From time to time I like to take a brief moment to highlight a resource that is particularly useful in the career exploration process. This time, I’ll call your attention to the Career OneStop Salary Finder.
Salary information is a vital piece of information when we are choosing a career. Without understanding an expected salary range, it can be hard to envision how well a particular career might align with our desired standard of living. If you will need to be making payments on student loans, you need to know how much education investment makes sense. Given this need, it isn’t surprising that several services exist to help you explore salary (Payscale and Glassdoor are two others), but Career OneStop comes with a few benefits:
- simplicity: a position title and zip code will get you started
- strong data: salary information comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics
The output is fairly straightforward: you’ll be presented with a graph showing high, median, and low salaries for the zip code your selected, as well as the opportunity to learn some more information about their data sources and how they defined the occupation you entered. It’s simple and involves the fewest possible steps between entering your info and having an answer.
If you haven’t spent some time on the Career Onestop site in general, it’s worth your time. They offer some excellent resources (more than I could cover here). Take a look.
