HCC’s Very Own Virtual Career Coach

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Published on November 29, 2016

Housatonic has always been about helping students, especially in regards to planning their futures, and this year HCC is providing its students with more help than ever. The school has purchased an online career coach that makes it truly easy to assess all aspects of the career a student might wish to pursue.

Career Coach, which can be accessed from https://housatonic.emsicareercoach.com, is designed to help you find a good career by providing the most current local data on wages, employment, job postings, and associated education and training. The website can tell you which jobs are growing in your area, what the wages are, and what sort of education you need to get your foot in the door. It supplies you with a ton of information including in-depth degree descriptions, personal career assessments, and a resume builder. A brief video tutorial is supplied at the top of the homepage. It expresses that it’s okay for students not to know all this information yet, and they can use the available data even if they’re not sure what career is right for them. Students can benefit from Career Coach whether they are freshmen surveying career options or seniors building a resume and everywhere in between.

The Career Coach homepage offers shortcuts, like the ones pictured above, bringing you the info you want fast and easy!

The Career Coach homepage offers shortcuts, like the ones pictured above, bringing you the info you want fast and easy!

The Career Coach website has a simple layout and is very easy to navigate. You can jump right into learning about a career/careers by using the search bar or take full advantage of the site by clicking the recommended start button. Creating a login and fully exploring all the options is highly encouraged.

Current student Andrew Melendez was pleased to be informed about the virtual career coach. He has been taking general courses for multiple semesters and has recently narrowed down his classes for a particular field. Melendez wants to be a radiologic technologist but while pursuing this path, he has been missing a lot of information. “I’ve had a lot of questions I just couldn’t find the answers to, or I found too many answers and I wasn’t sure which one to believe. This website supplied me with so much knowledge on a single page – so much more productive than Google,” he said. Andrew Melendez now knows that his desired field is projected to grow, that there are many local businesses providing jobs, and what he is most pleased about, is the average annual salary from start to experienced.

Virtual Career Coach has the ability to provide assistance to a countless number of students in a variety of ways. A new program at Housatonic, FORWARD, is another recommended source for student support services. The FORWARD program purchased Career Coach for the college. “Career Coach has been available to HCC students during the past school year, but many are unaware of it, so I would welcome the opportunity to promote it more fully to the HCC community,” said Philip Dante, Career Development Coordinator with the FORWARD program. For further knowledge and facilitation, please visit www.housatonic.edu/FORWARD.