We all spend most of our lives at work. Therefore, it’s so important to find the one that pleases you. Being engaged in a profession you love, you can not only earn money, but also fully use your potential, reveal yourself, and find harmony. As experience shows, only those who put their souls and talents into their jobs succeed in reaching the heights. Right from our childhood, we start thinking of how to choose a favorite business? How to find the work of a lifetime?
When looking for a new occupation, people don’t always understand what exactly they want. And it doesn’t matter whether you are just starting your career or have been working for many years. To correctly determine the vector of your professional direction, you need to consider several important points seriously. We offer you some tips from HR experts and simply experienced people who have found themselves, on how to make the right career choice.
Ask Yourself Some Questions
Sometimes, we can’t make the right decision because we just don’t have a clear understanding of our true desires and discontents. The first thing you should do is to examine your mind thoroughly. If you are starting your career path, try to think about the following:
- What occupation makes you happy?
- What do you have talents for and desire to develop?
- Is this occupation well paid for?
- Do you want a calm and measured life, or you’d better change everything, move to another city or go on regular business trips?
- How sociable are you? Do you want to work with people or prefer a minimum of contact with society?
If you are thinking about changing your job, you need more in-depth analysis. To identify the basic requirements for a new vacancy, a person should analyze his current situation at work. Consider what you love and dislike about your job, what you want to change. We advise you to give yourself honest answers to such questions:
- What position do I hold now, and does it suit me? If not, which one would I like?
- Does my salary suit me?
- Does my work location suit me?
- Am I satisfied with my colleagues and the working atmosphere?
- Do I go to work with pleasure?
- Do I see the point in my work, and do I get satisfaction from what I do?
- Does my work harm my health?
Answering these questions helps set your preferences in more detail and significantly refine the criteria for your ideal job.
Listen Only to Yourself
Many of us make a big mistake by neglecting their opinions. Often the public point of view and the opinion of our relatives exerts excessive pressure on us and makes us push our desires to the background.
Even if your family and friends criticize your vision of an ideal career and impose theirs, being well-intentioned, remember that you are a different and independent person. Your preferences may and should differ. Don’t choose an unloved profession as a business of your life just because it is profitable and prestigious in the eyes of others. Listen to yourself, trust your inner voice, and be prepared that you may have to defend your own path in life.
Assessment of Talents and Abilities
When looking for the perfect job, one shouldn’t rely only on fashion and trends. In a certain period of time, almost every profession acquires external attractiveness. This phenomenon is temporary, and it shouldn’t become the main criterion when choosing the work of a lifetime. Moreover, if you don’t have any talents or propensity to it, you are unlikely to succeed in this area.
First of all, it’s necessary to objectively evaluate your abilities, directing all the energy to their disclosure and improvement. It doesn’t mean though that talent is everything, and hard work is nothing, but inner gifts usually come with a feeling of passion for some occupation. Then climbing the career ladder will go much faster without difficulty.
Career Guidance Tests
When thinking about the perfect career choice, one should try tests for career guidance. Various techniques help choose the area closest to the abilities of a person.
At the heart of any test lies the principle of evaluating mental stability and talents that can be implemented in various fields of activity. A person evaluates his own emotions in the performance of a business, both positive and negative or neutral. Thus, you can find the most interesting area for yourself. The techniques allow us to determine the correlation of the level of professional preferences with the level of personal responsibility, which is required when performing a specific job.
But the best way of passing such tests is passing them with psychologists. They can determine which job is the best to choose more accurately. Besides, they set individual tests and draw the right conclusions. And a personal conversation can help identify skills, knowledge, and abilities.
Perspective Professions
So, having stated the main professional areas that are suitable both in ability and in heart, one should select the most profitable of them. You can find a list of the most relevant and promising professions. Now that you know what you are most inclined to, it’s time to become more pragmatic. After all, it would be best if you choose such a profession that will always allow you to earn your living.
Here you can follow two ways: choose careers that have always been and will stay in demand (such as accountants, economists, or lawyers) or get acquainted with specialties that, according to forecasts, will soon be needed (like alternative energy or nanotechnology).
As we can see, the right career choice always means a balance between job satisfaction and decent earnings. The main rule for everyone who is looking for a professional field is not to lean in one direction, forgetting about the other. Hungry life, as well as hated wealth, can’t bring happiness. Try to honestly understand yourself, consult with specialists, ask advice from knowledgeable people. And then your ideal career will find you!