- Identify your interests. …
- Explore your skill set. …
- Consider your previous experiences. …
- Make a list of your options. …
- Research careers. …
- Use your network. …
- Determine your career interests.
How to Choose a Career Based on Interests – The Strong Interest Inventory
2. Where can I go next?
Start looking into positions that sound interesting or desirable once you’ve improved your understanding of what matters to you and what you need in a job. Write down any jobs you don’t know much about and do some research. You may end up finding an interesting career path. Additionally, it can be helpful to keep in mind that not all jobs are perfectly represented by their titles. Even though a job description may not seem appealing, you might be a good fit despite the title.
How to identify opportunities
Here are some tips to make the process simpler as you start to list potential opportunities:
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OK. What do I want next is the final question you should ask yourself before making a career decision.
1. What’s important to me?
Choosing a career is a big decision that starts with thinking about yourself and figuring out what you value most in a job. You must conduct an evaluation of yourself in order to fully respond to this question. You must consider your top priorities when completing this self-evaluation, including your desired work environment, your ideal coworkers, and your ideal employer.
This deep dive will take time. But making the effort to select a profession that is a good fit for you is worthwhile. Write down your notes as you go along to protect your work. This will enable you to compare job descriptions and offers to what matters most to you as you advance in the career planning and job search process.
How to perform a self-assessment
Asking yourself questions that will reveal more about your interests, passions, strengths, skills, and even your personality type will help you carry out a self-assessment.
Some sample questions you can ask yourself include:
Values can be things like having a flexible work-life balance, being financially secure, helping others, and working independently. You can later compare these with a company’s values to determine whether you are in alignment.
Soft skills are the character traits and routines you have that influence how you work. Leadership, communication, problem-solving, creativity, and adaptability are a few examples of these abilities. Concentrate on determining which skills you want to use the most in your career.
Technical skills are hard skills that can only be learned through formal education or training. This can include easily measurable and defined technical skills or knowledge. Data analytics, planning, research, computer programming, and photography are a few examples.
Consider your natural talents, such as writing, selling, project management, communicating, and technical problem solving. If you’re unsure of your natural talents, you can ask yourself the following questions to find out:
Personal interests can range from working with children, animals, or the public sector to technology, writing, medicine, design, and other related fields. You should search for career opportunities that combine your strengths, skills, and passion as you progress through the process. Let’s take an example where you are an excellent writer and an environmentalist. You could look for content writing positions at a charity that raises awareness of climate change.
Now, it can be challenging for us to acknowledge this level of detail about ourselves at times. Ask a dependable friend, family member, or coworker for advice if you’re unsure of how to respond to any of these questions.
I also advise performing a “needs vs. wants” analysis at this stage of the process. wants” assessment. This exercise will enable you to distinguish between the qualities you need and want in a job. This can assist you in differentiating between qualities that are essential for a job and those that are just nice to have.
The components of a “needs vs. includes your desired salary, job duties, health insurance, work-life balance, professional development, and company culture. Once you’ve identified them, you can compare potential employment opportunities to your evaluation to determine which one best fits your needs and wants.
Where can I go next? is the next question you can ask yourself to help you decide on a career.
3. What do I want next?
It’s time to determine your short- and long-term career goals to establish a more defined career path. After conducting thorough research, think about where you want to be in one, five, or even ten years.
Ask yourself where you want to be in that time before establishing these goals. You can find jobs that will be a good long-term fit and help you get there by taking the time to consider where you want to be in the future, whether it’s a specific title, a particular location, or even a certain lifestyle.
Considering where you want to be in five years and making plans for how to get there may initially seem very overwhelming. But it doesnt have to be. Make it simpler by deciding on your long-term objective first, and then breaking it down into more manageable benchmarks.
How to set benchmarks for goals
To do this, determine what your potential annual benchmarks are using the data from your research. These should be more manageable objectives that will keep you on track to accomplish your larger long-term objective.
Let’s say you want to become a manager in five years but are currently an individual contributor. Your annual goals could be:
Consider further subdividing your Year 1 goal now that you have your annual goals. Make a monthly breakdown of the actions you must take to accomplish that goal.
In our example, we want to spend the first year working on one departmental project. Our monthly breakdown might include:
And now for the additional query you can use to determine whether you’re on the right track when beginning a new career. “What should I do next?”.
4. What should I do next?
Improve your skills, update your resume, and look for job opportunities after you’ve done some introspection, made a plan for your career growth, and decided what kind of work you want to pursue.
Improve your skills
Currently, a number of websites, such as Udemy or Coursera, offer free or discounted courses on a huge variety of subjects that can improve your qualifications for a position.
Update your resume
Once finished, be sure to update the certification section on your resume with your newly acquired skills. You should always ensure that your resume is updated to reflect the skills necessary for the position or industry for which you are applying.
Search for job opportunities
Now youre ready to start applying for new opportunities. To stay on track and prevent job search burnout, set attainable application goals of three to five opportunities that you qualify for per day. Utilize Indeed for Chrome to track your applications and stay organized during your job search.
The company name, role title, salary, application date, and recruiter information, if available, can all be included in your own custom application tracker. Following up on the status of your application is so much simpler when this information is organized. By clicking on this link, you can access the Indeed for Chrome extension.
Key takeaways
So there you have it. As a recap:
I hope that you found this information to be helpful. There are only three steps in choosing a career, but they are difficult and demand introspection. Consider this time to be an investment in your career.
Additionally, career planning is a continuous process, so you should routinely assess your progress. And don’t be discouraged if a position you thought would be a good fit for you turns out not to be a good one at all once you are in it. Every job has something of value to be gained. It might be a transferable skill or simply excluding the possibility that the field or position is not a good fit for you. That in itself is valuable information to have.
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Thank you so much for watching. And Ill see you next time.
