used to assemble the materials used in CareerOINK.
Most is based on information obtained from the U.S. Department of Labor.
For example, we included the full text of all job descriptions from the
current edition of the Occupational Outlook Handbook, a book produced
by the U.S. Department of Labor. But we also used materials developed
by JIST for use in other reference books. For example, we include about
1,000 job descriptions we developed for use in the O*NET Dictionary
of Occupational Titles. This approach allows us to use carefully constructed
job descriptions and other materials that would be too costly to create
for use in CareerOINK alone. The result is access to wonderfully complete,
carefully crafted, information-packed, and useful career information that
is simply not duplicated by any other source.
One way to think of CareerOINK
is as a database that uses information from a variety of books, with each
source cross-referenced to the others, so you can start anywhere and go
almost anywhere else. This is a very easy-to-use and a powerful way to
explore occupational information. Here are the primary sources of that
information.
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The
Occupational Outlook Handbook (OOH) – Published by the
U.S. Department of Labor and updated every two years, this is the
most widely used career reference of all time. It provides very
helpful one to two page descriptions for about 270 major jobs, covering
more than 90% of the labor market. |
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The
Occupational Information Network (O*NET) – This one is not a book,
but a database of occupational information that is maintained by the
U.S. Department of Labor. The most recent release provides details
on about 1,000 job titles, with about 400 data elements provided for
each job. The O*NET job descriptions we use in CareerOINK are based
on ones JIST developed for a major reference book titled the O*NET
Dictionary of Occupational Titles. We spent a great deal of time
on developing job those descriptions so that they are easy to understand
and packed with useful information. Our descriptions also include
details not included in the O*NET database, such as earnings and projected
growth. |
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The
Guide for Occupational Exploration (GOE)
– Another major career reference book, originally published by the
U.S. Department of Labor but revised and published by JIST in 2002.
It organizes all jobs in CareerOINK into 14 major "Interest Areas"
and then into increasingly specific groupings of related jobs. The
GOE is very easy to use, and one of the most effective ways to explore
career options. |
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The
Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT) – Also published
by the U.S. Department of Labor, the DOT provides brief descriptions
for 12,741 jobs. Replaced by the newer O*NET system, many government
agencies and businesses still use the DOT's numbering and job titles
system. The DOT's many job titles create a richness of specialized
jobs that simply can not be replaced, and that is why we continue
to include them in CareerOINK. |
Additional information
on these and other sources of information are provided in the "Help"
section of CareerOINK.
What does the future hold
for OINK? Bigger, Better and More Features!
The staff at JIST is dedicated to continually adding content
and additional fucntionality to ensure that CareerOINK.com remains a valuable
tool for you. Here are just a few of the enhancements that we have planned:
- Sample resumes and cover letters. To help people
write their resumes and cover letters, we want to provide sample resumes
and cover letters to be connected to each occupation. This will allow
users to look up an occupation, and then see real sample resumes and
cover letters developed for jobs in the CareerOINK database. Some of
these will be written by professional resume writers, others by CareerOINK
users.
- Interactive elements. We plan to add a variety
of interactive elements to the CareerOINK website, including user comments
about their own jobs (on likes, dislikes, pay, and other issues - JIST
JOB PROFILES); question or chat options for those wanting information
on a specific occupation; and other interactive features. We plan to
add these and other features to provide more information about each
listed job.
- More pig nonsense. The "CareerOINK"
name is just too much of an opportunity for us to pass up. So, over
time, we fully intend to "ham it up" and waste our time having
fun with pig puns and such, like maybe calling our sample resume section
the "resume trough," where you can find lots of "swill
resumes" and other stupid stuff. Hey, what about pig sounds whenever
you click on something? The possibilities are endless...
- More sorting options. On a more serious note,
we know that lots of people want to sort jobs in a variety of sensible
ways. For example, what about being able to find a list of jobs requiring
specific skills and certain levels of education and training? Or what
about searching for jobs in certain areas of interest, at certain levels
of training or education, and that pay over a certain amount? These
types of sorts makes sense, so we'll be working on adding a variety
of sorting options to future editions of the Web and CD versions of
CareerOINK. Or is that "snorting" options?
- More self-assessment options. Wouldn't it be
nice to fill out a questionnaire and have it end up giving you the one
"perfect" job for you? That will happen about the same time
as when pigs fly. Still, we can offer a more modest approach that lets
you respond to questions and that results in a list of jobs closely
matched to your preferences. In fact, we've already done this in several
forms, and plan to add this feature to a future release of CareerOINK.
In the meantime, click here for information about our online career
assessment options available now, or contact our sales department for
more information at 800-648-5478.
- Whatever you suggest. If we have lots of time
on our hands after doing all the nonsense around here, we will surely
think of other things we can do to improve CareerOINK. But, since some
of those ideas are sure to be a waste of time (though fun, like adding
lots of clever little pig applets to run across the screen and say "oink"),
we'd like your suggestions. Just what, we ask, would you like us to
consider adding in the way of features and improvements to CareerOINK?
Really. Let us know. Be specific. Be serious.
Send your suggestions to us at CareerOINK@jist.com or mail to us at
CareerOINK Mavens, JIST Publishing, 8902 Otis Ave., Indianapolis, IN
46216-1033.
Thanks.
About JIST Publishing
The people who put together all the information in CareerOINK
work for a company named JIST. Actually, our full name is JIST Publishing,
Inc., and our galactic headquarters is in sunny Indianapolis, Indiana.
If you are on the east or west coasts or from some other foreign land,
that means we are between New York and Los Angeles, and below Chicago.
And, yes, the humorous folks who work on the CareerOINK affectionately
call the JIST headquarters the Big Pig Pen.
A (Very) Brief History
JIST was incorporated back in 1981, during the worst recession in about
20 years. While that may not say much about the judgment of its founders,
it wasn't such a bad thing either, in that JIST's area of specialty was
- and is - career and job search information. With unemployment very high
at the time, demand for JIST materials was good enough to survive those
early years, and the rest is history.
Anyhow, JIST is now the Big Kahuna in the career information
and job search area. We publish more career information and reference
products than anyone else, and more career and job search related books,
videos, assessment tests, and other products than anyone else.
If you want to know more about JIST and its many
products, visit our website at www.jist.com, e-mail us at info@jist.com,
or call us at 1-800-648-5478 and ask for a catalog.
For More information, go to 
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