A career isn’t just a way to get cash — it’s the way you define yourself, the place you spend most of your days, and your method for making a mark on the world. That means choosing a career might be one of the most anxiety-inducing commitments you’ll ever face, right up there with marriage and mortgages. However, you can lighten the stress with a little self-evaluation. These five questions will put you on your way towards finding a career that will satisfy and motivate you for years to come.
Following your dreams is more than an empty platitude — it’s a perfectly plausible method of shaping your passions into viable careers. If you like to cook, you could take your skills to restaurants or catering businesses. If you love having guests over, you might enjoy managing hotels or other accommodation. Even scuba diving can be a profitable career; divers working on oil rigs can make six figures! Former instructors and professors in your favourite subjects are a good resource for ideas about careers that suit your passions.
To answer this question, take one of the interests you listed above and break it down into the skills it involves. Restaurant-quality cooking, for example, involves not just culinary skills alone but also product sourcing, budget management, and market research (to learn what the hippest restaurants are serving up at the moment). Making your home into pleasant accommodation for your guests involves communication skills, empathy, and an ability to compromise. Each of these skills is important to dozens of careers and looks great listed on a CV.
While you might not list your Myer-Briggs type on a CV, your personality is just as important as your skills when it comes to career choice. Your level of extrovertedness, for example, can decide whether or not you’re cut out for a certain career. Serious extroverts do well as salesmen, waiters in restaurants, managers of hotels and other accommodation, and other positions that involve interactions with large numbers of people. Meanwhile, introverts have a higher tolerance for jobs that involve hours of solitude, including freelance design and some research positions.
This staple interview question actually sheds valuable light on your career choice. No need to craft the perfect recruiter-impressing answer — just think about why you do what you do. Do you work because you strive to make gains and move up in the world? You might enjoy careers with high risk but high yield, such as stockbroking or investing in restaurants. Do you think more about avoiding financial stress or an unfulfilling future? You might be better suited to careers that involve planning and analysis, such as crafting business strategies.
Get to know some people who have established careers in the field that interests you. How do they spend their days? Do they have a healthy work-life balance? Does their workload allow accommodation for loved ones and leisure activities? Remember that if you stick to that career, your lifestyle will probably look similar to theirs in a few years; make sure you’re committing to a future to which you can look forward.
