Hi, everybody and welcome.
My name's Jenn, and I'm a career coach
at Indeed, with over 10 years of experience in career services.
I've personally worked with hundreds of job seekers
in a variety of different roles.
Today, I want to share three questions you can ask yourself
to help you choose a career.
And at the end of the video, I'll
share an additional question you can
ask yourself to make sure you stay on the right path.
You don't want to miss this.
Let's get started.
The first question you can ask yourself
when deciding which career to choose
is, what's important to me?
Choosing a career is an important decision that
begins with self reflection and identifying
what is most valuable to you at a job.
To answer this question thoroughly,
you'll need to perform a self-assessment.
This self-assessment requires you
to think about what matters most to you in areas
like the type of work you'll be doing,
who you want to work with, and what you need from an employer.
This deep dive will take time.
But it's worth the effort to choose a career that's
a good fit for you.
As you do this, write down your notes to preserve your work.
As you move further along in the career planning and job search
process, this is going to allow you to compare job descriptions
and offers to what matters most to you.
To perform a self-assessment, ask yourself
questions that will help you learn more
about your interests, passions, strengths, skills, and even
your personality type.
Some sample questions you can ask yourself include,
what are my key values?
Values can include things like financial stability,
helping others, working independently, and having
a flexible work-life balance.
These are personal core values that you
can compare to a company value later,
to see if you're in alignment.
What soft skills do I possess?
Soft skills are the personal habits and traits
you possess that shape how you work.
These can include skills like leadership, communication,
problem solving, creativity, and adaptability.
Focus on identifying the skills that you want
to use most in your career.
What technical skills do I possess?
Technical skills are hard skills that are obtained
through training or education.
This can include technical knowledge or abilities that are
easily defined and measured.
Some samples might include data analytics, planning, research,
computer programming, and photography.
What natural abilities and strengths do I have?
Think about the things that come easy to you, like maybe
writing, leadership, selling, project management,
communicating and technical problem solving.
If you're not sure what your natural abilities are,
some questions you can ask yourself to find them out
include, what aspects of my work do I receive the most
compliments on?
What am I constantly getting praised on
in performance reviews?
What do my teammates take my advice, guidance or assistance
with?
What's my personality like?
One of those common personality tests people use
to draw connections to personality in work
is the Myers Briggs Type Indicator.
This Career Guide article has more information on MBTI,
if you're interested in learning more.
But to take note of your personality traits
without using an assessment, identify traits like,
are you artistic, outgoing, quiet, organized, commanding,
or loyal?
What am I interested in?
Personal interests can include things like technology,
writing, medicine, design or working with children, animals
or in the public service.
As you move into the later stages of the process
you'll want to look for career opportunities that combine
strengths, skills, and passion.
For example, let's say you're a strong writer who's
passionate about the environment.
You might search for content writing opportunities
at a nonprofit organization that promotes
awareness of climate change.
Now, it can sometimes be hard for us
to recognize this level of detail about ourselves.
If you're not sure about how to answer some of these questions,
ask a trusted friend, family member, or co-worker
to offer some guidance.
An additional exercise I recommend
at this stage of the process is to complete a needs
versus wants assessment.
This activity will help you identify
what you require in a job versus what you would prefer.
This can help you define what your minimum job requirements
are versus perks, benefits, or other qualities that are just
nice to have.
The components of a needs versus wants
assessment include your salary requirements, job
responsibilities, healthcare, work-life balance,
professional development, and company culture.
Once identified, you can compare potential job opportunities
to your assessment, to find the one
that best suits you for your individual wants and needs.
The next question, you can ask yourself to choose a career
is, where can I go next?
After you've gained a better understanding
about what's important to you and your needs in a job,
start researching jobs that sound interesting or desirable.
If there's a job you don't know much about,
write it down and research it.
You may end up finding an interesting career path.
It can also help to remember that job titles don't always
represent the actual job perfectly.
While a title may not seem desirable,
the job description might be a good fit for you.
As you begin listing potential opportunities,
here are some strategies to make the process easier.
Identify interesting industries.
Is there a particular industry that seems appealing to you?
Are you naturally drawn to a particular category of work
like design, fashion, business, or education?
Think about friends, family members,
or acquaintances who have compelling or attractive jobs.
Refer to your interests and passions.
Look back at your self-assessment.
Are there any activities or tasks that make the time
pass quickly?
Do you have an interest in working with children?
If so, you might consider working
in industries that work directly with kids or support work
like education, child care, or social services.
Reach out to your personal network.
Do you have friends or colleagues
with jobs that seem interesting?
Tap into your network to explore jobs they hold
and jobs that they think you might be interested in
or a good fit for.
Conduct informational interviews.
An informational interview is a conversation with someone
who works in a role, industry, or at a company you're
interested in.
This 20- to 30-minute informal discussion
lets you learn more about a professional's
daily experiences and the qualifications that
helped them land the job.
It also gives you the opportunity
to get expert advice, tips on how to find similar positions,
and ways you can prepare for the role or interview.
Review job requirements.
Before choosing a career, you'll need
to know what certification, degree, training,
or other credentials are required.
You might decide that fulfilling certain requirements
isn't a good fit for you, which helps
to narrow down your list of careers
that are much more suitable.
Growth opportunities.
It's important to know if there's an opportunity for you
to grow in your chosen career.
That means the availability you'll
have in the career to advance, gain new skills,
and take on more responsibility.
Now, before I move on, let me know
if this video is helpful by liking and subscribing for more
career and job search advice.
OK.
The last question you can ask yourself to choose a career
is, what do I want next?
It's time to set short-term and long-term career
goals for yourself to create a clearer career path.
Now that you've completed extensive research,
consider where you want to be in one, five, or even 10 years.
To set these goals, ask yourself where
you want to be in that time.
Do you want a particular title, live in a certain location,
or maybe even have a certain lifestyle?
Taking time to think about where you want to be in the future
can help you identify jobs that are
going to be a good long-term fit and help you get there.
Now, thinking about where you want to be in five years
and planning how you're going to get there
might seem really overwhelming at first.
But it doesn't have to be.
Make it easier by first identifying
what your long-term goal is and then break it down
into smaller benchmarks.
To do this, use the information from your research
to establish what your annual benchmarks could be.
These are goals that should help you stay on track to achieve
your overall long-term goal, but they
should be smaller in scope.
So let's say you're an individual contributor who
wants to become a manager in five years.
Your annual goals could be, year 1,
work on a major departmental project.
Year 2, lead a major departmental project.
In year 3, we want to apply or request a promotion
to an associate-level position.
Year 4, we want to lead four or more long-term projects.
And year 5, we're going to apply or request a promotion
to become a manager.
So now that you have your annual goals,
look to break your year 1 goal down even further.
Create a monthly breakdown of the steps
that you've got to take to achieve that goal.
In our example, we want to work on one departmental project
in the first year.
Our monthly breakdown might include, in month 1,
we want to identify a peer that leadership regularly
selects for projects.
And we want to develop the skills, qualifications
and maybe even experience that they have that designates
them for those projects.
In month 2, we want to increase our workload, skill set,
or other project-favorable metrics.
Month 4, we want to speak with our supervisor
about our desire to work on that major project.
Month 6, we're going to discuss our goal
in our annual performance review.
Month 8, we're going to attend at least
one professional development activity, like a Toastmasters
meeting.
In month 10, we're going to apply to work on a project.
And month 11, we're going to work on that major project.
And in month 12, we're going to write a year in reflection,
ask for feedback, and reassess our goals for next year.
So it's important to hold yourself accountable.
Once you've outlined your monthly plan,
set a deadline to achieve each goal.
To learn more about how to create an achievable five-year
plan, be sure to check out this Career Guide article.
And now for the bonus question that you
can ask yourself to make sure that you're on the right path
with starting a new career.
What should I do next?
After you've self reflected, created
a plan for career growth, and identified the type of work
you want to pursue, you'll want to do the following three
key things.
Improve your skills, update your resume,
and search for job opportunities.
To identify which skills are relevant to gain or up-level,
find two or three job postings for a role that interests you.
Then look at the required to preferred skills section.
Identify any gaps in your skill set
that would need to be filled to make you a stronger
candidate for the role.
You can also use free tools like Indeed certifications
to research certification required for the roles
that you're interested in applying for.
You can access Indeed certifications
by clicking on this link.
Now, there are a number of websites like Udemy or Coursera
that offer free or discounted courses on thousands
of different topics that can strengthen
your qualification for a role.
Once completed, be sure to add your newly gained skills
to the certification section on your resume.
You always want to make sure that your resume is
updated to reflect skills relevant to the industry
or the role you're applying for.
Now you're ready to start applying for new opportunities.
Set achievable application goals by applying
for three to five opportunities that you're
qualified for per day, to stay on track
and avoid job search burnout.
Stay organized in your job search
by tracking your applications using Indeed for Chrome.
You can also create your own job application tracker
that includes the link to the posting, company name, role
title, salary, application date, and recruiter
information if available.
Organizing this information makes
following up on the status of your application so much
easier.
You can access the Indeed for Chrome
extension by clicking on this link.
So there you have it.
As a recap, the three questions you
can ask yourself to choose a career
are, what's important to me?
Where can I go next?
What do I want next?
And finally, ask yourself what you should do next.
Take steps to improve your skills, update your resume,
and search for job opportunities in your chosen career.
For more suggestions and strategies
for choosing a career, be sure to check out this Career Guide
article.
I hope that you found this information to be helpful.
While the path to choosing a career is just three steps,
they are intensive and require self-reflection.
Consider this time to be an investment in your career.
Also, career planning is a cyclical process,
and you should be re-evaluating your career growth
periodically.
And don't be dismayed if, once you're in a role
that you thought would be a good fit,
it turns out not to be a good one at all.
Every job has something of value to be gained.
It could be a transferable skill or just ruling out
that the industry or role is not a good fit for you.
That in itself is valuable information to have.
If you thought that this video was helpful,
please share it with others.
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Thank you so much for watching.
And I'll see you next time.