There are thousands of career options out there. It is difficult to make a career choice when you don’t really know what you exactly want to do! It seems like an insoluble task for you. To handle it you will need to put some time and energy into making your career decisions, but be sure that your effort will be well worth it in the end. By following these steps you can make a worthy career decisions.
Career decision making strategies
• Assess yourself/ your skills
Before making a career decision you have to learn about yourself. Assess your interests, values and skills in combination with your certain personality traits. Such assessment will make some careers especially suitable for you and some particularly inappropriate for you. For this you can use self-assessment tools called careers, to gather such information and, later to generate a list of occupations that are deemed appropriate for you.For self-evaluation people can choose career counselors or other career development professionals for career counseling and test but you can opt to use career tests that are available on the Web free of cost.
• Make a list of desired occupations
Make a list of occupations generated through your use of the self-assessment tools and personal interest. Your list probably quite lengthy, but you want to come up with a much shorter list, consisting of between of five to eight careers. Circle the occupations that appear on multiple scales and often popping up in your mind. Also circle the occupations that you may have considered previously and that you find appealing for yourself. Write these occupations down on a separate list.
• Exploration
Once you get finalized with your occupational lists the next step is to explore the merits and demerits of your desired occupation. It is necessary before taking the career decision to deeply analyze the merits and demerits of particular occupation, each occupation on your list, you will need to look at the job description, educational and other particular requirements, job outlook, advancement opportunities and earnings associated with the job.
• Information collection
You must have enough knowledge regarding desired occupations. When you have a few occupations left on your list. You now need to gather more in-depth information regarding the career. Your best source of such information is those people who have firsthand knowledge of the career in which you are interested. Identify the relevant people, who they are and conduct informational interviews to gather deep knowledge. Before taking the career decision it is necessary for you to have firsthand knowledge of your desired occupation.
Short listing
Trim down your list of possible occupations based on what you learned from your information hunt. Clear the picture that you may not be willing to put the time and energy into preparing for an occupation for which an advanced degree is required where you don’t have time to consume for it, or you may consider the earnings for a particular occupation are inadequate, insufficient for your needs. Keep in mind that situation will not be in your favor always; you need to manage your desires in your career selections.
Clear your goals By now when you have decided on one occupation you want to pursue. It’s time to put a plan into place so you can eventually find a job in particular field, but first you will need to set some goals for your job. What are the expectations of you from your job? What you want to achieve from such occupation. Where you want to see yourself after 10 years in particular career?
Action plan after setting your goals, you will need to decide how to achieve them. A career action plan will help guide you as through which strategies you can pursue your long and short term goals.