A Career is a life long journey that is developed rather than chosen!
Career development is more than just deciding on a major and what job you want to get when you graduate. It really is a lifelong process, meaning that throughout your life you will change, situations will change, and you will continually have to make career and life decisions.
Career Guidance is a process that will help you to know and understand yourself and the world of work in order to make career, educational, and life decisions.
The goal of Career Guidance is to not only help you make the decisions you need to make now, but to give you the knowledge and skills you need to make future career and life decisions.
Choosing a career—any career—is a unique process for everyone, and for many people the task is daunting. There are so many different occupations to choose from. How do you navigate this complex world of work?
Psychometric tests play a very important role in helping students / professionals choose a field which is in tune with their skills and abilities they possess and their job expectations.
These tests will help in making the right career related decision. This helps students / professionals refocus on their objectives to make an informed choice in choosing their careers and to avoid the risk of change in career path.
The following steps will help you in taking an informed and considered decision regarding your career:
1.Self – Awareness: Getting to know Self
A basic step for Career Planning is to give a serious thought to assessing yourself by taking stock of your needs, interests, your strengths & weaknesses.
- SWOT Analysis
- SWOT uncovers the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities & Threats of an individual. By knowing your strengths, you can focus your efforts on the things you are good at, and by understanding your weaknesses, you know what to avoid, what to improve, and where to get help from people who do these things better.
- Together, your strengths and opportunities help you to identify potential long term career goals. Your weaknesses and threats you face are those things that determine likelihood of success and that need to be solved / worked out, or planned for, to ensure your goal remains achievable.
- Life’s Goal Setting
- The purpose of Life’s Goal Setting is to give you an outline for looking at your life’s goals systematically.
- You should describe as comprehensively as possible your aims and goals in all areas of your life.
- Consider all goals that are important to you, whether they are easy or difficult to attain. Be honest with yourself.
Following are the areas you should consider when setting your life’s goals.
- Career satisfaction
- Status and respect
- Material rewards & possessions
- Personal relationships
- Leisure satisfaction
- Education
- Spiritual growth
2.Identify your Career Interests
- Career Interest Assessment will help you understand which careers might be best fit for you.
- It will help you find careers that you might enjoy.
- Understanding your Top Career Interest will help you identify a career focus and begin your career planning and career exploration process.
3.Identify your Career Motivators
- Career Motivators are Values that are most important to us in our lives and careers.
- Our values are formed in a variety of ways through our life experiences, our feelings and our families.
- In the context of career planning, values generally refer to the things we value in a career.
- Being aware of what we value in our lives is important because a career choice that is in-line with our core beliefs and values is more likely to be a lasting and positive choice.
4.Identify your Skills & Abilities
- If you know what your knowledge, skills and abilities are, you will be able to develop a better career objective.
- Skills and abilities will help you explore and identify ways to enhance and modify your career direction.
5.Identify your Career Path
- A career path is a series of jobs that help you progress towards your goals and objectives.
- It is important to connect your Education, Experience, Career Interests, Career Values, Skills & Abilities with your Career Planning.
- Professional Career Assessment Tools will help you in identifying your Career Path which is in-line and most suited for your Personality, Education, Experience, Career Interests, Career Values and Skills & Abilities.
6.Set Career Goals
- Career goals are targets. Things, positions, situations related to your professional life that you have set your mind on achieving.
- They can be short-term, like getting a promotion or certification, or they can be long-term, like running your own successful business or being an executive at your dream company.
- No matter what they sound like, they should be this sort of prize that motivates you to get going in your career.
For Example:
- What jobs / positions would you like to hold
- What skills, abilities, knowledge you would like to acquire
- What further Education you are planning
- Decide duration of goals
- Immediate goals (in the next 6 months)
- Intermediate goals ( 2 to 5 years)
- Long – term goals (5 years and beyond)
7.Create a Career Action Plan
- At times, these major career goals may seem difficult or even impossible to achieve, but they can be made much more manageable through the use of a career plan.
- The future can provide an extremely uncertain ride, but having a solid career plan in place can serve as a reliable roadmap to get you wherever you would like to go.
- By planning for the future and setting a specific timeline for accomplishing the things you want to achieve, you will find that your career plan is an effective way to ensure you never lose motivation along the way.