How to Choose a Career When you are not sure
How will you choose the right career out of thousands of possibilities? The task may appear impossible if you have no idea what you want to do. It’s not, thankfully. You’ll have a better chance of making a good decision if you follow a systematic procedure.
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Self-Evaluation
You must first learn about yourself before you can choose the right career. Some occupations are a good fit for you based on your values, interests, soft skills, and aptitudes, while others are completely inappropriate based on your personality type.
Use self-assessment tools and career tests to gather information about your personality traits and, as a result, create a list of occupations that are a good fit for you. Some people prefer to work with a career counsellor or other career development professionals to guide them through the process.
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Make a List of Potential Careers
You’re probably looking at multiple occupation lists at this point—one for each of the self-assessment tools you used. To stay organised, you should consolidate them into a master list.
To begin, copy any careers that appear on multiple lists onto a blank page. Subhead it “Occupations to Investigate.” Your self-assessments indicated that they are a good fit for you based on several of your characteristics, so they are certainly worth investigating.
Following that, identify any occupations on your lists that interest you. They could be careers you’re already familiar with but want to learn more about. Additionally, include professions about which you are unfamiliar. You may discover something surprising.
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Investigate the Careers on Your List
At this point, you’ll be relieved that your list has been reduced to ten to twenty options. Now that you have a list of occupations, you can obtain some basic information about each one.
Examine published sources for job descriptions, educational, training, and licencing requirements. Discover opportunities for advancement. Utilize labour market data produced by the government to ascertain earnings and job prospects.
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Make a “Short List” of things you want to do.
Start narrowing down your list even more now that you have more information. Start eliminating the careers you don’t want to pursue further based on what you’ve learned so far from your research. On your “short list,” you should have two to five professions.
Remove it from your list if you have non-negotiable reasons for finding a job unacceptable. Remove all of the responsibilities that you don’t enjoy. Careers with low job prospects should be eliminated. Remove any occupation from consideration if you are unable or unwilling to meet the educational or other requirements, or if you lack some of the soft skills required for success.
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Create an Action Plan for Your Career
Create a Career Action Plan, a written document outlining the steps necessary to achieve your objectives. Consider it a road map that will lead you from point A to point B, and then to points C and D. Make a list of all your short- and long-term goals, as well as the steps necessary to accomplish them. Include any anticipated roadblocks to achieving your objectives—along with the strategies for overcoming them.
This may appear to be a significant amount of work — and it is. However, defining a career path is much easier when you know what you want. Taking these steps early on will save you a great deal of time and effort in the long run.
Career Action Plan (Editable Template)
If you’re at a career crossroads, our career coaching service may be of interest to you. To learn more about how we can assist you, please call 01685 700946, email info@karenblakecoaching.com or complete the booking form.
