Milestone

Thirty Years of Career Information

March 1, 2009, marks a major anniversary for me. Exactly 30 years ago on this day, I first started working in the career information industry. I want to use this occasion not to recapitulate my own career, but rather to look back on how the industry has changed over these three decades.

In the late 1970s, the major sources of career information were the Occupational Outlook Handbook and the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. The OOH came out every two years, as it does now, but because it was available only in print, it came out well into the calendar year (perhaps March or April) of its publication date, whereas its current editions now appear on the Web during the previous December. More significant, it was almost the only available government-based publication with salary figures for a full range of occupations and, because it came out biennially with figures that were already about two years old, the salary figures would be almost four years old before a new edition would appear.

If you've never had to use the DOT, consider yourself lucky. Although it was packed with information and penetrated to a level of detail that has never been surpassed (e.g., it covered 14 different kinds of welders), it was not at all friendly to browsing. In fact, its wealth of detail actually interfered with browsing. Perhaps its biggest limitation was that its occupational classification scheme had been developed during the Depression. By the 1970s this structure was badly out of date. I used to enjoy trying to find obscure occupational titles with intriguing names; my favorite was Chick Sexer.

I was hired to work in the most interesting medium for career information at that time, computer-based delivery systems. At first, I actually had almost no contact with the computer. I did all my research using hard-copy sources and by telephone. I wrote up my results on the typewriter. (The word processor for inputting the information could display and process only one line at a time, and it had an invisible cursor, so only trained workers could operate it.) Understand that in those days the computers were mainframes or minicomputers. The amount of information that could be stored was highly limited, and the speed at which it could be delivered was laughably slow compared to current standards. Reliability of connections was erratic. End users received the information on either a teletypewriter or a monochrome monitor. The few graphics that existed consisted of bar charts composed of asterisks or other standard characters.

The informational content of those computer-delivered systems was mostly derived from a tape of occupational characteristics developed in conjunction with the DOT. It rated occupations on several skills and physical demands, plus (if memory serves) indoor/outdoor environment. I was dubious of some of the ratings. One that sticks in my memory is the "good vision" requirement for computer programmers--an occupation that was actually one of the most promising for blind people.

One of the achievements of the pioneers of computer-based delivery is that they recognized that the ultra-fine-grained detail of the DOT would not be helpful for their clients, nor was the occasional tendency of the OOH to err in the opposite direction (e.g., one article about all designers). They hit on a level of occupational specificity that was just right for beginning career explorers in high school or older. They also were able, in many cases, to provide more timely economic information than did the hard-copy OOH.

In those days, one of the great impediments to developing career information was the lack of a standard classification of occupations by the various federal and state agencies that made the information available. The Census Bureau used one scheme for its demographic data; the Occupation Employment Survey used another scheme for its salary information; DOT used yet another scheme. The publishers of assessments added to the difficulty by using their own idiosyncratic ways of classifying suitable occupations.

These taxonomic problems were slowly resolved. The Standard Occupational Classification, which employed a useful level of detail, had already been released in 1977, but it was recognized as flawed and was rereleased with revisions in 1980 and again in 2000. It took until around 1999 for all agencies of the government to be required to follow SOC. For college majors, the Classification of Instructional Programs emerged in 1980.

A major watershed in the career information industry was the release of O*NET, which was prototyped in 1995. Its medium--a database rather than a book--was very forward-looking, and if it used yet another idiosyncratic occupational taxonomy, at least it struck the right balance of detail. (A few years later it shifted to a variant of SOC.) Its content model offered a more thorough set of skills, knowledges, and abilities than did DOT, plus detailed task statements. Occupations also were rated on the popular Holland personality types and on several work-related values, so the jobs could readily be linked to assessments.

The only jarring note was the near-Soviet level of secrecy that surrounded O*NET's development. At industry meetings, the developers who presented the plans for O*NET would offer no detailed handouts and would not even allow overheads to be visible long enough to permit full reading or note-taking. The impression we career information users got was that the developers wanted to implement their plans without any second-guessing on our part. I'm happy to say that the current O*NET development team is quite open to suggestions from all stakeholders.

More important, the information in the O*NET database has gradually shifted from warmed-over DOT ratings to ratings derived from job incumbents.

Taxonomy will always be a problem for career information; it always lags behind the restructuring of the economy. The developers at the Department of Labor are trying hard to catch up. There is already talk about revision of the 2000 SOC taxonomy, and the O*NET developers have already announced plans for an infusion of 102 emerging occupations, such as Photonics Engineers, Cytotechnologists, and Online Merchants.

In closing, I need to add that I have surveyed career information resources that are available in other countries, and I am proud to say that what we have here is second to none. If anyone reading this tends to be skeptical about what government can accomplish, I invite you to contemplate the career information available from the Department of Labor. Labor's Web site might well display a banner that reads, like the sign you sometimes see at road-repair sites, "Your Tax Dollars At Work." We all benefit from this work.