Resource Spotlight: Career Cruising’s Matchmaker Feature for Choosing a Career

In addition to many other career and job search resources and services, the Business & Career Center has online resources you can access 24/7 for free with your library card. Career Cruising is one of these; an interactive database available in Spanish and English, for people who are choosing a career, changing careers, and/or choosing a school. It also has information on financial aid and scholarship opportunities. In this post we’ll take a look at Matchmaker, their survey for those deciding on a career. 

In the B&CC we regularly assist patrons who are switching careers, either by choice or necessity, as well as those who are deciding on a career for the first time. The Matchmaker feature is not only useful for someone choosing a career or changing careers, it has the added bonus of being enjoyable and easy to use. It matches your interests and preferences to various professions, and then offers you information about each suggested career, including job descriptions, working conditions, salaries, and interviews with people in that profession. You can sort the results of your Matchmaker survey by level of required education: high school, 2-year college, and 4-year college.

To use the Matchmaker, go to the Career Cruising page on the BPL website and put in your library card number and your PIN.

The first time you use Career Cruising you’ll need to create a “My Plan” account. To do this, click on “Assessments”, then “Register”. Once you’ve created your account, click on “Matchmaker” to begin the survey. 

There are 39 questions, each describing a skill, activity, type of work, working condition, etc. and you choose from five responses ranging from “dislike very much” to “like very much”. At the end you’ll get your career suggestions ranked based on your responses, and you can explore any or all of the suggested professions. After getting your first set of career results, you can then answer two more sets of 39 questions if you wish.

If you’d like to learn more about various professions, you are welcome to visit the B&CC at the Central Library to browse our shelves and/or get assistance from a librarian in conducting your research.

Good luck!

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The B&CC currently offers Resume & Career Help via email and Zoom - for more information please visit our Career Help page. Note: we do not write or re-write documents, or fill out online applications for patrons; this is an advising service. We look forward to resuming face-to-face career services at some point in the future!