« Back | Home » Career tips to take you far

PREPARING FOR YOUR CAREER

Choosing a career is one of the most important decisions that you will make in your life. Although most people make several career changes in their lifetime, the first career decision you make will have an impact on various aspects of your life. It will, for example determine the direction in which you will develop skills, the type of organisation in which you will start working and the income that you will earn. In choosing a career, a number of steps have to be followed.

Step 1: Know yourself (self-knowledge)
Develop a true understanding of yourself in terms of your skills (what you are good at), your educational background (what qualifications you have), your interests (what you enjoy doing), your values (what would give you satisfaction in your career) and your personality (what kind of person are you).

Step 2: Identify your options (career knowledge)
Gathering information and researching careers.

Step 3: Evaluate career options
Examine the information you have collected, identify what additional resources and information you will need and explore and use new information.

Step 4: Select a career option
Based on the information you have gathered and analysed, you should now be able to choose one of the career options.

Step 5: Design an action plan
You can now begin developing and implementing a plan of action. Determine what information or resources you need to complete each step of your plan of action, identify the obstacles to implementing your career decision and how you can overcome them and lay out the steps you should take to implement your career decision. These steps may refer to getting the required training and applying for financial aid.

We need to examine the career fields available and, finally, we need to know what qualifications to aim for that will give us entry to our chosen career and help us grow and succeed through each subsequent stage as we progress.

Information kindly supplied by FASSET

Know yourself - click here to find out more!

Career tips to take you far

Job, career, or vocation?

• If you have a job, you should earn enough money to survive.
• To enter a career, you normally need a formal qualification, and then you will have opportunities to develop your knowledge, skills, and experience as you progress from stage to stage.
• A vocation is something you feel you must follow because you enjoy it and because you feel it is worthwhile; it may mean a career path that does not always pay a top salary but you choose it because it offers you job satisfaction and a sense of fulfilment.

Career decision-making is not a once-off activity. New careers are constanty emerging and exisiting careers change according to market needs. Whatever lies ahead, it is important that you start off planning in a field that suits your interests, skills and values.

When you begin the job-hunting process in earnest, remember that you make your first impression on a employer long before you even arrive at a job interview. Usually the first contact you have with a company is through your CV.

• Create a good impression with your CV.
• Preparing or the interview - your chance to shine!
• At  the job interview
• Know yourself