Picking your career is a huge, life-altering decision. Sure, you can always change your mind later down the line, but it takes time, effort, dedication, and oftentimes, a lot of money, to get yourself set to pick the right career path and start your career.
Naturally, it’s in your best interests to get it right the first time. But it can be tough to know what you want to do with your life, especially when you’re young, fresh out of high school or even as a college graduate.
Here are a few tips that will help you pick the right career path for you – take your time and make sure you’re really certain before you commit to a degree or other certification.
Take a Personality Test
Obviously, we know ourselves better than anyone, but that doesn’t mean we’re always in tune with the inner working of our minds. Personality tests aren’t designed to put you in a box or dictate your life, but they can be extremely useful tools to help guide you.
Tests like the Enneagram or MBTI can teach you so much about your strengths and weaknesses and how these could translate into your career prospects. You’ll learn plenty about yourself and how you function in various industries. For example, ENTJ vs INTJ personality types sound very similar, but they are best suited to very different types of work.
Consider Your Interests
When looking to pick the right career path, don’t forget, you actually want to enjoy the work you’ll be doing for the rest of your life. It’s a good idea then, to consider your existing interests and whether or not they might be right for you.
The hobbies you enjoy, topics you like reading about, and the tasks and activities you naturally gravitate towards are a good indication of which industries might suit you.
Remember Your Strengths and Weaknesses
Being able to identify your own personal strengths and weaknesses is an important step in figuring out what you might want to do with your life and picking the right career path. We have to be able to accept that we simply aren’t all good at everything, and even if you might like the idea of a certain career, it might not be suited to you and your personality, skills and strengths.
Look at Different Paths
When looking to pick the right career path, be sure to look at a variety of careers. Even if you have an idea of a job, career or even an industry that you’d like to work in, keep an open mind and be willing to explore other but similar options.
Not everything is black and white, and a little exploring and researching might open your eyes to options you never considered.
Do Your Research
Lastly, be sure to do your research when trying to pick the right career path. Of course, it’s important that you have a pretty clear understanding of what you’re getting into before committing. A job might look different on the outside from what it’s actually like on a day-to-day basis.
Find out about the nitty-gritty details of jobs you’re interested in, look up pay scales, talk to people in the field and even try out job shadowing if you have the time.