- Introduction
- Understand your skillset
- Your Personality matters
- What are your Objectives?
- What about money and growth?
Introduction
The question we constantly face when we are growing up is, “What do you want to become in your life.” The answers used to change continuously during different ages. During those times, answering that question was pretty straightforward without much thought process. However, once we reach the stage where we have to make the decision about our career, it becomes more challenging.
When we grow up, some of us have a clear passion for supporting family and environmental conditions to pursue a career related to the passion. But for most of us, our higher education or career path is accidental. This will create a serious question if a particular job is suitable for us. This question needs to be asked at the beginning of an education program or a career path. At times, this question may slowly develop into a lack of fulfillment and cause anxiety when we pursue a particular job. Doing something which is not suitable for our character, real potential, and personality is going to be a burden over some time. So, it is essential to think seriously about what kind of jobs would be suitable for one in the long run.
This article tries to answer the important question of finding out the suitable career options for any job aspirant at any stage. A fresh graduate or someone who wants to switch jobs may find this article useful for a better understanding of oneself and the job market.
Courses and Job Opportunities after B.Sc.
Understand your skillset
Every job requires some skill set. In modern times, the skill array for any given job profile has become complex with multiple areas of expertise. So, when you are thinking about a suitable career, you should first ask yourself, what are the skills that you have. During this process, you would be thinking about your major skills like coding, designing, or marketing. Beyond that, you need to look more broadly at your capabilities. Ask yourself what the things in which you can consider yourself good are. It may be your ability to communicate with strangers or your ability to search the web effectively. Prepare a list with every single small activity in which you do good. According to any employer, you are nothing but a collection of skills. So carefully find out all the skills and talents that you have. At present, various transferable skills are getting much attention in the recruitment arena, and you need to find out your transferable skills and the kind of job roles in which they will be adding more value. The ability to manage social media accounts and being familiar with digital marketing is an important skill that may make you suitable for specific job profiles. Similarly, finding your expertise in all the skills will give you a clearer picture of suitable jobs for you in the long run. Most of the time, those would have been explicitly specified in the job description given by the organizations, but there could be occasions where you need to comprehend them by your own analysis and experience.
Your Personality matters
We all would agree to the fact that everyone is unique. Understanding our personality will play a vital role in finding a suitable job for us. Depending upon the situation, you may ask several questions yourself to find out your personality and suitable job according to that. For example, ask yourself if you are a people person or not. How much you are interested in connecting with your customers, colleagues, and public is an important part of any job. If you think interacting with people is something energizing you and you have the knack of keeping people engaged by your communication, then you are a people person. Your presence will be valued, and you will be able to resolve conflicts quickly, and you can be a good team player. You may find jobs in which you deal with several people that give you long-term satisfaction rather than jobs in which you need to work long hours inside a cubicle without many interactions.
Another important personality trait is the things you care about. For example, you may worry a lot about environmental issues, health care and education of poor children, agricultural reforms, or anything similar to that. When your curiosity and awareness about certain things are deeper, it is always recommended to ensure that your job search is aligned with that.
So irrespective of our utilization of skills and other positive aspects in a particular job, if there is no personal connection and we do not care about the consequences of our work, there will be dissatisfaction after some time when you believe strongly that you are working for a good cause and positive impact in society, the best of your talent will be delivered in the job.
What are your Objectives?
The ultimate objective of pursuing a job is broader than monetary benefits. We spend most of our time in our prime life doing our jobs. Thus, success in life is mostly defined with the help of success in the job. You have to ask yourself what is ‘success’ according to your preferences. You may just forget the ideas you heard from your parents, teachers, and friends and think about them for yourself. What is important to you as a career? The answer will be your dream job. The dream job will be something where the difference in the quality of life between a typical working day and a vacation day will be very minimal. The location in which you work, the job profile, schedule of the work, freedom in work, the scope for learning, and the kind of people you get to work with all combined will decide how best your job is.
When you have more family commitments and expect to spend quality time with your friends, you should be looking for a job with flexible work arrangements. If you can work independently, you may be able to find a job where less amount of team interaction is expected. So, list down all these criteria, analyze one by one, prioritize them as most important, important, less essential, and ‘nice to have. By observing the list, you will be able to filter wisely the jobs that are suitable to you.
What about money and growth?
Ensuring a secure and stable income is the most important aspect of doing any job. And even if all the other factors are negative, the majority of our people do the job just for the sake of managing their needs, monthly bills, and debts. So, it is a crucial element when you think about the suitability of a job for your life. When people say you must follow your passion, it is harder to experiment with that in real life because of practical considerations. People always have a tough time deciding between the jobs they want to do and what they believe will make them wealthy. The decision has to be taken carefully considering the short, medium, and long-term objectives in the career. If you are in the very beginning of your career and the job is only a temporary arrangement before starting your own business in the next few years, you should be getting a job with maximum income. Looking for job satisfaction may not help at this stage. However, if you are in the later stage of your career and you have already made a considerable amount of wealth for your requirements, you may look for a job that satisfies the other factors that give you peace of mind. Beyond this context, there are always possibilities to pursue our dream job that we love, which pays us well too. Finding out these possibilities is not harder, but a constant and consistent search will be required, accompanied by skill development routines. If you are pursuing your dream job that fails to satisfy your monetary expectations, you may always find other part-time job profiles that can help you. In this internet era doing multiple jobs at once has become quite possible.
Understating the difference between a job and a career is always insisted in the beginning stage of a career. The focus always has to be in the long term instead of benefits obtained in the short-term scope. The jobs that could provide higher growth potential are always better to choose. The challenges in the day-to-day tasks, availability of mentors, career path promised by the job are more important than the other factors like convenience and salary. So, the growth factor is to be considered seriously when we decide if a job is suitable or not.
Conclusion
Thinking about all the parameters discussed in this article will give a lot of ideas, and they should be discussed with experienced people to validate your conclusions. Professional networks like LinkedIn and other social media platforms have made it easier to connect with people. They can be utilized to get their suggestions and to learn their experiences which eventually help you to get a complete picture of the jobs that will be suitable for you in the long term.
