I like the graph that shows salary progression at every age. Often career advice just gives you the average entry figure and the average and peak senior figures, which kinda seems predicated upon the ‘Career for life’ mentality which locks people into professions they dislike. Suggestions, to do or not do with as you see fit, no reply necessary:
Ability to compare multiple jobs simultaneously.
Make a note saying the graph will appear once you pick a job, or have it pop up by default on a default job.
Center the numerical figures in their cells.
Make the list of jobs and/or the list of categories searchable and associate search keywords to jobs. For example, if I want to find ‘Professor’, it seems to come under postsecondary teachers, which wouldn’t have been something I would have thought of without trawling the list of educators, but I would have found it if I could search by ‘Professor’ and get the result returned.
‘Actuaries’, ‘Statisticians’, ‘Mathematicians’ seem to have a duplicate entries. Check database for other duplicates by querying for where job names coincide.
Have the graph update to say which job you’re currently looking at, so the user can be sure it’s updated.
When hovering on the graph, have the box say e.g. ‘Age 40’ rather than just ’40′ to make it obvious what ‘40’ refers to.
When hovering on the graph, have the order of the figures in the box correspond to the order on the graph, i.e. give the upper, then median, then bottom figures rather than opposite as it currently is.
Track down the figures where you don’t have data, or establish that there is not enough data, and let the user know which is the case so they know the provenance of researched or omitted figures.
In general, I think a lot of the time the user will want to come in from an angle of having relatively specific jobs in mind and going from there, rather than working from broad categories to increasingly specific jobs. I’m not immediately sure if or how this should cash out into specific suggestions, though. But maybe something to bear in mind while you’re developing the product. Perhaps you could have a mode like the current one and a ‘wandering’ mode where you start with a specific job then have it compared and linked to related or similar jobs (where the relational and similarity data would have to be put into the database somehow). Maybe a graph interface with nodes?
Ability to compare multiple jobs simultaneously. Make a note saying the graph will appear once you pick a job, or have it pop up by default on a default job. Center the numerical figures in their cells.
One thing I was thinking about on this note was, comparing the “true cost of post-graduate education”, in other words, you choose a job that will require X years of post-grad, and then you choose a job that doesn’t. And it will compare lifetime earnings.
Make the list of jobs and/or the list of categories searchable and associate search keywords to jobs. For example, if I want to find ‘Professor’, it seems to come under postsecondary teachers, which wouldn’t have been something I would have thought of without trawling the list of educators, but I would have found it if I could search by ‘Professor’ and get the result returned.
Good idea.
‘Actuaries’, ‘Statisticians’, ‘Mathematicians’ seem to have a duplicate entries. Check database for other duplicates by querying for where job names coincide.
Good catch. From looking it seems like the BLS statistics (which is what this polls from) has duplicate entries that have the same info but separate ID codes. Government efficiency right there. I’ll rewrite the script to scrub these out.
Track down the figures where you don’t have data, or establish that there is not enough data, and let the user know which is the case so they know the provenance of researched or omitted figures.
What specifically did you mean here?
t. Perhaps you could have a mode like the current one and a ‘wandering’ mode where you start with a specific job then have it compared and linked to related or similar jobs
I think the big problem with trying to determine “related jobs” is that, more often than not, in the actual job market, the relationship between similar jobs is in name only. If I’m trying to hire someone for sales, someone who has a lot of marketing experience probably isn’t going to be a great candidate, even though “sales” and “marketing” seem to go hand-in-hand.
What I mean is if you have the resources (time, energy, etc.) to do so, consider trying to get the data where the script returned ‘0’ values because the source you used didn’t have that bit of data. But make it clear that you’ve done independent research where you find the figures yourself, so that the user realises it’s not from the same dataset. And failing that, e.g. if there just isn’t enough info out there to put a figure, state that you looked into it but there isn’t enough data. (This lets the user distinguish between ‘maybe the data just wasn’t in the dataset’ versus ’this info doesn’t even exist so I shouldn’t bother looking for it.)
I think the big problem with trying to determine “related jobs” is that, more often than not, in the actual job market, the relationship between similar jobs is in name only.
Sure it would again be more resource-intensive, but I was thinking you could figure out yourself which careers are actually related, or ask people in those fields what they actually think are the core parts of their job and which others jobs they’d relate it to.
I like the graph that shows salary progression at every age. Often career advice just gives you the average entry figure and the average and peak senior figures, which kinda seems predicated upon the ‘Career for life’ mentality which locks people into professions they dislike. Suggestions, to do or not do with as you see fit, no reply necessary:
Ability to compare multiple jobs simultaneously. Make a note saying the graph will appear once you pick a job, or have it pop up by default on a default job. Center the numerical figures in their cells.
Make the list of jobs and/or the list of categories searchable and associate search keywords to jobs. For example, if I want to find ‘Professor’, it seems to come under postsecondary teachers, which wouldn’t have been something I would have thought of without trawling the list of educators, but I would have found it if I could search by ‘Professor’ and get the result returned.
‘Actuaries’, ‘Statisticians’, ‘Mathematicians’ seem to have a duplicate entries. Check database for other duplicates by querying for where job names coincide. Have the graph update to say which job you’re currently looking at, so the user can be sure it’s updated. When hovering on the graph, have the box say e.g. ‘Age 40’ rather than just ’40′ to make it obvious what ‘40’ refers to. When hovering on the graph, have the order of the figures in the box correspond to the order on the graph, i.e. give the upper, then median, then bottom figures rather than opposite as it currently is. Track down the figures where you don’t have data, or establish that there is not enough data, and let the user know which is the case so they know the provenance of researched or omitted figures.
In general, I think a lot of the time the user will want to come in from an angle of having relatively specific jobs in mind and going from there, rather than working from broad categories to increasingly specific jobs. I’m not immediately sure if or how this should cash out into specific suggestions, though. But maybe something to bear in mind while you’re developing the product. Perhaps you could have a mode like the current one and a ‘wandering’ mode where you start with a specific job then have it compared and linked to related or similar jobs (where the relational and similarity data would have to be put into the database somehow). Maybe a graph interface with nodes?
One thing I was thinking about on this note was, comparing the “true cost of post-graduate education”, in other words, you choose a job that will require X years of post-grad, and then you choose a job that doesn’t. And it will compare lifetime earnings.
Good idea.
Good catch. From looking it seems like the BLS statistics (which is what this polls from) has duplicate entries that have the same info but separate ID codes. Government efficiency right there. I’ll rewrite the script to scrub these out.
What specifically did you mean here?
I think the big problem with trying to determine “related jobs” is that, more often than not, in the actual job market, the relationship between similar jobs is in name only. If I’m trying to hire someone for sales, someone who has a lot of marketing experience probably isn’t going to be a great candidate, even though “sales” and “marketing” seem to go hand-in-hand.
What I mean is if you have the resources (time, energy, etc.) to do so, consider trying to get the data where the script returned ‘0’ values because the source you used didn’t have that bit of data. But make it clear that you’ve done independent research where you find the figures yourself, so that the user realises it’s not from the same dataset. And failing that, e.g. if there just isn’t enough info out there to put a figure, state that you looked into it but there isn’t enough data. (This lets the user distinguish between ‘maybe the data just wasn’t in the dataset’ versus ’this info doesn’t even exist so I shouldn’t bother looking for it.)
Sure it would again be more resource-intensive, but I was thinking you could figure out yourself which careers are actually related, or ask people in those fields what they actually think are the core parts of their job and which others jobs they’d relate it to.