Category: Tech

Tutorials for library databases, job-search websites, and common software issues.

Tech Talk: Learning Express Job and Career Accelerator

The East Baton Rouge Parish Library recently acquired a new resource to assist jobseekers: the Job and Career Accelerator service of the Learning Express database.

How to Access It:

The Learning Express database is free to anyone with an East Baton Rouge Parish Library card. Go to the library website, then click on The Digital Library. Choose to search the “A-Z List”, then find “Learning Express 3.0” which takes you to the Learning Express database. Now click on “Job and Career Accelerator”.

How it’s organized:

There are six sections to this resource.

Find a Career Match: These assessments can be a good career planning tool for people who don’t know where to start. The Interest Matcher asks you about how much – or how little – you are interested in doing certain types of tasks.  The Skills Assessment is similar, except it asks about what skills you already have.  Each assessment will, based on your answers, provide you with a list of professions and types of work which match your interests or skills.

Explore Occupations: This tool provides detailed information about 1000 different careers.  There are several different options for how to search and narrow down results. For each job title, the database gives information on job description, average salary, projected demand, education needed, skills preferred, and more.

Search for Jobs and Internships: This takes you directly to job postings and internship opportunities on Indeed.

Tools to Get Hired: This section provides samples of job search-related documents, including resumes, cover letters, networking letters, and post-interview thank-you notes. There is also a how-to-interview tutorial and a resume-building tool.

Career Library: This section has in-depth guides on how to start a career in several common fields, including healthcare, teaching, paralegal, police, and culinary arts. There are also specialized guides for how to change careers and how to use social networking in the job search.

School and Scholarship Finder: The Scholarship Finder helps you search among 24,000 different scholarships to find scholarships for which you might qualify. The School Finder helps you locate a school that meets your educational goals and needs. It includes a Quick Match tool that helps you find schools that might be a good match for you.

What do we like most about this resource?

One-stop shop: This database brings together a lot of resources for different aspects of job searching and career planning under one roof. You can take an assessment, choose a career, write a resume, apply for jobs, and find a school, all under one roof. That can be very convenient.

Good information: There are lots of tools here to help you become a savvy jobseeker. For instance, the sample letters in the Tools to Get Hired section are helpful examples. And the guides in the Career Library are extremely informative, if there is a guide for your chosen career.

Resume Keywords: This was our absolute favorite part of the database. The Resume Builder contains a list of Job-Specific Keywords which you can use to plug into your resume. For example, if you look for “Accountant”, a long list of keywords and skills related to accounting and finance will come up. You can then choose some of those keywords to fill out the “Skills” section of your resume. This is a great way to make sure your resume bursts with the key skills that will grab a hiring manager’s attention.

What do we dislike most about this resource?

Derivative: This database has very little in it which is original. The job postings come from Indeed. The career information comes from ONET. And the general structure of the resources comes from Career Cruising, another career database which we’ve discussed extensively.

Resume Builder: We know, we seem to be contradicting ourselves. We said that we loved the Keywords section of the Resume Builder. And that’s true. But we found the rest of the Resume Builder inflexible and hard to use. It uses a one-size-fits-all formula for the resume template, making it difficult to tailor a resume to suit your specific skills and audience. We much prefer referring our patrons to our own resume templates, which are 100% customizable.

Written by Richard Wright and Lynnette Lee

The Hidden Dangers of Tables and Text Boxes in Resumes

Common Scene in the Career Center: A patron is trying to revise or update a resume. He/she tries to add or delete a line or section, or tries to change some of the formatting, but it does not seem to work right. The formatting and spacing get thrown off, and we are not able to fix it. We see this happen when a resume is formatted with tables or text boxes.

Where tables and text boxes come from

There are 3 reasons why your resume might contain tables/text boxes:

1) You are using a resume template that includes them. Some resume templates, in Microsoft Word and other sources, use tables and text boxes to lay out the structure of the resume. These formatting structures are usually invisible unless you specifically look for them.
2) You used a website to build your resume. Some websites that say “just enter your information and we will build your resume for you” use tables and/or text boxes to lay out the structure of the resume (assuming that you downloaded your resume from the website in Word format).
3) You put the table or text box in yourself.

Why you should avoid using tables and text boxes in your resume

Why do people like to use tables and text boxes? They look great because they give structure to the resume template. Tables are very useful for laying out a document in certain ways. Cells and rows and columns work well to create “sections” for different kinds of information. Text boxes can also work well for creating a “block” or a section. One advantage of text boxes is the freedom to move them around to different locations in the document. They can be useful for creating a header or a “left column” section.

Nevertheless, the Career Center still recommends against using tables and text boxes in your resume, for the following reasons:

1) They can “get in the way” when you want to revise your resume or change the layout.

  • Let’s you want to add an item to your Work Experience. You think “just add a new line and type information.” But if your resume uses tables, the layout is not the same as the rest of that section. Using Enter to create a new line in the same cell/row will not look the same. To be consistent you would need to create a new row and/or cell in the layout table. Unless you’re savvy with creating and editing tables, this may be hard for you to do.
  • Similarly, deleting something from your resume is difficult if the template uses tables or text boxes. Often, there is a bunch of empty space that will not go away. Why? Because now you have an empty cell and even empty cells take up space.
  • Tables and text boxes can get in the way when you try to change the margins.

2) Websites that import information from your resume have trouble “reading” information that is in tables or text boxes.

  • We have tested this with several different Automated Tracking Systems (ATS) such as Workday, Taleo, and Brassring. We found that they could “read” or import most but not all of the information in your resume. Some websites, such as job-posting giant Indeed, cannot import resumes with tables at all.
  • This is a big deal. You want websites to read correctly the information in your resume. For one thing, this saves you time and effort typing information on a job application. (Job application websites “read” your resume and use the information to fill in many of the boxes.)
  • More importantly, these websites might have trouble reading your work experience and qualifications. That means they might not recognize key words and information and not “flag” your resume so that a hiring manager will take a closer look and perhaps contact you for an interview. If the software can’t properly read your resume, due to tables and text boxes, then it may never get seen by human eyes.

How to Recognize Tables and Text Boxes in MS word templates

Usually they are invisible and can be hard to spot (as in the example below).

However, usually you can see a little square (with four arrows inside) in the top-left corner of a table and/or text box. If you cannot then click on an area inside the document – or move the cursor over the top-left area – and the little box should appear. Right-click on the little square. This makes a little menu appear.

Click on the Borders icon (which looks like a 2 x 2 square). And then choose All Borders. This will change the Borders setting for the table and/or text box so that the border(s) become visible.

And there is your table! Of course people usually want tables and text boxes to be invisible (no borders) so that they do not show up when printing the resume (and a person reading the resume does not see them). But in this case, you want to know that they’re there – so that you can choose not to use a template that has them.

What are other ways to format a resume?

  • If you are laying out your resume yourself, you can use tabs, justification settings, and indents in order to provide structure. These can all provide results that look similar or identical to what tables and text boxes accomplish. Although they can take a little more effort, the result is a document which you can edit as much as needed, which can be easily read by ATS.
  • Use a resume template that does not use tables or text boxes. This can be tricky because, as noted above, tables and text boxes are often invisible. One thing to look for is blocks of text next to each other in neat columns (as in the first example in this article). Or a section of text that seems to stand by itself and is not part of any paragraph.
  • Easiest method of all: Use one of our Career Center templates! The Career Center website has several different resume templates. They follow current “best practices” for resumes. They are well laid out and space efficient without being cramped. Click here for our resume templates.

Written by Richard Wright

Tech Talk: Why You Need Your Resume in MS Word (and how to convert it from PDF)

Patron: I need to update my resume. It’s in PDF format. How do I make changes?
Staff: I’m sorry but you can’t.

A conversation like this happens quite often in the Career Center. Many of our clients don’t realize that the choice of format in which they save their resume can affect their ability to make changes to the resume. Many computers – including the library’s computers – do not have the software necessary to edit PDF files. So, why do so many people use PDFs? And if your resume is PDF only, what can you do about it?

advantages and disadvantages of pdfs

One of the great advantages of having a PDF version of your resume is that it cannot be altered by another person or a computer program. Therefore, it can be a good idea to submit your resume as a PDF in an email or an online application, so that it will arrive with all of your formatting intact.

However, this feature of PDFs is a double-edged sword. No one else can make changes to your document – but neither can you. If you want to add a new position, or change your email address, or fix a typo, you will be out of luck with a PDF.

Therefore, we strongly urge you to save your resume (and cover letter, references, etc.) in an editable format such as Microsoft Word. You may also save each document as a PDF for online submission if you’d like,* but you need a Microsoft Word copy so you can make changes.

*Recently we learned websites that use ATS (Automated Tracking System) do not read PDFs very well. Even if a website allows you to upload your resume in PDF format, it is better to submit it in a Microsoft Word format such as DOC or DOCX.

My resume is pdf only. how do i fix that?

If it is not a scan, try this:

  • Convert it using Word. Word 2013 and 2016 are able to open a PDF and convert it to Word format. This is the most effective and hassle-free option. However, it will not work with a scan. It only works with documents that were created in MS Word but saved as PDFs.
  • Use Google Drive to convert it. Obviously, this one only works if you have a Google account. Upload the PDF to your Drive and open the file as a Google Doc. Then, in the menu bar, go to File -> Download as -> Microsoft Word (docx).  Again, this technique does not work with scans.
  • Use PDFtoWord. This website converts PDFs to Word documents and produced good results when we tested it. However, it will not work with a scan.

If it is a scan, try this:

  • Run it through Optical Character Recognition (OCR). OCR recognizes letters and words in your scanned file and turns them into text. Some websites can run an uploaded file through OCR and then convert it into a text file in MS Word. We had good results doing this through ILovePDF, OnlineOCR, DocsZone, and PDFtoWordConverter. However, please be advised that quality is not guaranteed – sometimes, formatting is lost during the conversion process, particularly if your resume is highly formatted.
  • If all else fails, re-type it from scratch in MS Word. It takes time, but it will be worth it.

See Wikihow for more detailed instructions on converting PDFs to Word.

I don’t have microsoft office. what do i do?

You are welcome to use the library for this purpose; all of our branches have MS Word on our computers. Alternately, you can use a free application such as Libre Office, which is very similar to MS Office and compatible with Macs and Linux.

If you would like in-person help with writing or formatting your resume, come to the Career Center at the Goodwood Library where trained staff can assist you.

Written by Rick Wright

Job Searching with Facebook

If you’re a savvy job-seeker, you already know that social media is a crucial job search tool – for establishing your personal brand, expanding your network, and discovering the hidden job market. But what you may not know is, there is a new tool you can add to your social media job search toolkit. Facebook has recently launched Facebook Jobs, an app which allows you to find and apply for jobs directly through Facebook.

How to use facebook jobs

Once you log into your personal Facebook page, the Jobs tool is visible on the left sidebar under “Explore.”

Click on the Jobs tab and you will see:

  • the Location that determines which job openings are shown
  • a list of Job-Type boxes so you can narrow down the search by Full-Time, Part-Time, Internship, and so on
  • a list of Industry boxes so you can narrow down what types of jobs interest you
  • a Search jobs field if you would like to search for jobs with certain key terms

Depending on what search terms you use, you will see “posts” for job openings in your Location area, Industry, and Job Type. If you see a position that interests you have the option to click on Apply Now – but you might not want to.

One Major caveat

The Facebook Jobs tool has one great advantage, which is that it makes it very easy and convenient for you to look for a variety of jobs at once. Much like aggregate job posting sites such as Indeed, it’s a time-saving one-stop shop for job searchers. But once you find a job you’d like to apply for, we recommend that you do not actually apply for the job through Facebook itself (unless that is the only option). We strongly recommend that you go to the company’s official website and apply there instead.

We have two major reasons for this recommendation. First, many people see Facebook as a place of play, not a place of business. Submitting your application that way may cause you to be taken less seriously, especially if the application links directly to your personal Facebook page – which is probably much less polished and professional-looking than your resume or LinkedIn profile. Second, there is always a risk that you will be sharing your information with a suspicious source. There are a lot of scam artists who lure in victims with fake job offers, and Facebook may not be able to thoroughly vet them all. Thus, the company’s official website is the safer bet.

Applying for a job through facebook

Again, we recommend that you don’t do this, and use the company’s official website instead. However, sometimes that’s not an option. If the job can only be applied for on Facebook (and you’re certain that it’s legitimate),  click “Apply Now” on the job posting. This opens up a rudimentary job application form where you can provide contact information, education, and experience. There is also an option to be notified by that organization about other job openings.

Advertising a job through facebook

If you run a small business with a corporate Facebook page, you can use the Facebook Jobs tool to advertise your job openings. This may be a good way to expand your pool of applicants, because far more people will see your openings here than on your company website. Once you log into your corporate page, there is a button for Publish a job post.

That opens a form on which the organization can post the open position with places to add information about Job Title, Location, Salary, Job Type, Details, Additional Questions, and a Photo if desired (such as a business or company logo).

Overall impression

Whether the Facebook Jobs tool is useful to you will depend on your needs and circumstances. If you have highly specialized skills, or if you are only interested in a handful of companies, this tool may not help you find what you’re looking for. If, however, you’re not completely sure what you want or where to find it, this tool can be a great way to look at a large variety of local job listings with a minimum of fuss. We saw lots of openings for retail, food service, caregiver, and labor positions, but there’s a little of everything and a few off-the-wall postings you’d have trouble finding elsewhere. In general, we think it’s a good tool to help both companies and job-seekers.

Written by Richard Wright and Lynnette Lee

New IT learning and job opportunity in Baton Rouge

New IT learning and job opportunity in Baton Rouge

Become a Cybersecurity Analyst in just 15 months, at no cost to you. You will get paid while you train through this new apprenticeship opportunity sponsored by NexusLA and Apprenti.

Cybersecurity Analysts are in high demand in our area and companies such as Blue Cross Blue Shield of Louisiana, EATEL, TraceSecurity, and General Informatics have already agreed to hire apprentices through this program (Apprenti). Apprenti is a new registered apprenticeship program to offer you a path and plan into the tech industry.

How it works

  • Take the online assessment (https://apprenticareers.org/locations/louisiana/) and rank high enough to be invited to interview with staff. (If you want to be part of the first cohort you need to take the assessment before the end of October.)
  • If you are selected, you’ll be placed into 3 months of full-time technical training (this period is unpaid!)
  • Once you complete training, you will transition to paid on-the-job-training with companies such as Blue Cross Blue Shield of Louisiana, EATEL, TraceSecurity, and General Informatics, for one year
  • After graduating from your apprenticeship, you will have the opportunity and experience to qualify to be retained by your hiring company

Getting started

You need to be over 18 with a high school diploma or equivalent and eligible to work in the U.S. (you do not need to be a U.S. citizen).  Take the test at https://apprenticareers.org/locations/louisiana/ and see if you make it to the next round. If you don’t succeed the first time around, you can retake the test 3 more times.

Your career in Tech awaits you

Apprenti Louisiana gets you trained and certified as a tech hire right here in Louisiana. All you have to do is complete the apprenticeship program and you are on your way to a thriving career in technology. For more info: https://apprenticareers.org/locations/louisiana/

Written by Anne Nowak

Tech Talk: Hoonuit

Do you want to learn more about computer applications to help you in your job search? Or have you started a job in which you are expected to use certain computer applications?Then take a look at Hoonuit.

Hoonuit is an online platform that provides “on-demand software training and support tutorials to help businesses and organizations fulfill staff technology training and development goals”.

Getting Started

Patrons of the East Baton Rouge Public Library can access Hoonuit through the library’s Digital Library. The computers inside the East Baton Rouge Parish Library will connect automatically, but if you are at home, you may need to type in your library card number. You will need to Create a New Account if you do not already have an account with RB Digital. The account is free.

Once you enter Hoonuit you will see a welcome page. The screenshot below shows “Pathways” which are like online courses focusing on a particular topic or software suite such as Word 2016 or Office 365.

These courses include modules, each of which includes a series of short training videos that describe a specific aspect or feature of that software.

As you can see, the videos are very brief. They teach by showing actions within the application along with a voice over by an instructor who explains what you can do within that application and how.

Popular topics include:

CAREER SKILLS
Writing a Resume
Accepting a Job
Winning Cover Letters

DESIGN
WordPress 4.9
Adobe Illustrator CS6
Adobe Animate CC

MOBILE DEVICES
iOS (multiple versions)
Chromebook Training
Creating a Basic Budget on a Mobile Device

PROGRAMMING
C++ Primer Training
PHP Basics Training
HTML and CSS Training

SOFTWARE AND TECHNOLOGY
Google Drive
Office 365
macOS

Important – There are many videos on topics and software applications that are not listed under Pathways or Topics – you must search for them. Hoonuit offers over 50,000 videos on an impressive array of applications, including applications that are less well known but can be useful, such as Audacity, Gimp, Moodle, and OpenOffice.

You can access Hoonuit through a web browser on a computer, or on your smartphone or tablet using the RB Digital app. Explore Hoonuit and expand your computer skills today!

Written by Richard Wright

Work@Home 101: How to Find Legitimate Work-From-Home Opportunities

If you’ve missed our seminar “Work @ Home 101”, here are the key takeaways:

No commute, no dress code, no office politics, and more flexibility. That’s what attracts most people to look into working from home. Thanks to technological advances, work-at-home opportunities are more plentiful than ever before. But how to find the best opportunities? How do you beware of scams? And is working from home really as good as it seems?

While the before mentioned advantages are real, there are distinct disadvantages to working from home as well. Do you have the self-discipline not to give in to the distractions of being at home, such as surfing the web, doing housework, reading a book, or talking to friends? Are you okay with no person-to- person interaction all day? Many jobs feature interaction through chat, phone, or video call, but it’s still not the same as being around others in person. There are also no clear limitations between being “at work” and “at home”.

However, if you have determined that working from home suits your lifestyle, the next step is to figure out, which opportunities are the best fit for you.

Independent contractor or employee?

Both kinds of employment are available virtually and both have their pros and cons. Being an employee usually means that you only work for that specific employer, have regular hours, and receive benefits such as paid time off and, ideally, health and retirement benefits. In most cases, the employer will furnish equipment like laptop and/or telephone.

As an independent contractor, you provide services to an organization but are not their employee. As such, you are not eligible for benefits and mostly have to furnish your own equipment. But you can also set your own hours and only work when you want to. This set-up provides ultimate flexibility and you can work for several organizations at the same time. The majority of work at home opportunities will fall into this category!

Where to find legitimate work-at-home jobs?

There is a one-stop-shop for virtual job postings. Your first go-to website should be Rat Race Rebellion. It’s not the most user-friendly site, but in turn it is free. Rat Race Rebellion provides the most comprehensive list of links to legitimate work-at-home opportunities of all kinds: employee and independent contractor, large and small companies, from healthcare to education to call centers, it covers every industry.

Another legitimate website is Flexjobs. Flexjobs’ mission is to provide flexible work opportunities, not just virtual ones. Therefore, a lot of their jobs are actually not work-from-home, so you have to dig through their listings to find the virtual opportunities. You can browse the listings for free, but in order to get company name and contact information you have to join flexjobs, which charges you a monthly fee! Therefore, browse the listings first in order to determine if it is worth for you to join.

Last but not least there are online market places such as Upwork and Workmarket. Upwork is literally an online marketplace where anybody can post projects that they need to hire somebody with a specific expertise for. Project posters are often individuals, small companies, or start-ups. On the flip side, contractors can sign up and advertise their services. Projects cover a wide range of fields: creative, legal, translations, software and web design, proofreading, accounting, etc. You can browse the jobs without registration. But in order to bid on/apply for the projects, you need to register and create a profile. Unless you have a rare expertise or skill, it takes some time before you can make decent money on Upwork. You need to build a good reputation project by project. Once your reputation is established, you can demand more money. It is pure supply and demand. Upwork can be great for people wanting to break into a new field or who want to build a portfolio of projects. It is also a good resume filler for people who are unemployed and want to avoid long gaps in their work history.

Workmarket is also an online marketplace, but the projects posted are usually by larger employers. You can’t just browse jobs on the site —  you have to register before you can proceed. Since the jobs are by larger employers who have an urgent short-term need, the pay is usually good. Both Upwork and Workmarket only provide contract work, not employment.

If you want to move ahead with getting an online job but don’t know how to proceed, the Career Center can help. Give us a call at 225-231-3733 and we will help you discover options and tackle applications.

Written by Anne Nowak

Tech Talk: Career Cruising, Part 5 – Financial Aid

This is the fifth post in a series delving into the various aspects of the Career Cruising database available through the East Baton Rouge Parish Library’s Digital Library. Read all posts here.

Tech Talk: Career Cruising – Financial Aid

This post will be a more in-depth discussion of the financial aid feature.  The financial aid tab of Career Cruising is literally a treasure trove of information and money. It lists thousands of scholarships as well as information on federal financial aid.

There are three ways to search the database: alphabetically, by keyword search, and by using the financial aid selector.

The financial aid selector lets you choose specific parameters that apply to you, such as location, ancestry, major, interests, special needs, etc. It will search the database to find matching scholarships.  The results include links to the scholarship website with the respective application information.

You can also search by keyword. For example, the database returns five scholarships that have the keyword “Louisiana” in their name. Again, a link to the scholarship website is included in the results.

If you have time on your hands, try searching the database alphabetically and just browse the different scholarships. You will come across some off-the-beaten-path scholarships, such as the Fifth Month Scholarship or the Gulf Coast Hurricane Scholarship.

The financial aid tab also includes extensive information on how to apply for Federal Financial Aid (FAFSA), its regulations, and application guidelines.

The financial aid tab is an ideal add-on to the education section. The database’s most valuable feature is its exhaustive listing of available scholarships. Some of them seem so obscure that surely not many students will know about them, thus increasing the chances for the few that do find out about them. So, if you or your children are planning for college, be smart and use Career Cruising’s Financial Aid feature to search for additional college funding opportunities .

This resource is free to you with a valid EBRPL library card through the East Baton Rouge Parish Library’s Digital Library.

Written by Anne Nowak

Tech Talk: Gale Small Business Builder

If you are planning to start your own business or non-profit organization, you will want to check out the Digital Library’s newest database.

Gale Small Business Builder is a step-by-step online planning tool for starting, managing and optimizing a business or nonprofit. The program’s intuitive dashboard walks users through five areas of exploration in order to develop a business plan focused on long-term success.

 

Areas include:

Entrepreneur Profile This tool helps users explore what they can bring to the table as an entrepreneur and assess where they stand in preparing to start a business. A one-page summary of them as an entrepreneur is generated.

Business Ideation Users can employ tools such as Lean Canvas, SWOT, Porter’s Five Forces, and more to plan the high-level framework in which their business will operate.

Break-Even Analysis Delivers insight to determine when a user’s business will be able to cover expenses and begin to realize a profit.

Business Plans Creates a plan that can be presented to potential investors and lenders, including Executive Summary, Lean Business Plan, Full Business Plan, and Strategic Marketing Plan.

Financial Projections A robust analysis of a company’s financial future encompassing capital expenditures, sales, equity, and inventory.

For patrons exploring the idea of small business ownership, this resource provides a gradual introduction to entrepreneurial concepts and elements. For seasoned business persons or those progressing through the recommended workflow, the focus shifts toward outcome-based activities to support the management and growth of an operation, such as getting a loan, seeking investors, buying new equipment, and opening new facilities.

Additionally, check out our Start Your Own Business page for more entrepreneurial resources.

Written by Anne Nowak

Tech Talk: Career Cruising, Part 4 – Education

This is the fourth post in a series delving into the various aspects of the Career Cruising database available through the East Baton Rouge Parish Library’s Digital Library. Read all posts here.

In Career Cruising, the education tab lets you research your post-secondary education path from finding majors and the right school to how to best utilize your four years of high school in order to prepare for college. It contains comprehensive information about schools and provides links to their websites. It’s a perfect one-stop-shop for your college research.

The first feature under the education tab let’s you explore colleges and majors. You can search colleges by state or by major.

For Louisiana, the list includes 114 schools, which includes every kind of post-secondary school from career colleges and beauty schools to universities offering graduate degrees.

If you already know what you want to major in and want to find out which schools offer your field, you can search by major. For example, if you want to major in kinesiology or exercise science and want to find a school in Louisiana, these are your choices.

If you want to expand your search to other states, you can easily adjust the search filters.

The next feature lets you compare up to three schools side by side. It compares almost every statistic available for educational institutions. You can compare size, cost, average financial aid packages, which majors are offered, which NCAA sports teams are fielded, and, of course, admissions requirements.

If you have a number of requirements for your college and wonder which schools satisfy all of them, use the School Selector tool. Here you can choose different parameters, such as: public or private school, city, suburban, small town or rural setting, school size, admission difficulty, tuition, athletics, majors offered, and campus services. You can combine any of these criteria and see what’s possible. If it exists, Career Cruising will tell you where.

Last but not least, Career Cruising offers a planning timeline for college admissions. In a detailed description, the database describes which steps toward college choice and admission you should take during which year of high school.

As it did for occupational information, Career Cruising contains an incredible amount of data and information about post-secondary education and institutions. It is an easy-to-use tool for exploration, either to browse “what’s out there” or to do a targeted college or major search. If you are in the market for a college education, Career Cruising should be your go-to site for research.

This resource is free to you with a valid EBRPL library card through its Digital Library.

Written by Anne Nowak