Life is too short to be spent doing work you don’t like. While we all need to pay our bills and save for our futures, and while no job is perfect (even people doing their dream job don’t like it some days), we spend too much time working accept being miserable there. If you can get a job that’s in the top 20% of what you’re good at, top 20% of what you like, and top 20% of what you can get paid for your skills, that’s a win! Not that you shouldn’t aim higher than that going f

The next step to take toward finding a better paying job is to compare the skills you already have to the skills required for other jobs. Today’s CareerForce assessment is intended to help you compare skills in your current job to skills required for other jobs; jobs that are in demand, jobs that best align with your current job’s required skillset, and comparing your current job skillset to a career of interest, if you have one in mind already. After considering this, it’s a

Continuing the Job Seeker series from the previous two posts, using CareerForce assessments as examples, this post will guide you through the CareerForce Employment Readiness Assessment. This is a simple 12-question survey that makes today’s assignment seem light. However, be sure to plan on time to review the results of your assessment, as CareerForce makes some helpful recommendations based on your answers. Many recommendations will have links to other pages that you shoul

Now that you’ve set up a job seeker account to help you land a better paying job, spend the next several days exploring the different resources available to you. As shown in the two pictures below, start by logging into your account and then look for job search tools: Plan to spend one day on each relevant item listed; for example, those using a CareerForce account should take one day for the Employment Readiness Assessment, one day for the Compare Skills assessment, and so o

This post begins a series of concrete steps for you to take toward finding a better paying job, the first major milestone of the ALRS! You should plan to spend about 15 minutes setting up an account with the economic development agency in your state; the links for all 50 states are provided at the bottom of this post, which will go through setting up an account with Minnesota’s CareerForce as an example. Why Set Up an Account Setting up an account like this gives you access t