Whether you’re about to leave school or university, or have been working for decades, you’ve probably asked yourself this question at some point:
“How am I meant to figure out what job or career is right for me?”
We all want to spend our 90,000 hours – the average length of a career – doing something that we enjoy, are good at, and think is a worthwhile use of our time.
But unfortunately, for most of us, answering this question can feel like an elusive and impossible task.
And understandably so: with so many jobs and careers available, how are we meant to know which is right for us? It’s not like we can systematically test them all.
The good news is, you don’t have to test them all.
What’s more, there’s actually just 3 key steps you need to take to figure out what career or job is right for you.
We’ll come onto these steps later.
But first, let’s discuss what typically goes wrong.
What goes wrong
Unfortunately, most people take the wrong approach when it comes to choosing their career.
The result?
They go round in circles, never find clarity on what they truly want, and start in jobs that aren’t right for them.
Ouch.
The conventional approach has 3 critical flaws:
People only ever consider a very small pool of careers – maybe maximum 10 or 15 – usually based on their personal knowledge or from chats with friends, family and recruiters. In doing so, they cut off viable career routes from the outset.
People’s decision-making process for choosing a career is patchy. Even when people think they’ve been thoughtful, they often haven’t considered important factors like their values, or whether the day-to-day tasks they’ll do actually give them energy. Most of the time, people decide on a career based off very limited information and gut feel. Then they start the job and realise it’s not right for them.
People waste their time reading job descriptions, updating their CV and writing cover letters, before they know what they truly want to do. A certain amount of testing, learning and researching can be invaluable - it’s true - but many people focus on applying for jobs because it feels like they’re “making progress”, when in fact they’re just getting closer to landing a job they don’t really want. (Oh dear.)
I can hear you screaming: “Surely there’s a better way?”
Thankfully, there is.
How to get it right
There are 3 key steps you need to take to figure out what career or job is truly right for you.
Step 1: Look inward
It may sound counter-intuitive, but the key to finding the right job or career is to forget about jobs and careers for a few weeks. Instead, look inwards.
You have a huge amount information available in your head about what career is right for you. It’s untapped and waiting to be accessed. You just have to ask yourself the right questions.
The six key questions you need to ask yourself are:
1. What are my values?
2. What is my career vision?
3. What are the skills I most enjoy using?
4. What are my unique strengths?
5. What topics or fields fascinate me? (This informs the sector or field you should work in)
6. What are my practical expectations from a job? (e.g. salary, company culture, location)
Your answers to these questions create what we (at my 90,000) call a “dream job description”.
If you did this job, you’d be energised, happy, fulfilled, motivated, and then some!
(For tips on how to answer each of these questions, please read the blog 6 Questions To Discover Your Dream Job.)
Step 2: Go broad
The next step is to use online tools to come up with as many job and career ideas as possible. This way, you’re not limited by your own knowledge of what’s out there.
There are some great tools out there, like:
https://www.ucas.com/ucas/after-gcses/find-career-ideas/explore-jobs
Don’t be fooled by the URL. This website has helped business leaders to change careers. It’s wonderfully laid out and is very intuitive to use.
An important note.
At this stage, you’re not evaluating the ideas. You’re simply writing down any career ideas that resonate with you or closely match your dream job description.
Step 3: Filter down
Once you have 30 or 40 career ideas, you can evaluate them. But against what criteria?
You guessed it.
Your dream job description! This is your yardstick. Your comparison point against which you can evaluate all career ideas. No more “gut feel” and guessing.
Chances are, no job or career idea can quite live up to your dream job description. And that’s to be expected. After all, it is your dream job.
But, there will be a few career options that are an 80% or 90% match.
Through this evaluation process, you’ll identify which career is the best overall match to your dream job description. This is the career you should pursue!