Thinking about your career?
Here are five easy steps to plan your career:
1. Find out more about choosing a career
Service Canada has a series of quizzes to help you explore your work abilities, learning styles and work values. To access the quizzes and other resources, you need to create a free account with Service Canada. Click here to create an account which can be done in less than a minute. Once you create an account, you are logged in. Click the link to Career Navigator in the menu on the left side of the page and start taking quizzes. There is also a host of other resources available for you on this site.
2. Learn about your options
Now that you know about yourself, what types of work would be a good fit?
- The Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities offers information about choosing a career.
- Ontario workinfonet.ca (OnWIN) has employment, career, and labour market information specific to Ontario.
- Explore possible careers and find out what basic skills are required by each occupation. You can even try some activities related to each occupation!
- Do you want to be your own boss? Find out if self-employment is the right thing for you.
- The Individual WorkinfoNet Portal gives you information on employment specific to each Ontario region.
- The Ontario Cooperative Education Association has a list of valuable resources to get you started in planning your future career.
3. Do more research
You know what type of work interests you. The next step is to find out more about the jobs you like. You can also discover which jobs are in high demand.
- On the Ontario Job Futures website, learn about the demand in many different occupations in Ontario.
- The Ontario Labour Market Information Guide can help you understand and use labour market information. This will help to study the demand for various careers.
- Find occupational descriptions on the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities website.
- On the Workforce Planning Ontario website, you can find resources in your community. They can help you find information about training, employment and the labour force.
- The Government of Canada's Job Bank offers information on careers, job market trends, career tools, a job bank where you can search current job openings and other resources.
4. Make Choices
Now that you have more information, it’s time to make some decisions and narrow in on a career goal!
- Research your chosen career to find out about the latest trends, wages, and needs for your chosen career path.
- Ontario Skills Passport provides clear descriptions of the basic skills and work habits important for work, learning, and life.
- VECTOR has a career video library with over 100 videos showing many career options. The Made with the Trades website can help you explore careers in the skilled trades.
- Jooble Canada is a vertical job search engine that aggregates and displays job ads from thousands of job boards, corporate, recruiter pages and newspapers.
5. Plan your education
Find out which programs and courses are available to help reach your career goals.
- EmployerRegistry.ca is a free online community that connects employers and future workers.
- The Ontario Youth Apprenticeship Program is a school-to-work program for students to explore and work in apprenticeship occupations.
- Search over 1,000 online and distance programs and 18,000 online and distance courses here in the studyonline.ca portal. Start your education today!
- Wavemakers is a groundbreaking work-integrated learning program, supported by the Government of Canada through the Innovative Work-Integrated Learning Program, designed to connect diverse post-secondary students with leading employers across Canada.
Visit the Ministry of Colleges and Universities to learn more about career planning.
