Choosing A Career: Knowing Yourself And Exploring Your Options
By Careers Desk
Wednesday, October 24, 2018.
There is no denying that deciding what career path to go down can be one of the most difficult things you ever do. After all, this is a decision that is going to impact the rest of your life. In order to determine the best career route, you need to understand your own skills and explore the options available to you. Read on to discover more.
Identifying your skills and interests
It all begins with you. If you are to choose the right career, you need to like it! After all, you will never fulfil your potential or stay motivated if you are not passionate about your job.
To determine what sort of jobs would suit you, there are a number of questions you should ask yourself. This includes the following:
What is important to you?
What do you want from your career?
What kind of lifestyle do you want?
What did you enjoy most at school or university?
What are your values, motivations, and interests?
What are you good at?
If this does not help you, you should take a psychometric test to determine your character traits and your strengths and weaknesses.
Exploring your career options
Now that you have determined your own strengths and weaknesses, the other part of the puzzle is to explore the different career options that are available to you.
You need to figure out what your ideal industry to work in would be, and then you can identify critical trends when it comes to researching the jobs market on a local, national and worldwide scale.
Once you have evaluated the areas of work that are suited to your interests, values, and skills, you then need to consider what it is going to take to get you to that point. For example, let’s say you want to work for a haulage company. You need to look into going to a paid truck driving school. How much would this cost? How long would you need to attend for?
Once you have all of this information, use it to compile a shortlist of jobs. This list should ideally contain between five and 10 jobs. You can then write down the pros and cons for each job. This should cover the following:
Training
Salary and conditions
Related jobs
Job description
Entry requirements
Employment outlook
Career development
It is also wise to think about the size of employer that would be best suited to you. Would you prefer to work for a large company or a small business? Or, perhaps you would rather be self-employed?
So there you have it: an insight into the various elements you need to consider when you are attempting to choose a career. You first need to get to know yourself – what you can offer a job and what you want from a job. You then need to explore the career options that are available to you.
