Choosing a career path can be so overwhelming! Where do you even start looking? Sure, we all know what elementary school teachers and doctors and cops do, but what about everything else?
Well, start by taking a nice deep breath.
Then, when you’re in a good headspace, try a free online career assessment like the one at CareerOneStop or the MyNextMove quiz from O*Net. These aren’t magic bullets, and you might need to take them a couple of times before you get any choices that look good, but they’re a good starting point. Poke around on the sites and see what’s interesting. Take notes. Be open.
And what if nothing looks good? For starters, remember that these sites aren’t comprehensive lists of everything that’s out there. So really note what particular pieces of information you find off-putting or not entirely appealing. Be as specific as possible, because sometimes we are our own worst enemies with these things, so you want to be really clear about why you’re saying no to a type of career. Is it really not interesting or is it just kind of intimidating? Do you really not want to explore further, or are you just disappointed that the role requires additional training? Really read the information on the sites and see if you can come up with at least a few things that seem appealing. Gather as much information as you can on those, and you may very well find that there are offshoots or related roles that are more interesting to you, of that there are particular focus areas that you think you’d like. Capture all of that info somewhere! Then see if you can find people in those roles to talk to.
I know I talk about networking and informational interviewing a lot, but it’s because that’s where you really learn what a role is like. You might think, for example, that graphic art sounds fabulous, but when you learn more about it, you lose interest. On the other hand, you might thing being an insurance agent sounds like the most boring thing in the world, but when you look into it, you see that it’s really about making sure people are taken care of. Job titles don’t tell us very much, so explore things! There are so many options out there.
And what if everything looks interesting? Well then we’re back to where we were last week, so take a look at those steps as you need to. Sometimes this is all just a process of experimenting and eliminating.
