Counselling and Career Development

Find career information

To make effective career decisions, you require sufficient, relevant and reliable information, which you need to integrate with what you know about yourself, your career vision and goals. Your career research will connect you to others who will help you to do the following:

  • Answer questions about your career choice.
  • Learn more about specific occupations and their requirements.
  • Plan your studies linked to your career.
  • Expand your understanding of the opportunities related to your career vision.
  • Identify "hidden" career paths that you did not think of previously.
  • Think about how you could pursue specific opportunities.

Before you explore

Before you explore any career and study options, you need to understand what you need. What are you unsure about? What questions do you still have before making a career decision?

Keep track of your information

As you search, keep a record of the information you find and set reminders to follow up on certain aspects. You also need to be aware that you need to make decisions at some stage. If you find that you are gathering a lot of information but still struggle to make a decision, you could contact a counsellor to talk about your options.

Evaluating the information

You must be able to evaluate the information you find online. Evaluate the information at hand of the following questions:

  • Who wrote the information? Look at the domain name – is it educational (.edu, .ac.za), commercial (.com), governmental (.gov, .gov.za) or nonprofit (.org, .org.za)?
  • Try to find information under headings like "About us" or "Bibliography" to verify the author(s). When was the page last updated? What are the author's credentials?
  • Check for further links – where does this page link to? Does the author say where they got the information for this site?
  • Check the purpose of the page. Does it aim to provide information, sell, convince or share, or even aim to be humorous?

Where to start?

A wide range of sources is available to find career information.

  1. Listen to this conversation about doing career research.
  2. Read this overview of career research.
  3. Download the Career Research brochure to keep track of your research.
  4. Use the following resources to help you to gather information about your options:

Last modified: Tue May 05 07:42:25 SAST 2026