Sector Council Occupational Classifications and Standards
One consequence of a rapidly evolving labour market is the difficulty
a tool, such as NOC, has in capturing the changes fast enough to provide
data on emerging occupations. NOC was designed to capture data over
time and needs consistency to perform that function. So, new occupations
and drastic changes in skill requirements are not being captured. Therefore,
usually based on results from a human resources sector study, sectoral
partners have created their own national occupational analyses and standards
to keep up with the occupational skills developments. With these, employers
can accurately identify employment needs and skill gaps, and set training
goals. Employees can build work profiles and make plans for their professional
development, such as training updates and project assignments, and mobility
within their company, occupational field or industry. The new sector
standards are being created with education and training in mind and
can be used to develop curriculum on an ongoing basis as changes occur.
The classifications, standards and profiles that have been developed
by various sector councils are listed in the sector summary tables in
Appendix F.
Implications for Career Decision Making
NOC offers counsellors and educators a variety of options for assisting
students and clients with occupational exploration. The sheer number
of occupations in NOC encourages clients/students to broaden the scope
of their exploration and find options they would never have considered.
Individuals and groups can look up a specific occupation and find
a list of job titles associated with the occupation group, a description
of the main duties and the requirements for employment including education,
training, certification and licensing. They will also find similar
occupations listed which they can look up and compare.
The Career Handbook gives, in narrative and scaled format,
more detailed information about an occupation by relating aptitudes,
interests and worker functions to an occupation's duties. Clients
can also find out what physical activities and environmental conditions
are usually found in an occupation, and discover career advancement
opportunities and specializations in the field, as well as some suggestions
of typical employment sites.
The NOC Web Site allows users to search quickly and easily, and
to compare information currently found in the printed versions of
NOC and the Career Handbookhttp://www23.hrdc-drhc.gc.ca/.
Sector council occupational profiles provide up-to-date emerging
or changing occupations and very specific skill descriptions for the
career seeker who is ready to focus on an industry, sector or occupational
field.
As helpful as the classification systems are for the career explorer,
some information can become outdated very quickly. Once the client has
a basic direction and some knowledge of occupational interest, practitioners
need to encourage career seekers to look in many places to verify information,
such as newspapers, magazines, company Web Sites and annual reports.
Interviews with people in the field will help give a current, local
slant, as will interviews with people in training or educational institutions,
and associations or unions.
