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A new online career-finding tool helps high school students interested in agriculture match their talents and interests to a plan of study and career.
Students can use Purdue Agriculture Academic Programs' CareerFinder two ways. They can answer a series of questions about their likes, interests, and personality traits, and the CareerFinder will then match them to an area of study. They can also click directly on a characteristic they feel describes them best to see likely careers.
"There's a real need for a resource to help students figure out what to study in college," says Jennifer Stewart, a 2006 agricultural communication graduate who helped create CareerFinder. "When I started college, I had no idea what I wanted to do and where I wanted to go. A resource like this would have been helpful."
Julie Douglas, a 2005 graduate who also worked on the project, adds, "CareerFinder gives students the opportunity to check out options in agriculture and see that there is something for everyone; it's a tool that students can use to learn about different careers and industries that they may not have been aware of."
Stewart and Douglas worked on CareerFinder as part of an internship with the agricultural communication department.
"The neat thing about CareerFinder is that it starts with students' basic interests and lets them know what careers might suit them," Stewart says. "It even goes a step further to let students know how to pursue those careers by providing information from majors all the way down to specific plans of study."
Once students decide on a category, whether it is realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising or conventional, they're given a list of professions that they can click on for more detailed information to help them find their way to the right major in Purdue Agriculture.
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