Major and Career Exploration

Traitify helps you discover majors and careers based on your personality and preferences.

Use the Traitify Resource Handout and Traitify and Interest Code Blend Sheet to help interpret your assessment results.

The Focus assessment gives you information about your values, interests, personality, and skills.

Use the Focus Resource Handout to help interpret your results and provide insight into possible major and career opportunities.

Use What Can I Do With This Major? to explore other majors outside of the School of Science. Note: not all majors may be offered at IUPUI.

Candid Career provides short informational interview videos with professionals. You can search for videos by industry, job title, college major, companies, and more!

The Occupational Outlook Handbook can help you find career information on duties, education and training, pay, and outlook for hundreds of occupations.The OOH can be searched using key words, occupational areas, and many other criteria.

O*NET offers in-depth information on occupations with a focus on the knowledge, skills, and abilities needed for various positions. O*NET lets you search careers by a variety of criteria, including preferred interests. Learn about required skills, educational preparation, and other relevant information for many occupations.

An informational interview is an interview that you initiate with a professional in a career or industry that interests you. If well executed, an informational interview can be one of your most valuable sources of occupational information. An informational interview will allow you to:

• Explore careers
• Clarify your career goals
• Obtain information about your career field
• Be aware of the skills needed to do the job effectively
• Discover employment opportunities that are not advertised
• Broaden your professional network
• Build confidence for job interviews
• Identify your personal strengths and weaknesses

Job shadowing and professional shadowing is another means of career exploration in which you observe a professional at work. A job shadow can last anywhere from a few hours to a few days. During this time, you will be able to see firsthand what professionals actually do, what their working environments are like, and what kinds of people they interact with.

• A job shadow allows you to learn more about a career before you invest too much time preparing for a job that may not be right for you.
• You should also use the opportunity to make connections that will help your future job search.

Use your job shadow as an opportunity for an informational interview with the professional that you are shadowing. The informational interview will allow you to learn much more about your career interests, and it may also give you a sense of the specific kinds of work available in the field or industry.

An internship is a short-term work experience that will allow you to gain relevant knowledge and skills related to a particular career. It's also the best way to explore your career interests and gain experience that will accelerate your career.

Both service learning and volunteer work are great ways to get involved in the community and serve others. However, service learning is integrated with academic curriculum and content. Service learning also requires you to engage in reflection activities after your service experience and applying your learning to real-world activities.

One-time volunteer opportunities are a good way to explore your options, but once you determine a project or organization you enjoy, you should become a sustaining volunteer. Sustained volunteerism allows you to integrate with an organization, add to your professional network, build your skills, and have a broader impact.

For undergraduate students, research is an excellent way to build relationships with senior scientists and add depth to their university experience.

A job on or off campus allows you to research possible careers, grow skills and experience, build networking connections, and even earn a paycheck. The Office of Student Employment provides a variety of resources to help you locate the right position, including individual appointments and resume checks. You can also visit JagJobs to start your part-time job search.