Making good career choices
In the next of a series of articles about careers, the Career Development Centre write about making the right choices for you.
The idea of a clearly defined career path and job for life is outdated. Change is now the only certainty in life. The challenge is to manage this constant change. The majority of graduates will be working on average 8 hours a day, 5 days a week for 40-50 years.
Imagine yourself 40 years from now. Has your career been one which gave you personal satisfaction and played to your strengths and abilities? Did you realise your potential? Did you forge a path that was rewarding and successful in terms as you personally defined them?
Career is our journey through life; an expression of what is meaningful and important to us. It is a series of paid and unpaid experiences and can include our roles as student, worker, citizen, parent, spouse, etc. Career satisfaction usually comes from the interplay between ‘being’ (sense of self) and ‘doing’ (the expression of self).
The process of good career decision making includes - knowing yourself (what motivates you); knowing what’s out there (where the opportunities are), and choosing to pursue a particular role. Making the right decisions can determine the direction of our lives, and self-awareness is a fundamental part of this process.
Being self-aware means understanding your skills, strengths, abilities, personality, values, motivations and external influences and how they impact on career decisions. Informed choices are usually based on an appreciation of what you can do and what you want to achieve.
If you would like to find out more and get help with your own careers decision, try some FREE psychometrics tools, visit the Career Development Centre website.