FINDING A CAREER ~ Part 2: “Career Options”
Greetings!
If you’ve not read Part 1, I encourage you to do so for an essential context for this process. This is the second of 5 parts in this series. We’re working with a tool I developed to help people discover — or find — or create — your next new and wonderful career. The tool, THE 4 LISTS, is a place to keep track of the valuable information pieces that are especially important in finding your new career. You can think of these as pieces of a puzzle you’re solving, or as parts of an artistic collage you’re assembling. In Part 1 we started with YOU and your interests and passions, and today we’re focusing on career options.
The titles of THE 4 LISTS are:
#1. Interests and Passions
#2. Career Options
#3. Criteria for Choosing Career
#4. Gifts, Strengths, talents, Assets, Skills
List #2. Career Options
The focus today is List #2. Career Options. Take a sheet of paper and write this bolded title at the top. Below that, write these questions:
> What are the various things I might possibly be doing ?
> What are some variations on what I am doing now? What parts do I love?
> What did I want to be as a child? What have friends suggested?
> What are some wild and crazy, ‘far out’ ideas? What are some very practical ideas?
Examples: Become an expert in computer repair, lead wilderness tours
Now, on this page, start listing your answers to these questions. And then as you think of additional possible careers, any that draw you enough to keep track of them, write them on here. THE 4 LISTS are a keep-track tool, and then you can play with, work with the information you are gathering. If you come across a career in a magazine or on TV, and it intrigues you, capture it here. If a friend makes a suggestion and you like the idea, write it here. Later, after you’ve gathered more information on Lists 3 and 4, you can choose 4 or 5 careers from this list, which may have grown to be 15 or 16 items, to explore, i.e., to research, check out. Know that it’s not uncommon for many people to spend more time reading about, informally researching a 2-week vacation, than they spend looking into a possible career. So you can be way ahead of the curve and increase the likelihood of your being delighted with your next career by first generating a list of possibilities and then exploring them.
One way to generate more to consider is by taking career assessments. Two that I use often are the Myers Briggs Type Indicator™ and the Campbell Interest and Skill Survey™. Both have interpretation materials that relate your results to careers you may want to at least consider. And you could add those to this List #2. Career Options. You can find some career assessments online, too. Be aware that the formal research behind these varies, and you are wise to take the results of even the best assessments with a large grain of salt. The assessments are not smarter than you are, and results are suggestions to consider. Also, remember, from Part 1, you can capture on List 2 those career ideas you have brainstormed from List #1. Interests and Passions, and recorded in your FINDING A CAREER notebook; however, just include the ones that have a real appeal for you.
What do you do with this information?
For now, you simply continue to collect, on this page, ideas for your next career. As noted above, later you will be exploring some, but very likely not all, of these options. Writing the ideas down is a keep-track thing; it commits you to nothing. Career exploration is very different from career commitment. Give yourself the gift of freely exploring any career options that appeal to you; joy is the marker!