Career Cruising is the latest entry in vocational guidance software. There are many such services available, but I found Career Cruising to be a wonderful experience. Career Cruising’s organization is intuitively designed and very user‐friendly. Easily identified tabs and buttons facilitate navigation, which allows users to concentrate on using the database. It is available both via the Web and via networked CD‐ROM (subscribers will receive the CD‐ROM in either case).
The main page starts with four main options. Career Matchmaker is a quiz of about three dozen questions, using a standard five‐point Likert scale, which narrows down possible career options. By answering an additional 50 or so more specific questions, these results can be further refined. This all takes a few minutes, and by the end, users will have a good list of possible vocations. They can also limit those results by using other variables such as educational level, tasks, etc.
Other available options include exploring individual careers or disciplines by school. Again, using these options is intuitive and easily accomplished. Users can explore individual careers by searching the index or by exploring whole clusters of related fields. Each vocation has a detailed description covering information about job description, salary, working conditions, education and related jobs. This gives searchers a comprehensive idea of what to expect from each choice. The vocational descriptions and the school database are linked, allowing for easy access to possible programmes that would fulfill the educational requirements for each job.
If the primary focus of the search is colleges and universities, searching can be by name, geographic area, majors, or other variables. Some of the links to the schools need updating, but this small problem can be overcome with little effort. To provide an even better understanding of each career, there are interviews with actual practitioners available in either text or multimedia formats.
When factoring in the ease of use, scope and volume of content, and price Career Cruising is a very attractive package. Not only is it a vocational research tool, but it can also be very useful as a college research tool. The site description states that this service is used at many educational levels and by those currently employed who are exploring other careers. I cannot verify the statement, but it is not hard to believe. I readily recommend this service to any institution that has a constituency that is looking for a one‐stop career or education research tool.
