Choosing a career remains one of the most important and difficult decisions that one has to take, which may decide the life-quality of your future self. One needs to take this decision with due consciousness and intelligence, by analysing various factors associated with it.
This article talks about those essential steps and factors that you must definitely look upon, before taking any decision about your career, if you are quite unsure about it right now.
- Introspect
Before pushing yourself into any kind of job/service/business, analyse if your permanent personality (traits of your personality that are very less likely to change in future) will be able to handle it for a long time. Analyse the kind of person you are, the kind of things you enjoy and the things you hate.
For example, if you are someone who cannot sit in a room for long hours, or someone who enjoys travelling, meeting people and going out, then probably you won’t be happy with a desk job for long, even if it pays you lavishly.
Think, introspect, talk to yourself and write down all your traits on a piece of paper, then cancel out the kind of jobs that don’t fit in with your permanent personality traits.
- 2. Explore
Don’t know what would be the best career for you? Perhaps the best option is to explore them all. This is the best advice that a college student can implement to know himself better and take good career decisions in future.
Make a list of the career domains available to you. Cancel out the domains which are not in consonance with your personality as explained in previous paragraph. Explore and try to find out more about the remaining domains.
- Do internships.
- Participate in related events.
- Meet and talk to experienced people of that domain.
Even if you don’t have relevant skills in a domain of your interest, you can build and develop skills over time.
Sit on maximum possible chairs until you find the most comfortable one for yourself 🙂
- 3. Know that there’s nothing such as a ‘Perfect Career’
One of the major mistakes that students commit while searching for the best career for themselves is that they go after an ‘ideal career’ which would maximise their happiness and minimise the challenges.
It is extremely important to understand that right from a street vendor to a teacher or to a bureaucrat, every career has the same degree of challenges and difficulties. You ought to choose a career where you feel that challenges are worth taking for. No career is, or ever can be, a perfect career for you if you don’t accept and appreciate its challenges.
Be ready and happy to face the challenges of your career, don’t run away from them.
- 4. List down your short and long-term goals
It is very important to knew what you actually want to chase. How much money do you want to earn? How often do you want to travel? What are your other wishes in life?
List down all your short and long-term goals on a piece of paper, and while choosing a career, see whether you will be able to fulfil all those or not while working in that domain.
