Gale Launches New Online Career Assessment Platform for Libraries to Help Job Seekers Navigate Today's Economy

FARMINGTON HILLS, Mich., Sept. 1, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Gale, a Cengage company, today announced the launch of Gale Presents: Peterson's Career Prep, a new innovative online career assessment platform for libraries – powered by Peterson's® – that gives patrons access to career development tools. Now libraries can provide job seekers with career planning and guidance resources to explore new paths that align with their interests and skills to achieve their professional goals in today's job market. Read Gale's blog about the new platform.

According to a recent study conducted by the American Library Association, 60% of libraries anticipate that their patrons most urgent needs in the next six months will include job search supportⁱ. Gale Presents: Peterson's Career Prep helps users learn about job paths, receive personalized career and college recommendations, create resumes and cover letters, search for positions, explore schools and training programs and obtain advice on both finding a job or advancing an existing career.

"In today's economic uncertainty, finding a job can be quite challenging. The increase in unemployment rates coupled with library closures makes it essential that libraries offer job-seeking and career development tools that can be easily accessed online at anytime, from anywhere," said Paul Gazzolo, senior vice president and general manager at Gale. "Gale Presents: Peterson's Career Prep helps job seekers navigate the current economy with personalized career assistance that helps them realize their unique talents and skills to compete in today's job market, improving lives and enabling economic mobility."

Gale Presents: Peterson's Career Prep includes:

• VisualCV Resume Writing tool: Allows users to create visually interesting resumes and cover letters. Users also gain access to an external library of resume samples from 5,000 industries and can even create free websites to share their resumes externally with prospective employers.
• PathwayU Career Assessments: Contains four in-depth assessments aligned around a user's interests, values, personality and workplace preferences, driving personalized career recommendations. The tool also presents users with colleges recommendations. The connect tool provides an easy way for users to request additional information directly from the colleges.
• Career Database: Contains career information that utilizes the most recent data available from O*NET and the U.S. Department of Labor. Potential career matches are suggested based on a user's assessment results; users can view these suggestions by job title or subject area. Military crosswalks are included to help individuals transitioning out of the military translate their skills to civilian occupations.
• Job Search: Job listings are sourced from Indeed.com and are updated daily. Users can also limit results to employment type (i.e., internship, part-time, full-time) and look for job listings that align with their assessment results.
• Career Advice: Includes a content library with helpful articles and tips focused on writing resumes and cover letters, networking and interview. Content is written in a friendly, conversational tone. Bonus worksheets and workbooks can also be downloaded for patrons who want to dig deeper into career exploration or their assessment results.
• Improved Mobile Experience: Allows users to strengthen their career development and pursue employment opportunities from any location, on any device.
• Simplified Homepage Design: Helps users spend less time navigating the resource and more time focusing on building their career skills.

Gale Presents: Peterson's Career Prep is available now at participating public, academic and K-12 school libraries. Coming later this fall, Gale's Testing & Education Reference Center will be renamed Gale Presents: Peterson's Test Prep. Gale also offers Gale Presents: Peterson's Test and Career Prep, a combination of the two products.

For more information or to request a demonstration on Gale Presents: Peterson's Career Prep, visit: gale.com/careerprep.

About Cengage and Gale
Cengage is the education and technology company built for learners. The company serves the higher education, K-12, professional, library and workforce training markets worldwide. Gale, a Cengage company, provides libraries with original and curated content, as well as modern research tools and technology that are crucial in connecting libraries to learning, and learners to libraries. For more than 60 years, Gale has partnered with libraries around the world to empower the discovery of knowledge and insights – where, when and how people need it. Gale has 500 employees globally with its main operations in Farmington Hills, Michigan. For more information, please visit www.gale.com.

Follow Gale on:

• Twitter
• Gale blog
• Facebook 
• LinkedIn

About Peterson's
From culinary school to medical school--and everything in-between--Peterson's helps you discover, prepare for and fund your education journey. As a trusted educational services company for over 50 years, we continue to provide the most accurate, dependable, high-quality education content in the field. With the most up-to-date college search and career discovery tools, expert test prep and scholarship database, Petersons.com is the one-stop-shop for everything you need to achieve your educational goals.

______________________________________
ⁱ Libraries Respond: COVID-19 Survey Results, American Library Association, May 2020

Media Contact:
Kayla Siefker, Gale, a Cengage company
248-915-9624
[email protected]

SOURCE Gale, a Cengage company