Megan Riksen:

Hello and welcome to the Work Like a Laker podcast. I'm Megan Riksen. Today my co-host is Grace Joaquin.

Grace Joaquin:

Hello.

Megan Riksen:

And we are back for season eight Woo. Of the podcast. We have a really amazing season planned that is going to include our 100th episode of this podcast.

Grace Joaquin:

Oh my goodness.

Megan Riksen:

Isn't that insane?

Grace Joaquin:

Yeah. And I want us to shout out Carlos Martinez.

Megan Riksen:

Yes.

Grace Joaquin:

Who started this, I wanna say like eight years ago?

Megan Riksen:

Yeah. because we're in season eight and we do one season of academic year.

Grace Joaquin:

So yeah.

Grace Joaquin:

So shout out to him. And if you go back to some of our earlier episodes, you'll hear him, you will hear Carlos.

Megan Riksen:

Yeah.

Grace Joaquin:

In season one and two. I believe.

Grace Joaquin:

And then season three

Megan Riksen:

Is popped in

Grace Joaquin:

Remote because

Megan Riksen:

Oh yeah. Then we were COVID. Oh my gosh. Those were tougher times.

Megan Riksen:

But we very happy to be back in person with you a hundred percent.

Grace Joaquin:

We made it through though. And we're so excited for this season.

Megan Riksen:

I know we've got a ton of great content and we thought a great episode to kick off this season would be to discuss some of the best tools for exploring careers. These tools come in handy for students who have no clue what they want to do, but they're also tools that provide really high quality information to students who might be digging deeper into their career of choice. And you also will get to hear later, we have a great interview with Lori Evans from Health West to give us kind of that employer perspective on these tools.

Grace Joaquin:

Yeah. And, and the two we are highlighting today are going to be (ONET) Online and Career One Stop. These are comprehensive free tools sponsored by the US Department of Labor that assist with career exploration, job analysis, and planning. And I do think ONET actually was created by a group of occupatiONETl psychologists.

Megan Riksen:

Really?

Grace Joaquin:

So that's kind of cool. Yeah's what I heard. So you know, people who are really interested in labor and data. A lot of fun things. I, there maybe like yourself, would you say?

Grace Joaquin:

Yes.

Grace Joaquin:

I, I, I will get into that a bit, but I, I was huge into these websites, especially when I was an undergrad because I just found it so fascinating to learn about the data behind different careers. And so, we'll, we'll talk more about that. But basically these tools are super helpful for students in any stage of the game if you're exploring like I was, so, like again, I changed my major about six times and so this was very helpful to kind of figure out some of the skills needed for different fields. Yeah. Some of like, you know, salary you might be interested in. When you're looking at different job fields. But also it's really helpful for students who are graduating because you can, you know, if you're like with a salary piece, if you're going into a job offer, knowing what is sort of the standard salary to expect. Also just kind of looking at skills that are important that you might wanna put on your resume and, and, and everything. So it really, it's for any, there's no wealth of Information.

Megan Riksen:

Yes.

Grace Joaquin:

For anyone at any point in their job search. Career journey. So first we're gonna talk about some features that we want to highlight in these websites. The first one is going to be from ONET. And this is an interest profiler. If you go to ONET and you go on their homepage, you'll be able to see a resource center on the right hand side. And this is where you'll find the interest profiler. It will link you to a website called mynextmove.org. And essentially this is an assessment tool. If you've taken Pathway U, it's similar to that, but basically it'll ask you a bunch of questions about yourself and then it will give you some ideas for Career Pathways that would be a good fit for you

Megan Riksen:

With lots of links to the content that you're gonna find on ONET.

Grace Joaquin:

Exactly.

Megan Riksen:

So it's gonna kind of do some of the work for you.

Grace Joaquin:

Yes. A little bit. Yeah. So super helpful. For especially I think people exploring explore careers.

Megan Riksen:

Absolutely.

Grace Joaquin:

Okay, so a few notes on how to actually use this tool and how to search. There is a search bar, so you can do a simple keyword search that works great if you know a specific job title. So if you maybe did that interest profile or they popped out some job potential job titles that might be a good fit for your interests and values you could kind of start there with the keyword search. There also is a way to search by industry, which you'll see under find occupations on the site. And there's a list of about 20 or so industries there. And they are a huge range. You know, it goes from arts and entertainment to government, to transportation. Pretty much runs the gamut of what you can find. And again, this is from the Department of Labor. So that's how they organize this information, which is kind of good to note because it's not gonna necessarily be the same as like our career communities or Grand Valley majors. So it's gonna feel a little bit different, but I think you can still kind of find the one or two maybe industries that interest you the most.

Grace Joaquin:

Totally.

Megan Riksen:

You can also find related occupations. So once you kind of go into one of the occupations into one of these job profiles at the bottom, when you scroll down, you see all the occupations that are related, which I think is super helpful.

Grace Joaquin:

Yes.

Megan Riksen:

In any, at any stage because when you're exploring Cool, you have more information, more things to dig into. If you're actively job searching, oh great. I have some more keywords I can use to pop in handshake, things like that.

Grace Joaquin:

Exactly.

Megan Riksen:

And then it, these profiles will also give tasks, work activities, the knowledge that is needed. So kind of the basics of what you would actually be doing in this job. So, you know, there's so many careers out there that you might have like very surface level knowledge of what that is. But you might be able to dig a little deeper and be like, oh, this really is pretty data heavy. Yeah, I like that. Or I hate that. So you can get a better sense of the position

Grace Joaquin:

And you know, I think always like the best way to try out a job is obviously to have like an internship or something. And then the next step would be like a job shadow. But if you can't do either of those things honestly, this is sort of that piece where you can still see kind of what a day-to-day might look like. Just from reading through some of the topics of what you would be doing in any given day. So super helpful. And then another piece that I also find just very practical and helpful to have is that salary information I had talked about before as well as education level. So I know sometimes we'll have students ask us, do I need a master's degree? I know this job, some people have a master's, some people have a bachelor's. What is needed? And this will give you the data of what percentage of people in this field have one or the other. So you might be thinking, oh shoot, maybe I need to go right into my master's degree after I graduate.

Megan Riksen:

If it says only 10% have a bachelor's degree. You know that you're getting an advanced degree. But if it's 50 50, then you can probably go right into the workforce and work and then decide if you wanna get your master's degree.

Grace Joaquin:

Yeah.

Megan Riksen:

So that can be super, super helpful. And then the salary data, you know, first of all, I think it's just people wanna know what to expect.

Grace Joaquin:

Yes.

Megan Riksen:

And if you're exploring careers, of course we know that factors into what you're going to end up deciding. It's usually not the only thing or even the most important thing usually. But it does factor in and so that can be helpful. But also, like we, I talked about earlier with the negotiation piece. If you're getting a job offer and you're looking at this information and you're saying, okay, this is, does it say the median or the average salary? Do you remember? Mm.

Grace Joaquin:

Mm I don't.

Grace Joaquin:

Okay. So we just checked and it does show the median wages, but it will also give you a curve. I like to point that out because if you're just looking straight at the median wage, that's probably not gonna be an initial offer number because that's point, yeah. It's looking at people who have been in the field for a lot longer, not just entry level. So, but it's nice because you can click into it and look at that curve to see the lower end and the higher end and give you more of an idea of what to expect just starting out in a field.

Megan Riksen:

Yeah. I think that curve is really helpful. It's like the top 10% make this, the bottom 10% make this. So you probably know you're gonna be a little closer to the bottom in an entry level rule.

Grace Joaquin:

Yes.

Megan Riksen:

Not the bottom bottom, but Yes.

Grace Joaquin:

Yeah. And if you're getting an offer that's at the very bottom, then you know, that's probably not a great offer.

Megan Riksen:

Exactly. Good deal. Yeah. So then there also is job outlook data. So this is wages and employment trends. So it'll show you how many people are currently in the workforce in that particular type of role. And you can break that down by state. So I find that's really helpful. So if you're job searching in Michigan, you can absolutely see like, is this a growing workforce? Is it declining? It will give you a percentage on that. And it also will show you projected job openings. Which is another great indicator of if this is gonna be something, you know, and you can kind of think like probably if it's something related to AI, it's probably gonna be growing. Yes. Right. But you might not know for a lot of these, if it is, and especially if you're like moving upstate or something super valuable to like look up the state that you're moving to. And then it does have a feature right on the homepage as well that you can find just the bright Outlook occupations. And you can search by like which ones have the most job openings, which roles have the most rapid growth. So that's another way, if you are just kind of curious about like what is hot right now, what like, I don't know what I wanna do, what are, what are some things that have the brightest outlook? Good place to start.

Grace Joaquin:

Yeah. And I think that, again, the thing that gets a lot of the buzz and what's in people's brains are the salary questions. But really what's just as important, if not more, is this piece of like, is there a bright outlook? Because you don't wanna go into a field that is dwindling and you are not gonna be able to either find a job or keep a job in that field. So super important. And then finally, we just wanted to talk about how you might use this with additiONETl tools because this is really a great place often to start your career exploration and then you're gonna wanna take it steps further after that. And so let's say you find a few jobs, few career, career paths that you're interested in. Next steps might be to then, okay, let's go on LinkedIn and let's see if there's any alumni from Grand Valley who do this work.

Grace Joaquin:

I can see where they're working, maybe I'll reach out to them. Maybe I'll just kind of look and see, did they have an internship while they were at Grand Valley? Where was it? This is going to give you some ideas of employers that you might explore yourself to see is this the place I would wanna work at? You know, so there's a lot of ways that you can take that. Same thing with Handshake. You can take these career paths in and like Megan said earlier, you're gonna have more language around what job titles you might be searching for. If you're looking for job posts on Handshake, even if you're a freshman or sophomore, it doesn't hurt to look to see what is out there for when I'm ready to start getting a job or an internship. That might help you figure out, is this a good path?

Grace Joaquin:

Are there jobs in my area? So you can use those tools as well in conjunction with ONET or Career One Stop. And then finally, Megan had also talked about that it will give you some skills that you might need in some of these roles. And so you can look at those and say, okay, maybe you have a few of them. Maybe there's some that you don't, maybe it's some hard skills, technical skills.

Megan Riksen:

What are those gaps?

Grace Joaquin:

Yeah. Can you maybe take a class that will help fill those gaps and be able to build your resume so that by the time you graduate, you're going to have a competitive resume that has the skills you need for that field.

Megan Riksen:

Yes. Absolutely.

Grace Joaquin:

All right. So now it is my pleasure to bring in Lori Evans, who is the Talent Acquisition and Onboarding coordinator at Health West. Hi Lori.

Lori Evans:

Hello Megan.

Megan Riksen:

Thank you so much for being here today.

Lori Evans:

It's a joy to be here. Thank you.

Megan Riksen:

Can you just give us a little bit of your background, introduce yourself a little bit before we jump in?

Lori Evans:

Absolutely. So I have about 16 years of HR in my background. Mostly in talent acquisition, but I also have worked in social work. So I have this very unique perspective and viewpoint when I am recruiting students because I was one at one time as well. And actually did the work. So it's really helpful when I speak with students. And I have about 12 years of experience in social work.

Megan Riksen:

Nice. So yeah, kind of an even distribution there.

Lori Evans:

Yeah. A little bit. It really is.

Megan Riksen:

Yeah. That's amazing. Okay. So tell us about Health West. And you can kind of get into maybe the types of roles you typically hire for, especially those that might be most interesting to our current students in recent grads.

Lori Evans:

I would love to speak about that.

Megan Riksen:

Awesome.

Lori Evans:

So Health West is the Muskegon County's community mental health. And we have approximately 500 staff right now. That fluctuates of course. Month by month. We have 10 buildings in Muskegon County.

Megan Riksen:

Oh my gosh.

Lori Evans:

I know it. We are everywhere. Including the schools. We are also in five school districts. We're in three law enforcement agencies assisting them with de-escalation for all calls. So they do.

Megan Riksen:

And you're embedded there?

Lori Evans:

We are embedded. We have tried to infiltrate every aspect of mental health to better help our community. But within those 10 buildings we have 60 programs and we serve everyone. We serve everyone with insurance, without insurance, Medicaid, private insurance, Medicare it doesn't matter to us. If someone needs help, we will serve them. We have a mobile crisis team. So, in 2018 we became a certified community behavioral health center with the state of Michigan. One of the first three in the state. We're very proud of that. Also in 2018, we became the first community mental health in the nation to put a dental clinic on site. So we have an integrated health clinic as well. We have a Trinity Health Pharmacy on site, and we are a one stop for mental health, physical health, dental health. And we know that those that we serve often don't have the transportation to be able to get to all of these different places for their other health so we've created it under one roof for them.

Megan Riksen:

That's so cool.

Lori Evans:

It is really cool. We served over 8,000 people last year.

Megan Riksen:

Oh my gosh.

Lori Evans:

And that was, yeah. In various capacities. So those 8,000 likely had services in some of those different programs that I've already mentioned. So yeah. I could be here all day just telling you about us. I'm really proud of wonderful work that we do.

Megan Riksen:

So yeah, tell us about some of those roles that you might be hiring for.

Lori Evans:

Yes. so we are always hiring for master level clinicians and that means students would have a graduate degree in social work or counseling. Also marriage and family therapy. Those are the roles that we hire for most often. And we are, we also offer internships, internship placements, for students as well as our staff. And so we kind of grow our own, I like to say, because we have some undergrads that are working as case managers, which is another role that we often hire for. And that can be an undergrad in psychology, social work.

Megan Riksen:

Oh my goodness.

Lori Evans:

There's a really long list. I mean, it includes sociology some education. Undergrads. So it's best if anyone has questions about anyone that we're hiring for, you can reach out to me directly. I'm hoping we can offer my information.

Megan Riksen:

Great. Of course. Yes. We'll put that in the show notes. Absolutely.

Lori Evans:

Great. Terrific. and so you can check our website which is healthwest.net/careers. And that's going to take you to our hiring site and we update our hiring site constantly. So there is an option for students to sign up for what we call a job interest card. And that allows you to indicate jobs of interest and we will email you when we post them. Otherwise you have to watch for it every two weeks,

Megan Riksen:

That kind of, that passive. Things coming into the inbox. That can be really helpful and a busy schedule.

Lori Evans:

It sure can. And I know students are really busy Of course. And oftentimes they're working and going to school. We understand that. So hopefully that helps some of the students out there.

Megan Riksen:

Perfect. Okay. So we're here today. because I actually, we heard you on a panel talking about ONET, and we thought, Ooh, this would be perfect for our ONET Career Exploration Tools episodes. So let's jump into some of that. How do you use tools like ONET, in your work at Health West?

Lori Evans:

Well, ONET is, it is a plethora of information. Whether you're an employer or you're a student, any job seeker can use ONET. It is one of the largest resources in this nation to find careers. In fact, I like to think of it as a GPS for careers.

Megan Riksen:

Ooh, I like that.

Lori Evans:

Yeah. It's easy to remember, right? And the best part is it's all free.

Megan Riksen:

Amazing.

Lori Evans:

It's free for HR, it's free for any employer, it's free for students to use any job seeker OccupatiONETl Information work is what ONET stands for.

Megan Riksen:

So I don't think I even knew that, so thank you.

Lori Evans:

You're welcome. There are over 900 dedicated job descriptions on ONET. And it is, it is just so handy for HR because we can use it for competencies, which are really the building blocks of any role, right? So having competencies in certain areas is so important. And the more that you have just like a building block, the higher you can go in that role. So we use them for job descriptions. We use, oh, not to look at up and coming growth opportunities in industry, which is also available. We use it to compare wages because it's so handy. There is a local and a natiONETl and a state wage that you can check for every single role. We use it for training programs for certifications. It's all there, like I said, plethora.

Megan Riksen:

Amazing. Yes. Okay. So for students listening who are using ONET maybe to explore careers or, you know, gain information about what they might wanna do, what advice would you give them on how best to leverage the tool to make themselves maybe a more attractive candidate to an organization like yours? Like Health West? Yeah.

Lori Evans:

There are so many great ways that they could do that. The first is that you use a search tool. And I know that you're going to go over some of those details on how to access ONET and how to use it, which is great. But they can use the search tool and once you search for a role, it's going to show you corresponding roles. So let's say that you thought this was your perfect job, but now you go to ONET and you see all of these other titles and all of these other competencies and tasks and things that really maybe more effectively align with who you are and what you want to do. So first of all, you can use it to research. Secondly, you can also take a look at it for certifications within that role. So again, remember those building blocks?

Lori Evans:

We talked about if that particular role has a competency or a certification that you don't have yet, it's going to also allow you to click right through and see which educatiONETl opportunities locally you can receive that certification. So I would also say that a really great way to create a cover letter and a resume. And get ready for an interview is to read through that and use the same verbiage. Yeah. Use the verbiage that's listed and also do that with a job description. But ONET, like I said, we use for job description.

Megan Riksen:

So, and that's kind of nice because Yes, of course the job description is right there, but everybody has that. And not everybody is probably using this secondary tool of ONET. So you can really grab some great language from there.

Lori Evans:

You can, yeah. You can also see if there's, if it's a high growth opportunity . So you know, if it's a really, you know, hot job that you know employers are looking for. And then coinciding, if you want to look at the wage section you will see exactly how much you can put in a zip code. You can narrow it right down to a zip code to see what the lower end, the median, and the high end of that wage scale is going to be. And that helps you negotiate salary and that helps you to see us. If the employer that's posted the role is paying, you know, the fair amount.

Megan Riksen:

I, that's a question we get so often from students, like, how much should I expect to be making? How much can I ask for? And to know that you have real data digging down, especially if you're looking to maybe move outside of where you grew up or something where you might have some more of an idea to be able to put in that really specific zip code is so, yeah, it's super helpful.

Lori Evans:

It's super helpful. And negotiating salary is another topic, but I would love to talk another time about that because I, I really think it's important that students know their worth. And it is okay. It is okay to ask I mean, maybe not the first interview, but when we get through that second interview and they're, you know, telling you that they're moving forward if they're checking references and things it's a good time to just say, is there room for a negotiation on this salary? And HR is always open and honest about that.

Megan Riksen:

So. Yeah. As long as the candidate is open and honest and not saying, here's what I have to have, you know. Not coming in with demands, but coming in with information.

Lori Evans:

Exactly.

Megan Riksen:

Of what they think they deserve.

Lori Evans:

That ONET is just a great resource to know and to be strong in that amount that you're going to ask for because you see that that's the medium pay, you can even utilize that with an HR team.

Megan Riksen:

Yeah. Absolutely. Awesome. So yeah, we, we touched on this a little bit, but beyond like identifying those occupations and looking at those related occupations and maybe some higher growth areas, how can students use kind of that detailed information within ONET to prepare for their interview or any more advice on tailoring their resume, things like that to specific roles?

Lori Evans:

There are also is an ability in ONET to be able to look at affiliations and organizations that would help you and again, you can join them right through ONET, you can click right through and check them out. So in addition to all the previous information that I suggested, you know, checking for those affiliations is also a great way you know, to let people know, for instance, HR, the SHM, you know, having a SHRM certification is huge to HR. So check those out for each one of the roles. I think you'll be surprised at some of them that you can find that maybe you already belong to. One of the other ways that I would suggest is, one of the examples I give is if someone's working in retail right now they're obviously customer service is huge, communication is huge, huge. All of these skills that we talk about and competencies. So if you already have those skills and you're looking to work in communications as a role, all of a sudden you're translating over that communication piece that you have in retail and that customer service to the role that you want. And it's really helpful to take a look at what you already have obtained and utilize that in that role. So in that future role.

Megan Riksen:

Yeah. I think that's huge. And I think often students don't give themselves enough credit. Like you think about a retail role and you're like I just worked at whatever store and I didn't really learn anything. Yeah. But when you really reflect on it, yeah, you did. And you were learning a lot of skills and really putting them to use. So how are we gonna now talk about it? And yeah, I think you're spot on that looking and seeing how those things are written out within an ONET profile can really give you that language to help you share.

Lori Evans:

I completely agree. As someone who worked in retail I understand you are deescalating every day.

Megan Riksen:

Oh my gosh. Seriously, almost every interaction.

Lori Evans:

Yes.

Megan Riksen:

Right.

Lori Evans:

And you are, and it's such a fast pace. So, you know, working in crisis, there are correlations with being able to deescalate and being able to stay on your feet and, you know, do the next, make the next effort and help the next person. Whether that's in mental health, and of course there's a lot more to understanding mental health, but if that is something that drives you then maybe you should take a look at the ONET and see, put in social worker and see exactly those competencies and see how they align with retail.

Megan Riksen:

Yeah, absolutely. Awesome. Well, this has been really helpful. What have we missed? Anything else that you were hoping to share today about this fabulous tool?

Lori Evans:

Well, I, you know, I think we've covered everything in a short amount of time.

Megan Riksen:

I know! We've really just hit that we did great!

Lori Evans:

Well, and I think ONET is set up that way as well. It's all right there on one page in front of you and it's, it's super user friendly very informative, like I said, and to know that HR utilizes it I hope that the students will feel secure in using it for themselves as that is very helpful as a means to obtain a job. That you can use it on both sides.

Megan Riksen:

Exactly. And that it's Yeah. Truly a, a valued tool for everyone. Exactly. So, great. Well thank you so much for giving us your time today, Lori.

Lori Evans:

My pleasure. Megan, thanks for asking me. It's always, I'm always happy to be here at

Megan Riksen:

GV too. We know, we know you're around GV a lot and we always appreciate that. Thank you so much. So thank you and thank you so much to everyone for listening, and we hope you tune into a future episode soon.