This part of the book provides a brief but information-packed description for each of the 234 jobs that met our criteria for this book (that is, the 200 best plus all the specialized postsecondary teaching jobs). The descriptions are presented in alphabetical order, which makes it easy to look up a job you’ve identified in a list from Part I that you want to learn more about.

We used the most current information from a variety of government sources to create the descriptions. We designed the descriptions to be easy to understand, but the sample that follows,with an explanation of each of its component parts, may help you better understand and use the descriptions.

Here are details for each of the major parts of the job descriptions in Part II:
1. Job Title: This is the job title for the job as defined by the U.S. Department of Labor and used in its O*NET database.
2. Data Elements: The information on earnings, growth, annual openings, percent selfemployed workers, and percent part-time workers comes from various government databases for this occupation, as we explain earlier in this Introduction.
3. Summary Description and Tasks: The sentences in bold provide a summary description of the occupation. It is followed by a listing of tasks that are generally performed by people who work in the job. This information comes from the O*NET database.
4. Skills: The O*NET database provides data on 35 skills, so we decided to list only those that were most important for each job rather than list pages of unhelpful details. For each job, we identified any skill with a rating that was higher than the average rating for this skill for all jobs. We ordered the skills by the amount by which their ratings exceeded the average rating for all occupations, from highest to lowest. If there were more than eight such skills, we included only those eight with the highest ratings. We
included up to 10 skills if scores were tied for eighth place. If no skill had a rating higher than the average for all jobs, we noted that none met the criteria. Each listed skill is followed by a brief description of that skill.
5. GOE Information: This information cross-references the Guide for Occupational Exploration (or the GOE), a system originally developed by the U.S. Department of Labor that organizes jobs based on interests. We used the groups from the fourth edition of the New Guide for Occupational Exploration, as published by JIST. This edition employs interest fields based on the 16 career clusters developed by the U.S. Department of Education and used in a variety of career information systems. The description includes the major Interest Area the job fits into, its more-specific Work Group, and a list of related O*NET job titles that are in this same GOE Work Group.
This information will help you identify other job titles that have similar interests or require similar skills. You can find more information on the GOE and its Interest Areas in the introduction to the lists of jobs based on interests in Part I.
6. Personality Type: This part gives the name of the personality type that most closely matches each job, as well as a brief definition of this personality type. You can find more information on the personality types in the introduction to the lists of jobs based on
personality types in Part I.
7. Education/Training Programs: This entry provides the name of the educational or training program or programs listed for the job in a related government data source called the Classification of Instruction Programs (CIP). This information will help you identify sources of formal or informal training for a job that interests you.
8. Related Knowledge/Courses: This entry will help you understand the most important knowledge areas that are required for the job and the types of courses or programs you will likely need to take to prepare for it. We used information in the Department of Labour’s O*NET database for this entry. We went through a process similar to the one
described for the skills noted above to end up with entries that are most important for each job.