5 Non-Standard Tips for Choosing a Career Path

BY MELISSA BURNS

Do not despair if you’ve just graduated and have no idea what to do with your life. There are millions of people in the same position as you are now, because choosing a career path is very difficult. This is a very important decision that would have a huge impact on your future, so you mustn’t rush it.

Instead, you can try various approaches that would help you understand yourself better and pick the right career.

How to Choose Your Career Path

Understand if you are a promotion or prevention motivated person

As career is something that would most likely define the rest of your life, you need to choose something that matches your personality type. There are many specialized tests that can help you determine your most prominent character traits, but each of them is limited.

When choosing a career, the most important thing to understand is what your main motivation is. All people can be divided into one of the two following types:

• Prevention-focused motivation.
  These people are driven by the need to feel secure. They would do best in stable jobs as they aren’t ambitious and don’t like taking risks. They excel in planning and management.
• Promotion-focused motivation.
  These are the people, who strive to work fast, come up with creative ideas, and take risks. Their driving force is the reward, and it doesn’t matter whether it’s a promotion or the feeling of achievement for completing the job.

Understand what kind of motivation you have and then use your hobbies and interests as the basis for choosing a career.

Use the help of specialized portals

The Internet offers a variety of career guidance tools and aptitude tests that can help you choose the right path for your future. They can help you choose the right path for your future. It would be best to use the help of a large portal dedicated to this matter as opposed to a website that only offers a few tests, because they also provide the services of advisors and information about various work and study options.

Quite often, students don’t know how many opportunities are open to them, and specialized career guide portals rectify this situation.

Talk to people from different walks of life

You can read a great number of booklets and articles about a profession, but only a person who has actually ‘been there and done that’ would have a complete understanding of it. Therefore, you should try to find experts in every profession you consider and discuss their work directly.

These people will give you valuable insights and can help you decide whether this job is indeed for you. They may also offer good advice on how to start establishing yourself in this field.

Take a sabbatical and travel

A sabbatical is a year without studies. In simple terms, it’s a ‘break’ that you might need to understand where you stand in this world and what you want to achieve. Students are often exhausted by the final school exams and they cannot make major decisions due to stress.

Traveling for a year will provide you with new experiences and help find where to go with your life.

Hire a career coach or, at least, talk to a counselor

These people are specially trained professionals who can help you understand yourself and your needs. They have the knowledge, experience, and skills to assist people in your situation and would definitely offer good advice and suggestions on how to determine what would be best for you not only now but also in the future.

Try Multiple Approaches When Choosing a Career Path

Choosing a career path is never easy, so you should use all help you can get. In the best case scenario, you should try each of the techniques mentioned above and compare the results. Just be sure to remember that whatever you choose must make you happy.

Melissa Burns graduated from the faculty of Journalism of Iowa State University in 2008. Nowadays she  is an entrepreneur and independent journalist. Her sphere of interests includes startups, information technologies and how these ones may be implemented.