'Job fair at Whole Foods Market Oakland' photo (c) 2011, George Kelly - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0/

It’s time for another one of my “The Best….” lists.

I think the best way for people to learn English is to find a topic that they are interested in learning about, and then create a situation where they need to use English to learn it. And certainly figuring out a future career is a pretty darn high-interest subject for most students.

You might also want to explore The Best Places For Students To Write Their Resumes.

Here are my choices for “The Best Websites For Students Exploring Jobs and Careers”:

First, check out “Ideas for E.L.L.s | Teaching and Learning About Work and Careers” Is My Latest NY Times Post – Here Are Extra Resources!

Here are the top seven:

Career One Stop. The primary reason I’m rating this site so high is because of its numerous closed-captioned videos about every occupation imaginable.

GCF Learn Free has a number of work-related interactives.

iSeek Career Videos

My favorite tool for resumes is Read Write Think’s Resume Generator

California Career Zone (which, despite its name, is useful for students everywhere) has three separate sections — Assess Yourself, Explore Industry Sectors, and Reality Check. They are all well-designed and accessible.

I’m adding How To Write A Resume to this list. It lets students create their resumes.  It’s free, very “scaffolded,” and provides multiple ways to download and print a hard copy.

I’m adding Salary Zone to this list.  By using its “Salary Wizard,” you can find the salaries for many different occupations in different regions of the country. It’s an excellent way for students to research the pay for various jobs.  It’s pretty accessible, though it might take a minute or two of teacher explanation to Intermediate English Language Learners.

The New York Times has a feature called Salary that lets you pretty much identify any job you want — in any location (in the United States) you want — and tells you the base pay for that occupation.  The application is very accessible to English Language Learners.

My Next Move is an interactive from the U.S. Department of Labor that’s designed to help users identify potential careers.

Storytelling to help your career is a useful article from CNN that would require modification to be made accessible to ELL’s.

10 Things Job Applicants Should Know is from The New York Times.

GCFLearnFree.org is on a number of “The Best…” lists because of all its great sites and tools. I recently learned that they have recently updated their Career Exploration page with interactives and videos. It’s looks very good.

Here is a list of 25 tough interview questions from The Huffington Post.

The state of Michigan has a nice collection of closed-captioned videos talking about different health careers.

US Gov has career videos for kids.

 

Source: theundercoverrecruiter.comThis infographic doesn’t cite its sources, but it still seems to me to offer good advice:

 

Important Job Interview Advice For Our Students

O Net Online seems like a pretty good and detailed way for students to research careers.

Hire Stack has lists of interview questions for just about any job imaginable.

TIME for Kids has released a free new site (you don’t have so subscribe to TIME for Kids to use it) called Your Job.

A site called Money Prodigy has a great list of many other good sites headlined 14 Career Sites for High School Students (All Free).

Infographic: What Do You Want to be When You Grow Up? | Statista You will find more infographics at Statista

Practice Interview lets you choose the job you want, and then uses an AI-generated chatbot to ask you interview questions that you can answer.

Your personal job interview coach is what it says it is.

Here’s a useful slideshow to use with ELL students about career exploration. It was created by Betsy Markman. 

“Yoodli” Is A Free AI Site That Gives Feedback On Your Speaking

Cover Letter Assistant will use AI to write…cover letters.

Interviewsby.ai is yet another interview simulation tool.

SwiftCover | AI-Powered Cover Letter Generator

Three resources from the Harvard Business Review:

10 Common Job Interview Questions and How to Answer Them

How to Evaluate a Job Candidate’s Critical Thinking Skills in an Interview

How to Write a Thank You Email After an Interview

I like this Interview Preparation Tool.

PracticeInterview.AI is different from another tool with a very similar name, and it does the same thing.

Road Trip Nation is a free site that offers a lot of different resources. I liked their “Road Map” feature the most, which is an accessible tool students can use for career exploration.

Infographic: Wanted: The Most In-Demand Jobs of the Next Decade | Statista You will find more infographics at Statista

Unsure about a career? Try one, in a job simulation program is from The Hechinger Report, and talks about an interesting site called Forage. It seems to have potential, but the site itself is incredibly wonky and not yet ready for prime-time. If they ever get it working well, it could be useful to students.

“Interview Warm-Up” From Google MAY Help Students Prepare For Job…Interviews

Sassy is an AI career exploration tool for students.  It’s based in Oregon, but it seems to be useful and accessible to anyone.  You can read an article about it in Ed Week.

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