Your entire work life can be summed up in the term “career.” For many people, starting a profession is a means to an end: a means to learn more, take on more, and make more money.
We’ve prepared some ideas to get you started considering your best career path. These are questions and resources designed to help you organize your thinking about possible jobs to better your chances of success.
1.Try out a variety of self-evaluation tools.
There are a variety of tests available to help you figure out where you stand in terms of personality, strengths, and potential careers. However, exams have the potential to be unduly prescriptive, in the sense that they may force you to fit into a certain box. Use them to further your understanding of who you are and what drives you rather than as the final arbiter. Integrate their insights into the bigger picture if their responses are helpful.
2. Learn about different industries.
You can better assess where you would thrive by learning about the various industries and the challenges they face. Consider which aspirations pique your curiosity the most.
Public: You will be working for a government agency. Private: You will be hired for a privately held company or corporation.
Advantage: increased development potential
You will be working for a public organization, such as a city, state, or federal agency, whose mission is to maintain public services and infrastructure.
Potentially higher levels of stability.
Working for a non-profit means you’ll be contributing to a cause larger than yourself, rather than making a profit for shareholders or investors. A non-profit organization’s financial goals differ from those of for-profit enterprises, yet it still has to generate some money to carry out its work. Meaning is expanded as a result.
3. Research various markets.
Researching various industries will help you find a handful that might be a good fit alongside sector analysis. Look for well-established sectors to see if any of them pique your interest. Energy, consumer goods, and the media and entertainment sectors are all rather widespread in the United States ([3]). If any of these occupations catch your ear, jot down some notes about what you think you’d be doing and then do some extra research to learn more about typical job duties, career paths, and job outlooks.
4.To get expert help, look for it.
You can use the above-mentioned self-reflection time and numerous career tools to further explore these and other important considerations.
Take advantage of the career services offered by your college or institution if you are still a student there. A counselor or advisor who specializes in easing the passage from higher education to the working world may be made available to you.
A career coach is an expert in assisting customers in identifying the types of employment that are a good fit for them. Since career coaches are an added expenditure, it’s important to do your due diligence to ensure that they are a good fit for your needs.
5. Think about why you want to do this.
After compiling a profile of yourself, you can go on to exploring what drives you to succeed in your career. Perhaps you are looking for a job that will allow you to work from anywhere in the world while still making a good living, or one that will pay you more right out of college. In most professions, you won’t be able to do everything you want to do.
Examples of some top concerns are shown below. Consider what you would put on your list and the order in which you would put the items.
- Salary
- Benefits
- Autonomy
- Maintaining a healthy work-life balance
- Flexibility
- Profession Advancement
