Career Planning

Career planning involves learning about yourself, exploring different careers, and understanding how to use tools and resources that can help you find your "Niche," the best career fit for your unique talents, abilities, skills, personality, interests, and values. A career counselor will assist you with this process by providing career education activities from assessment to networking. Career planning is a multiple-step process that takes varying amounts of time for different people. The extra time and effort you take now could pay off in a life-time of job satisfaction and income later.

If you are undecided about your major, your future, or you are making a career change, contact one of our career counselors and or use the links below to begin your career search. Your career search should include a complete assessment of your personality, interest, values, accomplishments, and skills; exploration of careers and the job market; a plan to achieve your career goals; and the appropriate and targeted promotion of yourself to employers. The college also maintains career centers on Elizabeth City (AE 125) and Dare Campus (DC 226) with resources to assist you in your career search.

Career Search Links

Assess your personality, interests, values, abilities, and skills

Choices Planner CT provides a free comprehensive career-planning site that matches your personality, interests, values, and abilities with over 900 careers. Create a Career Portfolio to help with career planning. This site provides career assessment, exploration, planning, and promotion activities and allows you to save results in your portfolio.  Students will need to establish an account and log in.  Contact a counselor if you need assistance.

Keirsey Temperament Sorter (KTS-II) is a free assessment that provides personality/temperament analysis through a wide spectrum of analysis reports, providing insight for students about careers, relationships, learning styles, and personality. Contact a career counselor for a code to access and print a Temperament Discovery Report. For information about the KTS II go to www.keirsey.com 

Explore careers and the job market and Plan to achieve your career goals

CareerOneStop is your source for employment information and inspiration. Tools to help job seekers, students, businesses, and career professionals Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Labor. With links to ONET and the Occupational Outlook Handbook.
Choosing a major – If you are transferring and you are not sure of what you might major in you may want to explore this link to learn more about the careers different majors prepare you for. 
NC Careers is the North Carolina Career site that has great career resources.  Browse over 800 occupations in North Carolina and view the award winning  "Career Choices in North Carolina".
Reference USA is the No. 1 source of information on businesses and people for researchers, students and job seekers.
Vocational Biographies provide career biographies of over a 1,000 different careers. 

Promote yourself to employers @ collegecentral.com

CollegeCentral.com is one of the most visited entry-level job sites on the Internet. It provides both students and alumni with the ability to search their respective colleges' or universities' secure jobs databases, plus CCN's Jobs Central national job board, with millions of jobs posted to date.  Alumni and students can also develop and post their resumes, even develop an online portfolio.  College Central provides job search-specific documents and videos.  Below are the first in a series that cover core job seeker services to help you get hired. Print out these information-packed single sheets, and keep them handy to help you better prepare:

Other Career Resources
Co-Op Education at College of the Albemarle is the best way to get experience in your field of study.  
DisabilityInfo.gov covers a variety of topics related to employment of people with disabilities.
North Carolina Employment Security Commission provides a great link to job opportunities in the local Albemarle area
NC State Summer Internships gain essential work experience, improve your résumé, and get paid!
USA Government Jobs is your one stop source for federal jobs and employment information. Hampton Roads employs over 50,000 government workers. Make sure you use this excellent resource, How to Get a Federal Government Job 

Career Counselor Contacts