This module enables you to find occupations that are a good match for your abilities, education/training, knowledges, skills, and work activities based on your current (or recent) occupation. These matching occupations will share similar levels of each variable, although the specifics may differ. For example, management skills may be compared favorably for Engineering Managers and Lodging Manager, even though the knowledge requirements may match poorly.
To begin the match, select the occupational title that best describes your current (or most recent) occupation. CARES searches through the entire occupation list to find those that are the best match to your current occupation. It considers abilities, education/training requirements, interests, knowledges, skills, work activities, and work values, placing appropriate emphasis on each of the variable groups.
The matched occupations are categorized by Excellent, Good, Fair, Poor, and Not Related. You may view each of these categories by clicking on the corresponding tab above the list window.
Advanced Best Match
If you want to put greater or lesser emphasis on one or more of the occupational variable groups in the occupational Best Match module, you may follow the Advanced Best Match option to individually rate the importance of each group. Using the scale of 1 to 5 (1=Not Important to 5=Extremely Important), you must rate each occupational characteristic group to reflect the relative importance of that group to you in an occupation. After you have rated all the variable groups, CARES searches through the entire list of occupations and selects those that best match the characteristics of your current occupation, based on your customized ratings.
Calculating Best Match
The Best Match module uses a complex formula to calculate the Best Match for your current occupation. It uses both the Importance value and Level value of the variables of the occupations in the O*NET database, compiled by the U.S. Department of Labor (U.S.D.O.L.).
The Importance value is based on a 5-point scale (1=Not Important to 5=Extremely Important) that estimates how critical each variable (or job/worker attribute) is to occupational success. The Level value is based on a 7-point scale (1=Low to 7=High) that estimates, in relative terms, how much of each variable (or job/worker attribute) is needed for occupational success.
In calculating Best Match, Texas CARES compares the Level value for each variable of the current occupation to every other occupation to assign a Match Level based on the difference from the current occupation. If the variable Level difference is one point or less, the match is considered "good" and is assigned a Match Level of "3." If the variable Level difference is greater than one point but equal to or less than two, the match is considered "fair" and assigned a Match Level of "2." If the variable Level difference is greater than two points, the match is considered "poor" and assigned a Match Level of "1."
This is done for each variable in all the occupational characteristic groups (Abilities, Knowledges, Skills, etc.). CARES then multiplies the Importance value of the current occupation by the assigned Match Level of every other occupation to determine the Adjusted Match value.
To obtain the Match Index of each variable group, CARES adds the Adjusted Match values and divides that by the sum of the Importance values of the current occupation. The Overall Match is the mean of the occupational group Match Indexes.
Weighting is calculated as follows: each major occupational variable group is assigned an importance ranking by default or by the user (0=Don't Use to 5=Extremely Important). These values are summed and each value is divided by that sum to obtain a percentage weight. Zero values will result in a 0% weight.