How to choose a career

Throughout your working life, you’ll continually devise a strategy to manage your learning and advancement: a career plan.

This four stages are designed to assist you in visualizing the steps you need to take and the methods by which you need implement these steps in order to reach your career goals

The four stages of a career plan are:

1. identify your skills and interests
2. explore career ideas
3. make a decision
4. set achievable goals.

1. Identify your skills and interests

Making a career decision is important. You’ll spend a large portion of your life at work, so you should make good choices if you want to like what you do, stay motivated, and reach your full potential. You must first understand who you are. This entails evaluating your interests and values as well as your skill set. To determine whether your knowledge and skill set are a suitable fit for the position you’d like to have, it’s critical to recognize your range of abilities. Knowing what abilities you possess also makes it easier to identify any gaps that might need to be filled in order to reach your professional objectives.

Enumerate all of your specialized and transferable talents, along with instances of when you’ve used them. As you reduce of alternatives available to you in the next stage, and honest evaluation of your abilities, values, and interest will be helpful

If choosing a career has left you feeling lost, start by asking yourself the following questions:

• What am I good at?
• What are my interests, motivations and values?
• What did I most enjoy at university?
• What kind of lifestyle do I want?
• What do I want from my career?
• What is important to me?

2. Explore career ideas

This is all about focusing your possibilities by doing study on the employment market and career paths that pique your interest. Investigate the local, national, and international employment markets to learn about the major trends in the industry you have in mind for your dream career. This will assist you in learning about additional job options and identifying roles that are growing or shrinking.

3. Make a decision

You can now begin making decisions. Integrate your knowledge of yourself with what you’ve learned about the graduate employment market and your possibilities. Choose the role that most interests you from your list of job ideas, and then choose one or two backup options in case you are unable to pursue your initial choice.

4. Set achievable goals

Your career plan should include a breakdown of your short-, medium-, and long-term goals as well as how you’ll get there and what steps you need to take when. Review your progress often, particularly following the accomplishment of each short-term objective. In case your circumstances alter, you should also create a backup plan for your professional development. Draw a number of different routes to your long-term objective, taking into account how you’ll get past potential obstacles at each stage, such as training requirements.