How to work out what career might suit you

The age old question of how do I decide what I want to do foxes many of us and if you were expecting easy answers then I will disappoint and say there probably isn’t one sure fire way to work this out.

Everyone has their own set of individual talents, skills, interests and knowledge and all of us could probably do a whole host of different jobs. Which doesn’t help that much either but at least allows us to consider options.  The good news is with a bit of applied thinking and research taking steps towards what you want to do for the first ‘career type job’ can be achieved. Remember whatever you decide on initially you don’t have to stay there forever  ( nor do you have to with any job ) and you can always be learning and gaining skills for the next job. So no experience is ever wasted.

Anyway here are some ideas to get your started in this process.

If you are on a vocational degree then obviously that can suggest ideas …   However I guess if you are reading this you are either on a degree without a specific career path or you are on a vocational degree but you are thinking of other options, perhaps you are already exploring other avenues and you are curious about what else there is.

Remember that alongside the careers directly related to your degree there are jobs where a degree in a certain field would be useful and also remember  a large proportion of graduate jobs are for graduates of any subject.

So that can leave  a huge amount to choose from…

A vast array of graduate employers needs a  vast array of skills.

So break down your own individual ‘skill set’ and think about these in priority order. Also think about preferences, so your own likes and dislikes. Here are some ideas to get your started.

• Are you someone who prefers to work alone or in a team or maybe  you are happy with a mixture of both?
• Remember some people belong to multiple teams  and  may work alongside people doing the same job or a range of different jobs.
• Do you want to  design, develop and /or manufacture a product? What does that look like to you? Would you like to use innovative skills or techniques? Maybe be involved  in research and develop.
• Do you want to help others in some way, advise , support, treat, perhaps teach? If its teaching, is that to young children, older students, or even adult learners ? What subject/s would you teach?
• Are you the sort of person who can promote or sell goods or services? Are you motivated by targets and can you achieve these and even go beyond what’s needed?
• Are you a logical thinker? Can you work with processes and systems? Even design them?
• Are you someone who enjoys presenting?

We can carry on with this but if you have got this far then its probably worth you going to the Prospects Quiz on the home page of the prospects website.   This more extensive list of questions will yield results of around 20 job profiles which is a lot easier than looking at 400 plus .

https://www.prospects.ac.uk/

Give that a go ( maybe even over the upcoming break) and if you would like to discuss your findings then feel free to book an appointment with one of our Career Development Advisers based at all the university campuses.

https://www.brighton.ac.uk/careers/contact-us/index.aspx

 

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