8 Steps to finding right career path

We can do a lot of things in our lifetime. In today’s world, we have a wide variety of career options, and still, the majority of us get lost at different points of time in choosing a fulfilling career. We get tons of advice from parents, seniors, mentors, teachers, social media, etc. Though they are good to have however they lack one very important thing that is – Right Fit. 

Are you cut out for that job? Would you feel content doing that day-in-day-out for years and years to come? Forget about years, would you even want to put yourself through the years of hardship to be there without any other external motivator? Would you keep pursuing it even if you fail at it a hundred, if not a thousand times?

A career is not about doing a job or finding passion. A career is the path we choose for making our living, becoming prosperous, gaining reputation, and achieving power. If you think of your career as a high-paying job that you would do for the rest of your life then my friend you are too far from the right answer. There is a long way before you unravel the path to the right career.

Knowing the right career path as early as you can ensure better chances of going farther on the path of progress with fewer moments wasted. In current society, you can always leverage yourself by learning from other’s mistakes as well. So for all the career advice seekers, below is a pragmatic approach to have a fulfilling successful career.

The method starts from finding yourself then gradually expands the horizon to get a broader understanding of choosing the right career path. No matter whether you are a school-going student or a seasoned professional. You can use this method to unveil the right career.

Step-1. Identify Your Values

Have you ever heard a voice inside your head? A voice that tells you the difference between good and bad? Well, my friend that is your mind pounding your values on you. In simple words, values are the guiding principles that tell you what is important in life. It serves as a beacon for everything you do. 

Our beliefs are something we accept as truth irrespective of proof. Based on our early childhood experiences, we start believing a number of things. Our beliefs then become the ground of our core values. After childhood, it is close to impossible to see a change in someone’s core values. You will never be happy doing something that goes against your values. 

For example: In movies, a hero denies attacking a villain from behind because he believes heroes have noble character and he values moral integrity. He would rather lose a critical advantage but not go against his principles aka values.

Hence the first step to finding the right career begins with finding your true self. Finding your core values will serve as the foundation for everything else yet to be done in life. We will take a personal values assessment to identify our core values. While attempting the test, choose what you feel is important to you. Do not worry about being right or wrong. Be honest while choosing options. 

Test-1: Values Test

• Link >> https://dfdx.us/core-values-quiz/
• Choose “Which values are most reflected in your life right now?” to proceed. 
• Read the instructions and complete the test.
• Save the result.

Test-2: Values Test

• Link >> https://personalvalu.es/personal-values-test
• Choose all the values that resonate with you to proceed
• Read the instructions and complete the test.
• Save the result.

Read the results thoroughly. The most important values are at the top. This will give you a better understanding of values that serve as guiding light in your life.

Step-2. Identify Your Personality

Moving forward, we now have to find out your personality type. Values are deeply ingrained and cannot be observed as easily. Instead, people can observe your behavior. Personality is the pattern of your usual behavior. In some instances, people may deviate from their personality but on a day-to-day basis, it is very difficult to see changes in someone’s personality. Similar to values, there are many theories for different personalities. 

The “Big Five” personality traits, which are openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. These components are generally stable over time, and about half of the variance appears to be attributable to a person’s genetics rather than the effects of one’s environment. The advantage of the Big five is that it expands across different elemental factors in personality, allowing psychologists to have the most accurate information they can garner. The Big Five Inventory is the most used measuring tool

Test: Big Five 

• Link >> https://www.scienceofpeople.com/personality/
• Click on TAKE THE QUIZ to proceed
• Read the instructions and complete the test.
• Save the result.

Next is the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) which is an introspective self-report questionnaire indicating differing psychological preferences in how people perceive the world and make decisions. The test attempts to assign four categories: introversion or extraversion, sensing or intuition, thinking or feeling, judging or perceiving. One letter from each category is taken to produce a four-letter test result, like “INFJ” or “ENFP”.

Test: Myers–Briggs Type Indicator 

• Link >> https://www.16personalities.com/free-personality-test
• Scroll down to see questions and proceed
• Read the instructions and complete the test.
• Save the result.

Read the results thoroughly. This will give you a better understanding of your usual behavior. As a matter of fact, there will be a lot of similarities in the result of Big Five and MBTI. 

Step-3. Identify Your Areas of Interest

Close your eyes and recall all those activities that lit your eyes up, made you restless, and kept you on your toes even after you failed. Make a list of those activities. On top of it add anything you dream of doing and include your hobbies as well. This list is a superset. Your area of interest sets a boundary of various activities that you would like to look forward to practicing.

Please note unlike values and personality, our interests change with time as we observe and learn more.

Step-4. Identify Skill Sets

Skill is defined as the expertise to do a type of work well. Based on your current understanding of your skills, jot down all the skills you have to pursue the interest you listed above. As you start, you will notice that you lack many skills to be a professional in one or multiple areas of interest. The gap of levels between current and required are all the skills you can work upon further.

Please be noted that your current skill levels and understanding of skills required for some professions may not be sufficient. 

Step-5. Identify Demand

Now that we have dug deep enough to understand our current situation, let’s move to understand demand. Demand is the consumer’s desire and ability to purchase a good or service. In other terms, anything that is demanded by a consumer will have value to it. Now you have a tough task to do. It is to understand what people want. 

For this step, you should think of demand as a type of career option. It can be any profession – a job, startup, blogging, hobbyist, broker, sports, musician, politician, etc. Here you can utilize all the advice, observations, and inputs you receive on a day-to-day basis from parents, friends, acquaintances, news, social media, etc. Further, you can do a lot of research to understand things people want, skills that are in demand in the market. These are the things the market pays for. You will face fierce competition if there are too many people serving the demand. But that shouldn’t affect the list of things people demand. Demand is the thing that the market values.

Step-6. Finding The Sweet Spot

It is time to put to use everything we did so far. By now you should know about your values (guiding principles), personality (usual behavior), areas of interest (would like to do), skills sets (things you can do), demand (things valued in the market). The sweet spot is the overlap of all these things. To identify the sweet spot, will start shortlisting demand from the most rigid to most flexible aspects of you. In each step, try to find as many matches as possible.

Do keep in mind that your areas of interest and skills are fluid. Areas of interest will change with exposure and experience. Skills can be gained through training and practice. Demand will change with time. Therefore overlap should keep on increasing thereby allowing you to tap demands with greater value.

Step-7. Plan Career Path

The exercise till now gives you the starting pieces however career is not a destination but a journey. Everything you have learned today serves right for today. Each career option will require different skills in different proportions. Start with something in which you can exercise the skills you are good at and also gives you room to learn and/or improve other skills. This would increase the overlap between your skills and demand-relevant value-cum-personality resonating areas-of-interests.

Step-8. Revise and Recalibrate

Now the final step. For being future-proof you must abreast yourself with skill sets that give the best overlap of demand, interests, personality, and value. Apart from values and personality, rest (skills, interests, and demands) are fluid. Hence your career path is not static but always changing with time. New failures, new interests, new circumstances, etc. will affect you. You must adapt, improve and overcome. If that doesn’t happen, you will stop advancing in your career. In the worst case, it will go for a toss in the long run.

Therefore you must keep repeating this method at least once a year to keep yourself prepared. This maneuvering technique will keep you inherently motivated towards your professional goals.

Conclusion

In this method, we learned how to understand the process of figuring out the right career plan. The process starts with understanding oneself moving outwards to understanding what is relevant in the world. We also learned that the path isn’t fixed, it changes gradually over time. Your values and personality set the ground for your career where you play in your areas of interest using skills while serving the demand. This method is applicable to all but takes a bit of time to exercise and show exponential rewards. Remember clarity of goal and a thought process can save your years from aimless wandering, avoidable failures, and unnecessary suffering.

Hope this helps you too. Thanks for reading. Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comment section below.