How to choose the right career path

The world has evolved to such an extent that there are various careers to choose from. This has complicated the initial process of choosing a career. At a young age itself, we are being asked what we wish to be “when we grow up,”. Career planning is important for several reasons.

A career development plan in place reduces our risk of making impulsive decisions. And helps us recognize when we are ready to look for new opportunities and develop new skills. Unlike our previous generations used to do. Nowadays many people don’t take up the job immediately after high school and college. And then stick with it until retirement. We get inspired to find our “career path”—whatever that means—and follow it. Great, but where do we even start with. Here are some ideas, this might help you to make a choice.

1. Contents

   • 1 Assess Yourself
   • 2 Occupations List and Exploration
   • 3 Take a test
   • 4 Internship
   • 5 Find a mentor
   • 6 Make a career plan
   • 7 Steppingstone

   Assess Yourself

Before we can choose the right career, we must learn about ourselves. Our values, interests, skills, and aptitudes, in combination with our personality type. This allows us to identify some occupations, a good fit for us. Other occupations could be completely inappropriate. Self-assessment tools and career tests help us to gather information about our traits. These tools allow us to generate a list of occupations which is a good fit based on them. Another option available is to consult a career counsellor or career development professionals. Professionals can help us to navigate this process.

2. Occupations List and Exploration

We have many occupations in front of us at a point. One of which could have been by self-assessment tools used by us. To keep ourselves organized, we should combine them into one master list. First, we should highlight careers that appear on many lists and copy them onto a blank page. And mark it as “Occupations to Explore.” Our self-assessments ​indicated that they are a good fit for us based on several of our traits. We should explore them. Next, highlight occupations that appeal to us. These may be the careers we know a bit about and want to explore further. Also, we can add professions about which we don’t know much. We learn something unexpected. Through a job description and licensing requirements made available by concerned departments. Learn about advancement opportunities. The labour market information provided by the government can be useful. We come to know about the earnings for each profession of our interest.

3. Take a test

Well, what if we don’t know what we’re good at or even what we’re interested in. Career assessment test helps us to narrow down a field of interest. If it’s been a while since we have taken those tests, there are other kinds of assessment tests we can take. There are many websites providing career test explore and take a test to know our interests. We can also find a career that fits our motivational focus on the assessment test. And though these tests may be helpful, they’re not the final to our career path.

4. Internship

An internship is a great way to test out an industry or type of career. This eventually allows us to get a full-time job especially if we have no prior experience. There are chances that our internship doesn’t turn into a job or we may find out it’s the wrong career for us. Internship helps us build our network with the people. Through this network, we can get a career and job advice. Many companies are offering stipend during an internship.

5. Find a mentor

A mentor could help us take our career to the next level and give us the insight to help us make sure we’re on the right path. Once we’ve secured a mentor, take advantage of everything they’re willing to offer. This could include advice, connections and answering questions about the industry. If there’s a career we’re interested in is being finalized. We can check if any of those companies or people in that line of work allow us to shadow them for a few days to see what it’s like.

6. Make a career plan

As with most things, our career will benefit if we have goals and a plan to achieve those accordingly. we want to be in a particular industry, but the next goal after that is getting a certain position. Do we want to do that? Map out where we want to go, with concrete milestones.

7. Steppingstone

Of course, all these plans and ideas are never set in stone. We should keep in mind that we may start very excited about a certain career, only to fall out of love with it later. More than anything, remember that our career is a lengthy journey, not a sprint. It could turn out to be a very twisting path. Knitted together from experiences into a career worth having.

Finally, don’t forget that career planning is a continuous process. We should revisit and review our aims and objectives throughout our career. And should not feel constrained by the goals set by us. The structure of a career plan should help us to map out the route, to trying something new. The more efforts we put into our search for the right career, the more we’ll get out of it. Invest time and effort because change like this is rarely easy, but often rewarding.

Thank you, for taking out your precious time to read.