Blog posts

Governor Josh Stein has proclaimed September 2026 as Career Exploration and Workforce Readiness Month, recognizing the importance of helping North Carolinians explore their options, understand their strengths, and connect education and training to opportunities in the workforce. Whether you are a student, job seeker, educator, or workforce professional, September is a good time to take a closer look at where you’re headed.

While your resume shows your skills and experience, your cover letter gives you a chance to introduce yourself to an employer and share your interest in the position. It is your opportunity to explain your enthusiasm for the role and show an employer why you could be a great fit.

Writing your first resume can feel overwhelming, especially if you’re not sure where to start. A resume is simply a snapshot of who you are, what you have learned, and what you are ready to do next.

Starting a job search can feel like a job in itself. Where should you look? How do you know which opportunities are worth pursuing? And how do you get your application in front of the right people? A successful job search involves more than finding job postings. It means exploring your options, finding employers, and building connections.

Upon guidance from the NC Department of Public Instruction and NC Community Colleges, NCcareers has updated its Career Clusters and Career Cluster Match to align with the modernized National Career Clusters Framework from Advance CTE. The new framework reflects how careers and industries are changing and gives students and job seekers another way to explore the world of work.

“What companies in my area hire for the job I want?” This is a question that is important for career explorers when discovering new occupations. The first place many turn to discover this information is a job board, and that makes sense. A job board is a great place to discover businesses that are actively hiring for a chosen role, but not all companies are hiring or for every role all the time. Knowing more companies in your area helps you network, pursue work-based learning activities, and target specific businesses. The NCcareers Business Search tool was built for this specific purpose. Combining Staffing Patterns data with a private business listings database allows us to list the industries and business that typically hire any chosen occupation. Whether you’re a student exploring careers, an educator supporting students, a job seeker researching employers, or a career professional helping someone plan their next step, the Business Search tool can help you discover where a career could take you.

If you’re in middle or high school in North Carolina, chances are someone has told you that you need to complete a Career Development Plan (CDP). But why? And where do you start? Good news: you don’t need it all figured out right now. Creating a CDP can make exploring your options and planning your next steps easier, and that’s what NCcareers is here for.

Career exploration allows you to dream about the future – what makes you happy, what jobs would you want to do, where should you start? You are never too old or too young to benefit from a little career dreaming and exploring. It’s often presented in a few steps: take a quiz, read a few job descriptions, pick a direction. In practice, doing it well takes more time than that. Sorting through hundreds of occupations, each with its own education requirements, wage ranges, and demand outlook, means understanding what the data is telling you. The effort is worth it. Here are five reasons why career exploration matters and how NCcareers can help you plan for your future.

A lot of people make career decisions based on poor or incomplete information – what a parent does, what a relative remembers is a “good job,” or what a Netflix show made interesting. NCcareers.org was built to fill the information gap with real labor market data and trends. Here you’ll find over 800 occupations tied to actual wages and job openings, with certificates and degrees from over 100 colleges and universities in North Carolina that can get you there.