Want to Find Your Dream Career, but Don’t Know Where to Start?
There are endless recommendations telling professionals to pursue their passions if they want to find their dream careers. The issue is that advice of that nature is ambiguous at best. How does one figure out where their passions lie? What if all you know is that your current path isn’t a fit?
While the road ahead may be daunting, finding your dream career is possible. If you aren’t sure where to begin, here is a step-by-step guide that can get you moving in the right direction.
Start By Taking an Inventory
While it may seem like an odd starting point, taking an inventory of your skills, experience, known interests, and preferred work paradigms can give you a solid foundation. It allows you to assess what you already know – including technical capabilities, innate traits, and transferable skills – and your degree of competency.
Plus, it encourages you to look at your current or potential roles honestly, separating out your skills based on what you enjoy using and what you’d rather avoid. Additionally, it allows you to factor in environmental considerations, like the kinds of physical environments you like or dislike, the level of team interaction you prefer, and more.
The goal of this exercise is to determine what your dream role might involve. By doing so, you can start narrowing down your options.
Use Your Inventory for Exploration
Once your inventory is complete, use it to start exploring various career options. Head to a job board and use the information you’ve gathered as the basis for searches. For example, if you enjoy customer service, use “customer service” as one of the search terms. Then, review the job descriptions of the roles in the results list, identifying opportunities that offer more of what you’re after.
As you review the options, don’t worry about the industry or job title just yet. Here, the goal is to examine the possibilities, allowing you to use your preferred skills to identify a range of jobs that could potentially meet your needs.
When you find possible winners, add them to a running list. As your list grows, compare roles to one another to see what they have in common, allowing you to slowly shape your dream job as you move forward.
Identify Your Top Targets
After some initial exploration, start separating out the jobs that feel like the strongest matches. Determine how many of the requirements you already meet and if there are any skills or types of experience you’d need to add to your resume to qualify.
If you’re fully eligible to apply, then consider going forward with an application. If not, do a bit of research to determine pathways to acquire the qualifications. In some cases, formal training may be the best choice. In others, finding a temporary job might be the perfect approach. With the latter strategy, you can explore a new field or job category first-hand, all while boosting your skills, broadening your network, and earning a solid income.
Ultimately, it can take a little time to find your dream career, but using the process above can expedite the journey. If you are ready to find your dream job in Connecticut, work with the recruiters at A.R. Mazzotta. Browse our open jobs or send us your resume today.