Seven Strokes to Making a Career Choice

So let me get right to it and save you the trouble of reading through a prologue!

Just a heads-up – if your child is in the 10th, 12th or doing his/ her graduation you might want them to not just read but work on this. This is also a good place to start for career transition.

1. Identify your work personality: John Holland’s theory of career related personality types is a good place to start. It is both meaningful and a good guide. Holland’s RIASEC theory helps people identify themselves as having either Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprise or Conventional personality types.

 

 How do you identify your work personality? Well, there are paid and free assessments. The Strong’s Interest Inventory ® (SII) is a paid psychometric assessment that derives your work personality based on your interests and also helps you identify possible career options.

 

Reality has also made me realise that a number of people hesitate to invest in psychometric assessments for career development. An equal number, if not more, who would like to take up such assessments cannot afford it.

 

I recently came across this website that helps you identify your work personality, however, though this is not a psychometric assessment it can be fairly accurate. (Because you are still the one who is answering questions either way!) So, follow the instructions and click on each part of the Hexagon and see if you can identify your personality. You could follow the link – https://career.missouri.edu/career-interest-game/

2. Identify your interests: List down all the possible areas in different spheres that interest you. You are likely to come up with a wide array in your list. Your list of interests could read like –

I’m interested in photography

I’m interested in learning

I’m interested in Physics

I’m interested in sports

I’m interested in people…

and the list could go on.

Alternatively, you could use the ‘Can you?’, ‘Like to?’ and ‘Hobbies’ section of the Career Interests Game to come up with your list of interests.

3. Identify your Skills: By skills I mean your ability to do something. Skills can be developed at any age. The reason we consider existing skills is because they can sometimes tell us more about what interests. We begin to excel in that which we enjoy. What you would want to focus on here is not skills you would like to have but skills that you possess. If you are good at artwork – look beyond the obvious to identify skills – yes drawing and painting are valuable skills but so is observation, attention to detail, objective-focused… I hope you are getting my point. Identifying skills you possess, may at times require you to dig deeper into the skill itself.

 

Identify a minimum of 5-10 skills. Make sure you have atleast 3 examples for each skill that  you choose to select. For example: if you have repeatedly experienced the advantage of speaking with confidence and clarity, you can say that you have good communication skills. Just because you can talk or speak with confidence alone does not mean you have good communication skills.

 

If you are doing this exercise with your child, you might experience that some children have strong identifiable skill-set and with some children this may not be the case. Your child may fall in either one of this categories.  Development of skills can often be related to opportunities and personal traits. Do not fret! Focus on what your child really does well or what he/she thinks that they are doing well. Build on his/ her skill set from there.

4. Identify your Knowledge Areas: Ask yourself what fields of knowledge or which career fields interest you. Marks cards, television shows watched, hobbies pursued, topics of conversation you enjoys, articles you enjoy reading can help you in arriving at this list. Consider this – if you were given a catalog of courses which section would you skim over first… a closer look at some areas is likely to give you your list of subject matter interests. You could also reference https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outline_of_academic_disciplines.  Pick your top 10 list of Knowledge Interests. If 10 is too much pick 3-5 even that should help.

5. Throw in a few extras:

Although I call it a few extras, I find some of these foundational. The sad reality is we very often do not take what is truly important and defining as serious. This is actually where you would start:

  1. Write down your mission statement
  2. List down your core (non-negotiable) values
  3. Write down the answers to:
    1. Why do you want to work?
    2. What do want to accomplish from your work?
  4. List down your life priorities, expectations, advantages and limitations

6.  List down your career options:

You can get a huge list over here. You might want to use a combination of the techniques mentioned below to come up with your list of career options. Let me forewarn you that this exercise can be time-consuming. Log in to onetonline.org. This site has a database of  jobs with a detailed job description for each job. To search possible career options:

    1. Type your work personality (RIASEC). You could type one code or the combination. O-net will give you a list of jobs aligning with your code. Skim through the job titles and click on the ones that interest you.
    2. Type in knowledge areas that are in your top pick. See what O-net gives you. Once again, skim through the job titles and click on the ones that interest you. Check the RIASEC code (You’ll find it as Interest code).
    3. Type in skill areas that are in your top pick. See what O-net gives you. Once again, skim through the job titles and click on the ones that interest you. Check the RIASEC code (You’ll find it as Interest code).
    4. You should be able to list out your career options from this search

7. Prepare your Career Map: Career Map is a term that I use here to indicate charting a course that defines where you want to go, how you are going to get there and what are the supplies you need for the journey. Career Assessment – paid or free will not absolve you of this step. For example, an SII ® will give you all possible career options related to your code. But # 7 is completely your doing. No assessment will do that for you.

Remember, no career assessment will give you a ‘one career for you’ response. You are capable of doing many things. Yet not everything interests you. Building your career based on your interests, values and priorities is a good place to start. It’s as simple. But if every project around you require strategising, planning, analysing and developing… how much more your life or the life of your child?

Note to Parents:

This was also written with focus on parents whose children are in the 10th or 12th and need career/course direction. While you might see your child have a wide (maybe even haphazard or insensible) array of careers or even have no insight at all into what he or she wants to do , it would help helping your child make a course choice that’s provide wider scope for movement later on keeping in mind his/ her interests, abilities and subject interest.

It’s best to do the entire career exploration exercise slowly. Career Exploration require thinking. Don’t rush. Set apart sometime maybe an hour everyday to just think about your life and career. I encourage women whether working or not to do this activity. A career need not always be about being in the corporate sector.