The ONET Occupational Database - The Best Job Descriptions on the Internet By Perry Maisin At Isnare.com Ezine Articles

The ONET Occupational Database

The information I will describe below was developed by United States Government agencies including but not limited to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The ONET database is a treasure trove of occupational data and is the largest of its kind.

At the heart of the process is a concept called the ONET Content Model. Go to www.onetonline.org to read along. It will be helpful for your career search to be acquainted with the job titles that the leading occupational source identifies as related occupations.

How They Do It

In order for the ONET database to provide what I call the ‘transition trees’ for every occupation, they needed to develop a codification and classification system that they call the SOC taxonomy. SOC stands for Standard Occupational Classification and the taxonomy is a group of standardized characteristics they use to develop job profiles in hundreds of occupations. The taxonomy includes 812 occupational classifications/profiles today.

Why It is Important for You

The ONET database is the only database that combines and relates occupational classifications with Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities.(KSA's). It is the KSA library of characteristics that make up the backbone of every occupational profile. Each worker possess a unique set of knowledge, skills, and abilities – but you also share commonalities among and between many other occupational profiles. These are referred to as the ‘related occupations’ that are discussed and analyzed below.

The SOC Taxonomy

Here is an example of how the Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) taxonomy model works. The SOC was developed by the Department of labor to classify the entire population of occupations. Occupations that share knowledge, skills, abilities and other characteristics are grouped within the same SOC family. Most of the occupations titles are strongly related, but sometimes titles you might think are related are not. I tested this theory on two titles that I assumed would be related, but found out otherwise.

I have known several computer programmers and many technical people who are also amateur musicians. I’ve read that the reason is that programmers and musicians share a love of mathematics and patterns. To test that theory I analyzed the ONET taxonomy to see how closely Computer Programmers and Musicians were related.

Computer Programmers are categorized under SOC 15.
Musicians are classified under SOC 27.

A search for ‘Computer Programmer’ returned 504 occupations sorted by relevancy.
Music Directors and Music Teachers had a relevance score of 1 out of 100. This is the lowest score.
Mathematical science teachers also had a relevance of 1 out of 100.

According to the experts at ONET, there is a weak link between computer programmers and musicians on the ONET Relevancy scale.

Next, I followed the daisy chain of ‘related occupations’. Here is what I found:

Level 1. Computer Programmer (SOC 15) is related to Computer Operator (SOC 43)
Level 2. Computer Operator is related to Desktop Publisher (SOC 43)
Level 3: Desktop Publisher is related to Film and Video Editors (SOC 27)
Level 4: Film and Video Editors is related to Fine Artists, Including Painters, Sculptors, and Illustrators (SOC 27)

I searched on the Musician Occupation and found this:

Level 1: Musician (instrumental) (SOC 27) is related to Film and Video Editors (SOC 27).
Yet, there is no direct link from that title to Musician. The KSA profile seems to flow in one direction.

Conclusion:

Everyone has an “X” factor. While the taxonomy is a valuable tool and I encourage everyone to use the ONET system, let’s recognize that creativity and imagination cannot be placed in a box.

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