It may sound cliche to state that you won’t have to work a day in your life if you choose a profession you love, but picking the right career is one of the most important choices you will ever make. It will significantly impact your future happiness, fulfillment in life, and future financial success.
However, most people find choosing a career stressful and daunting. It cannot be easy to select a career that will make you happy and fit you properly at the same time when there are so many options available. But just because something is difficult doesn’t mean it isn’t worthwhile.
Consider the 90,000 hours the average person spends at work during their lifetime and pursue a career that makes you happy, aligns with your beliefs, and uses your talents to ensure you make the most of your time. Fortunately, this article will provide nine valuable tips on how to figure out what career is best for me.
1. Begin by Pursuing Your Passions
Starting with your passions is always a smart approach to guide you on how to figure out what career is best for me. You will do something essential by concentrating on projects and endeavors that you find fascinating, entertaining, or engaging. For instance, if you love kids and are passionate about taking care of them, you can consider starting day care since there is plenty of demand for their services.
There are difficulties in any profession, but the prospect of dealing with them won’t be as intimidating if you’re passionate about your expertise. It will also enable you to assess the value of pursuing further studies in the profession. Getting a degree you aren’t passionate about might be daunting and stressful. You might even give up before receiving a degree, which could result in spending a lot of money on education you’ll never use.
Therefore, ensure that a large portion of your new career is something you truly enjoy. While some of the duties associated with any profession will be tedious (that’s simply life), you’ll be in good condition if most of the tasks are enjoyable and fascinating.
2. Consider Your Strengths
It’s a smart idea to think about your strengths if you are wondering how to figure out what career is best for me. Now, that typically does not imply technical prowess. After all, if you truly desire something, you can learn almost any challenging talent. Soft talents, however, are more difficult to acquire. Some characteristics are more innate than others and can affect whether a career is a good fit.
Consider it this way: being a lawyer may not be the best career choice if you are an introvert who dislikes interacting with people since this profession involves extensive interaction and demands excellent communication skills. Even if you can improve your soft skills, you should value the qualities you already possess and consider a career that complements your personality, enabling you to use your current skills.
3. Find an Overlap
Whenever you are wondering how to figure out what career is best for me, it’s essential to consider how your skills, what companies require /what the world needs, and what you enjoy doing overlap. Your career sweet spot is where those three sectors intersect. Consider your talents and interests rather than job titles or genres to make a choice.
You may be surprised by how much your hobbies add up in terms of careers, and it will broaden your search because one can use comparable skills in various jobs. By determining your work personality style, you will have a clue on how to figure out what career is best for me. The work personality style differs from a personality test because it focuses on who you are and how you operate at work.
This evaluation can help you focus on a profession that best suits you by choosing the perfect employment that matches your strengths, pinpointing your development areas, and more. You can define your job needs, determine your preferred possibilities, and completely comprehend your work style after thoroughly understanding it. Consider the general working environment of the profession you are considering.
Do you work best when you have uninterrupted time at a desk? Do you prefer routine or diversity in your schedule? Do you prefer working alone or connecting with people when working on projects? To help you focus on what kind of career could be best for you, consider times when you felt and produced your greatest work.
If you know someone who works in a profession you’re considering, for instance, a realtor, ask them if they’d be willing to meet for a quick coffee (your treat) to go through their day-to-day responsibilities. Finding the ideal career for you can also be done through conducting interviews. Being interviewed for jobs can teach you a lot about professions, and even if it does not work out, it frequently encourages you to narrow down your interests and abilities.
4. Think About the Money
We all understand that money cannot buy happiness, but that does not mean it isn’t an essential factor influencing your query on how to figure out what career is best for me. Being financially secure can help you feel better about your situation. However, your definition of financial security may be different from others. Think for a moment about your long-term financial objectives. Do you intend to purchase a home? Be able to send your kid to college debt-free? Travel without hesitation throughout the world?
Determine what kind of lifestyle you desire. Also, focus on employment possibilities that could satisfy that demand by estimating how much money you’d need to make that a reality. You can consider a career in providing chimney sweep services since they are currently in high demand, but few businesses are conducting the tasks. It means you could make plenty of money due to low competition but high demand.
5. Consider the Working Schedule
The time you need to work and when is also vital in your quest to determine ‘how to figure out what career is best for me.’ A 40-hour workweek is quite common in many occupations, but some professions, for instance, a dentist, can work close to 20 hours per week and yet make full-time pay.
A job could also have a predetermined timetable, such as an ordinary eight-to-five schedule. Others, on the other hand, are incredibly flexible and let you work whenever you like, day or night, as long as you meet the set deadlines.
6. Research
You should research job descriptions, examine wage information, and speak with professionals to gain insight that will help you know how to figure out what career is best for me. The BLS (Bureau of Labor Statistics) Occupational Outlook Handbook is a fantastic resource for salary and basic job descriptions. You can find out about income ranges, common educational requirements, and whether there is an increase in the need for a specific profession, such as an attorney, in addition to an overview.
You wouldn’t want to choose a profession doomed to failure or with little promise. Online research is also a very valuable source of answers on how to figure out what career is best for me as it will enable you to read professional reviews and learn about pay ranges in various cities.
For instance, Reddit is a platform where people discuss everything under the sun, and many are quite open about their emotions. You might locate someone, like a plumber, who is talking about their plumbing profession and may provide you with valuable information to make you consider it a career. The goal is to reduce your list using this information. While you do not have to choose one just yet, you should eliminate anything that might not be effective.
7. List All Your Possibilities
Whether you know what you want to accomplish or not, finding out how to get there may be hard. To land your dream job, you must carefully weigh your options to determine the best course of action and carefully evaluate your possibilities to find an answer on ‘how to figure out what career is best for me?’ Make a list of all your possibilities, including actual employment prospects, educational opportunities, and career trajectories.
Once everything is on paper, you can identify what is not exactly correct and focus on your goals. Make as many choices as possible for yourself so that you have a variety to consider. Additionally, you can mix some potentially comparable possibilities and list your options from best to worst.
If you go a step further and research your listed options, you’ll probably notice plenty of job titles along the way. In a way, it is shocking how numerous they are. Approximately 1,000 different occupation categories exist, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). That doesn’t include drilled-down job titles, only categories.
Knowing that it comes as no surprise that many people experience some level of a career selection dilemma. You can begin to focus your search now that you know your hobbies and strengths, the money you need to make, and your preferred schedule.
Start by doing some simple searches. For instance, you can enter ‘jobs for [passion]’ as a beginning point in your neighborhood search engine. In addition, you might employ a similar strategy by going to significant job search engines and entering a few fundamental skills or responsibilities like local roofers to see the results. Finding possibilities that merit further investigation is the goal.
8. Network
Networking is a terrific method to help you know how to figure out what career is best for me; by learning more about the profession you are considering and the nature of the workplace. Networking is also essential when you are seeking a job if you have already decided what to do. Reach out to experts who currently hold the positions on your shortlist.
You might be able to make connections through your professional network already in place, or you might need to make new connections. For instance, you can visit painting contractors and accompany them to their work site to witness how they conduct their activities. It will provide first-hand exposure to the industry and a chance to learn information that isn’t frequently mentioned, which may help you make an informed decision.
9. Consider Taking a Career Test
You can simplify the process of how to figure out what career is best for me by completing a career test. Many career evaluations are easily accessible online and designed to help you decide on a professional path, but you must be aware of the type of test before taking one. Some evaluate your current skills and how you could apply them but do not evaluate whether these applications would be a good fit.
You can choose to take an interest test, which helps you identify careers you may be interested in but does not necessarily assess if they are ideal for you. There are also personality tests for evaluating your personality and suggesting ideal professions to consider. For instance, working in a funeral home is not a popular choice for many people; hence it may require you to take these tests to evaluate if you are compatible with the profession.
The benefit of taking these tests is that they are considerably more convenient and accessible, unlike the traditional paper test, which you could only take under the direction of a career advisor. The test results provide an analysis to help you find the jobs that best fit you and create a strong career road map to guide you.
Using the nine tips mentioned above will give you a clear response to the query of ‘how to figure out what career is best for me?’ and be in a position to decide which route is ideal for you. Feel free to contact us for additional information and guidance in career selection to help you make an informed decision.
