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What job? What career?

Written by: Lisette Howlett

Article Overview: Considering what job and career path you want to follow can be a potentially daunting decision. Careers advisors and even friends can help with this though ultimately you have to make the choice. This article will help you in considering these employment options and coming to a decision.

What job? What career?

Whilst only you can decide what you want to do, others can help you with information to inform your thinking and decision making process.

The first thing you should do is try to be unstructured and free thinking. Do not limit your horizons with early analytical thinking. What do you like to do, what do you really dislike doing, what are you good at, what do people come to you for help with. These and questions like this will help you think about the possibilities, the things that you would like to include in your future career and the things that you would like to avoid. Think also about constraints and goals - such as mobility preferences, the desire to work abroad etc Think also about the skills you wish to use at work, your feelings about further study (but remember that these might change!), which working environments appeal to you, the sort of lifestyle you want and so on.

The second thing you should do is some structured research and investigation into the options and opportunities.

You can then start to use this information to identify matching jobs, courses and potential employers.

• Talk to a careers adviser in your university careers service.
• Make full use of the information on this website
• Check if your university careers service offers psychometric tests. These can help with your self-analysis. Numerical, Verbal, Spatial and Abstract reasoning tests can highlight your skills and strengths. They also provide practice for some employers' selection processes. We also offer online tests here.
• Your college or university careers service will have books and information
• Try out one of those careers interest tools - but remember they can be skewed towards high availability areas (they certainly were in my day!)
• Try to get some interview practice even if it is only telephone interview practice
• See if you can use you vacation time to get some work experience or work shadowing in the area that you are interested (unpaid and short term is easier to find)
• Think about other things you can do that will be relevant and useful when you are preparing your CV
• It can be useful to look at online job boards and recruitment agency sites but be aware that not all jobs are advertised, especially graduate ones.

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Article Tags: abstract reasoning tests, analytical thinking, careers adviser, constraints, decision making process, free thinking, further study, high availability, horizons, interview practice, li li, possibilities, practice li, psychometric tests, selection processes, self analysis, telephone interview, university careers service, vacation time, working environments



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