Making A Career Choice When You Have No Idea What To Do

By Author: Ket Ledford
Total Articles: 99
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With hundreds of career options and the number increasing day by day, how can you go about making a career choice when you have absolutely no clue about your own preferences? This article provides some tips on how you can arrive at this decision.

Assess Yourself

Understand your preferences, interests, skills, knowledge, personality traits, etc. Use self assessment or career tests available for free on the internet or approach good career counselors to help with the same. This will help you to come up with a list of occupations that would be appropriate for you.

Explore occupations

Of the list of occupations that have been provided to you, shortlist those that you would like to explore. This list should not contain more than 10 occupations. Now, pick up each occupation and using newspapers or internet, search for job descriptions, educational requirements, career path, salary, and other information on the same. Based on the information gathered, check your list again and check out those occupations that do not seem to be a good choice.

Informational interviews

The best way to learn about ...
... an occupation is to find a person who is actually into that occupation and get details from him/her. This is known as informational interview. The firsthand knowledge and expert tips and advice on starting a career in that field can prove to be very helpful not only in making a decision but for future purposes if you chose that career. Again, further shortlist your occupation list based on the information gathered.

Training

There are companies that allow you to work on a stipend, during summer holidays or even just to explore a field. Check out the availability of such options in your area.