SEE THE FUTURE

                 

 

 

Thinking About a New Career? Explore Your Options

Career exploration is the second stage of the career planning process. You will begin to explore careers after completing the first stage of the career planning process, self assessment. During that stage you took inventory of your values, interests, personality and skills. You should have come away from the self assessment stage with a list of careers that are appropriate for you based on what you found out about yourself. Now it's time to learn about the careers on your list so you can begin to make that list shorter. Your goal is to eventually narrow it down to the one career you want to pursue. Try not to eliminate any career from your list until you do, at least, a little bit of research about it. Even if you think you know about an occupation, you may be surprised by what you learn.

Start With the Basics

At first you will just want to gather some basic information about each career on your list. Let's assume you have a list of ten occupations. You can do some preliminary research which will allow you to narrow down your list before you do more in depth research. When exploring careers you will need basic information such as job descriptions, employment statistics, job outlook, earnings and educational and training requirements. For basic information, use these resources:

• Career Briefs
• Careers By Field
• Additional Career Information Resources

After reading up on the careers on your list you will find that several of them don't appeal to you. For example, you may decide that you wouldn't enjoy the job duties of a particular career or that you can't (or choose not to) meet its requirements. The earnings may be lower than you thought or its outlook doesn't look promising. In the end, you will be left with a list with no more than about three careers on it.

Delve Deeper

After you narrow down your list of career choices your research will become more involved. You will want to learn what working in the field is really like, at least as much as you can without actually working in it. The best way to do this is to talk to people who do.

1. Utilize your network to compile a list of people who work in your field or fields of interest.
2. Set up informational interviews with them.
3. See if any of your contacts are willing to let you follow him or her around at work for a day.

After your in depth research, you should be able to determine which career is a good match for you. Try not to get frustrated if, at this point, you can't make a decision. Continue to do more research until you can comfortably make a decision.

Goals or objectives development

The career management process begins with setting goals/objectives. A relatively specific goal/objective must be formulated. This task may be quite difficult when the individual lacks knowledge of career opportunities and/or is not fully aware of their talents and abilities. However, the entire career management process is based on the establishment of defined goals/objectives whether specific or general in nature. Utilizing career assessments may be a critical step in identifying opportunities and career paths that most resonate with someone. Career assessments can range from quick and informal like those on CareerBuilder or may be more indepth like those such as Myers-Briggs and CareerLeader supported assessments found on MyPath. Regardless of the ones you use, you will need to evaluate them. Most assessments found today for free (although good) do not offer an in-depth evaluation.
The time horizon for the achievement of the selected goals or objectives - short term, medium term or long term - will have a major influence on their formulation.

1. Short term goals (one or two years) are usually specific and limited in scope. Short term goals are easier to formulate. Make sure they are achievable and relate to your longer term career goals.
2. Intermediate goals (3 to 5 years) tend to be less specific and more open ended than short term goals. Both intermediate and long term goals are more difficult to formulate than short term goals because there are so many unknowns about the future.
3. Long term goals (more than 5 years), of course, are the most fluid of all. Lack of life experience and knowledge about potential opportunities and pitfalls make the formulation of long term goals/objectives very difficult. Long range goals/objectives, however, may be easily modified as additional information is received without a great loss of career efforts because of experience/knowledge transfer from one career to another.
4. Making career choices and decisions – the traditional focus of careers interventions. The changed nature of work means that individuals may now have to revisit this process more frequently now and in the future, more than in the past.
5. Managing the organizational career – concerns the career management tasks of individuals within the workplace, such as decision-making, life-stage transitions, dealing with stress etc.
6. Managing 'boundaryless' careers – refers to skills needed by workers whose employment is beyond the boundaries of a single organisation, a workstyle common among, for example, artists and designers.
7. Taking control of one's personal development – as employers take less responsibility, employees need to take control of their own development in order to maintain and enhance their employability.