Career Counseling/Job Advisement in SD (San Diego: community college, restaurant, shops)

[CBerger]

Can anyone recommend or point our resources that are available in SD helping to guide career paths and possibly match jobs/careers. I've done some research into fairs and the like but alot of information to take on.

Basically I'm 29, worked as a chef/cook for the previous 6-8 years. I have my bachelors degree in art/painting but can never fully crack my way into a different industry other than back to cooking.

After a recent job switch to a new restaurant, I realized I'm over it and need to get out of the industry. I consider myself a valuable asset, intelligent, and generally able to be trained and succeed to whatever the job requires, but having mostly restaurant experience is hard to even get a foot in any other job areas.

I'm looking for advice that could point someone with a liberal arts degree into a more sustainable career path. I know that's not exactly this forum but if anyone has experience in SD with this and what resources there are I'd appreciate it. Thanks

[RosieSD]

Judy Baron is a San Diego-based certified career counselor who is excellent. Here is her website: Career Counseling San Diego

There are a few other certified career counselors in San Diego County, but there are also other counselors in different cities who work with clients remotely (usually via Skype), so you don't have to limit yourself to just San Diego. The National Career Development Association has a searchable database of its members: https://www.ncda.org/aws/NCDA/pt/sp/home_page

If you want free career counseling, you can also look into the job/career workshops offered by the San Diego Workforce Partnership. Each center has different workshops. Here's the link:
https://workforce.org/job-centers

Also, some of the community colleges have classes focused on career planning that may be helpful. For example, here are Grossmont College's courses: Counseling Courses I think UCSD extension also has some career planning services, or at least they did in the past. You may have to dig through their site or give them a call to inquire. https://extension.ucsd.edu/

Finally, the U.S. Dept. of Labor has a site called O*Net that's designed to help people learn about various careers. They have a self-assessment called My Next Move that I used to use with my students that can be very helpful if you want to get some ideas about which careers might be a good fit for further research. Here's the link to My Next Move: https://www.mynextmove.org/ and here's the link to the main O*Net site, which has loads of other information and helpful resources: https://www.onetonline.org/