A career is a path of professional development that every person wants to follow in his or her professional life. Pursuing this path can give us chances to succeed, fulfill our goals and ambitions, and gain more knowledge and experience. Developing one's career also greatly enhances our opportunities in the job market, and can give us a chance to increase our paycheck or reach higher and better positions.
But finding a career path may not be easy or obvious to everyone. Very often, as the years go by, our plan for our professional life changes, so we often have to start the whole process from scratch. We have created this article just for people who do not yet have a precise plan for themselves and want to learn how to choose a career path that will help them fulfill themselves and achieve their goals.
How to choose career path?
1. Learn about yourself
If you want to find a career, there are a few things to do first. Before you decide what career path you should choose, you must first get to know yourself. Remember that you will be spending most of your time in this job, so in order for you to enjoy your work and have constant motivation for it, you need to do something that interests you.
Think about the things you are good at, the soft and hard skills you have, what interests you, and how you like to spend your time. To do this, you can either figure it out yourself or go to a career counselor or take all sorts of tests to help you determine what you are good at and what profession would be best for you.
It would also be a good idea to make a sincere list of your flaws, advantages, and skills, which you can later assign to specific professions in which they might be useful. Answering the following questions may be helpful to you:
- What am I good at?
- What kind of lifestyle do I want to lead in the future?
- What subjects in school and college were the most interesting and easy for me?
- What do I expect from my future career? (What hours and form of work, number of days, how big a paycheck, etc.)
- What is important to me in life?
- Which of my skills and interests might be useful?
2. Think about what motivates you and your goals for the future
When you are making a choice of career, you need to think carefully about many aspects. It is important that you go to your dream job full of motivation. Think about what motivates you to act. This can be many factors, a few of which are the ability to adjust your working hours, a high paycheck, plenty of time to spend with your family, various employee benefits, or the opportunity for continuous development.
When you want to answer the question "what career is best for me" you also need to think what are your long-term goals. What would your dream life look like? What do you want to achieve and what stage of your career do you want to reach? You need to delineate your goals in both the professional and personal spheres, think about how you can achieve them, and what can help you do so. As an example, if you like stability and would like to have it in both spheres of your life, look for a job that will allow you to keep growing, but at the same time provide a place for you for many years to come.
3. Explore sectors
If you ask yourself "what career is right for me", first you have to think about whichever sector you would like to work in. There are a few of them, so you have to learn more about each one, their goals, streaks, and possibilities.
One of them is the private sector, which would make you be employed through a privately owned company or corporation. It puts a lot of emphasis on development and gives its employees many opportunities to climb the career ladder.
The second sector in which you can make a choice of career is the public sector. There you would work in a local, state, or federal government organization. Their purpose is to create and direct various public programs and control the activities of institutions. Working there gives a great sense of stability.
The last option is the non-profit sector. These are organizations completely unrelated to the public and private sectors. It is aimed at addressing or fulfilling a public need. This job can give you the opportunity to do things that matter. You should think about what seems best to you and in which sector you will feel most comfortable and where you can fulfill your goals.
4. Narrow your options
Finding a career is hard enough, so you have to help yourself a little bit. Based on the list you made earlier, create a new one with specific occupations that interest you and that your skills would allow you to do. Then choose the ones that appeal to you the most and the ones you would like to learn a little more about. Gather as much information as possible about each of these professions: salary, a form of work, and sample duties. At this stage, you should be able to cross most of the positions off your list and focus on a few selected that interest you the most.
5. Explore career options on your list
Your narrowed list, on which there should already be only a few positions, will now be your main focus. Now you need to carefully go through each of these options. You should use the job search pages. Look at specific positions, their duties, pay, and other details. Examples of sites with many job listings are LinkedIn, Indeed, and Monster, but you can find a lot more.
Look at reviews of specific companies. Those from people who currently work for it, former employees, but also from people who use its services. This will help you outline the image of a particular company and determine if you want to be a part of it.
The next step is to schedule interviews, which will give you answers to your questions. You'll then learn all the details about a particular offer and be able to decide if it meets your requirements and preferences. You can also talk to someone you know who is in a similar profession and learn everything you want to know from them.
6. Contact a specialist
If you don't know how to decide on a career, you can also turn to professional specialists who will be able to help you find a career. If you are still in college, you can go to the college career center, which is located at your university. There you will be able to meet with a career counselor who will help you in the process of moving from student life to professional life. He or she will advise you on what would be the best choice for your field of study, or help you change your career path altogether and recommend that you start another degree program.
If your student life is over, you can find a career counselor specially trained to help others find their dream profession. However, this option requires additional costs, so make sure you find someone who is competent and experienced.
7. Job tests - career aptitude tests
If you don't know how to decide on a career, you can take career aptitude tests to learn more about yourself, your aptitude and to match you with some kind of career path. You can find a lot of career aptitude test free online. The algorithm compares the answers you gave in the job tests with your personality, skills, motivations, goals, and qualities. Then they match your answers with the most appropriate career paths that would suit you.
A few of these career tests are Career Fitter, Truity, or MAPP. Their effectiveness is hard to determine specifically. Taking such career tests will certainly give some perspective on your career approach, but a better method is to do research.
8. Make a choice
Now it's the time to pick a career of choice - your choice. The career you choose should give you great satisfaction and professional fulfillment. Write your CV and send it to the recruiter. Don't forget that it is nothing definitive, if you don't like the job you have chosen nothing will keep you there. It's best to find something that gives you pleasure.
We hope that thanks to this article you now know the answer to the question "what should I do for a career" or will soon find the answer.
