If you are struggling to choose your career, you are not alone! Many teenagers find it difficult and it’s not surprising! It’s a difficult task when you have little life experience to work from yet there’s long lasting consequences from your decision. The good news is that there are many ways to find information and there is help at hand.
In this step-by-step article, I will show you how you can work out how you can choose your career. Over time and with some research you will find the right direction for you.
Step 1 – Understand your strengths.
What are your favourite subjects? Get into the detail of what and which topic you like. For example, what part of biology are you particularly interested in? Why does that interest you so much?
What hobbies do you enjoy and regularly do? What skills do you use for those hobbies? For example, if you love to play football, what skills do you use? Yes, you use your physical skills, but you probably use some analytical skills to read the game, anticipating the next play and also team building and relationship skills to get your best performance as a team.
Ask your parents or other family members what they think your skills are, especially soft skills. Are you caring? Are you good at organising or are you very logical? Ask your close friends the same question, but only those that you trust to give you an honest answer. What other skills do have?
Useful tip: Get a notebook dedicated to your career search. Use this to write down all your thoughts. Over time you can develop those thoughts or eliminate them if you have changed your mind.
Step 2 – What are your passions and life aspirations?
By following your passions in life, study or work become much easier even when you have tough days. If you are working in a job that you are not invested in, every day becomes so much harder. To find out what you might like to do, here are some questions you can ask yourself:
What motivates you to work hard?
Are you money-oriented or do you tend towards vocation type activities?
Do you like the outdoors/reading/computers?
Are you practical and love using your hands to create something or are you more academic and love to read? Do you love information and knowledge?
How do you see your life panning out? Do you want a career to support your lifestyle or does a career mean everything to you?
There are no right or wrong answers, you are observing facts about you to put to good use.
Write down all these learnings in your notebook!
Step 3 – How do you want to achieve your career?
Most parents in Ireland want to see their kids go to college and get a good education but is this the right option for you? There are plenty of other options to get where you want to go.
You can consider taking a practical route to your career such as an apprenticeship. Modern apprenticeships provide excellent qualifications including Honours Degrees and Masters Degrees but do not cost the same as higher level education. You also get to earn as you learn while gaining valuable work experience. Traditional craft apprenticeships such as carpentry or mechanics lead to very fulfilling jobs that pay well and are always in high demand.
You may want to study full time but are not ready for more study yet. A year or two working while living at home would give you that extra time to decide on your future career. You will gain plenty of life and professional skills while working that those full-time students are yet to get. It will help you understand more about yourself by the time you choose to go back to study (if that is what you want to do!)
Another option is to do a Post Leaving Cert Course (PLC). There are many courses to choose from with plenty of topics that may interest you. You will get a level 5 or 6 certificate which you can use to build on further for a degree.
By considering all options available, you will get insights into paths that will best suit you and your career and life goals.
3 Tips to help the process:
Tip 1 – Have plenty of discussion with your parents and friends using them as a sounding board for your thoughts. Avoid taking their opinions as instructions. Consider their advice but only use it if it feels right.
Tip 2 – Understand that it is a process and takes time. Don’t expect a conclusive decision straight away. We all like to go away from deep conversations to reflect about what we have learned.
Tip 3 – Research! Use all tools available to you to understand what options you can take. Use Careers Portal or Qualifax to look at different courses but make sure you look at the detail. What subjects will you study and what careers will open to you on completion of that course? Do the subjects and careers match your interests and skills that you have learned about yourself in Step 1 & 2 above? Write down in your notebook any course you find that you would consider doing as it can be difficult to find it again.
External Expertise
If having conversations with your family or friends is too difficult for you, or you are still not making progress, external expertise is a good alternative. For some people, it is easier to be more open with strangers than it is with family.
You can avail of guidance from your careers counsellor in school or privately with careers coaches outside of school. However, make sure that the person you work with listens to you and is not trying to push you down the wrong route. They should be facilitating you to make your own decision.
Ultimately, it is your life, and the final decision is yours. You should be happy with that choice.
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