1 Career alignment

An interest is something that a person enjoys doing, and an aptitude is something that a person is good at doing. While interests and aptitudes are usually correlated, they are not always the same. For example, a person may enjoy playing basketball for fun, but may not have the natural gifts to play it well enough to be a professional. Likewise, there are also cases where a person is naturally good at doing a particular kind of tasks, but do not enjoy doing so.

Each person has an individual combination of interests and aptitudes. These interests and aptitudes are variables that can determine the alignment of a career path. Career alignment is basically how well a career path matches the interests and aptitudes of a person. Career alignment is important because an optimal alignment not only leads to career success in terms of being employed and advancing in the career path, but also a strong sense of fulfillment.

American River College has career resources. One of these resources is PathwayU. All enrolled students can use this resource for free! PathwayU is a lengthy and complete career alignment assessment, it takes about 40 minutes to an hour to complete it. At the end of the assessment, PathwayU makes ranked career suggestions.

2 Choosing a program