How to Embark on the Career You Want

Your twenties can be a difficult time in shaping your career.  If you are feeling lost, I would hope there is some comfort in knowing that it is OK not to have or know your passion at the start of your career. 

Try not to be put off by having vague rather than clear feelings of what you are aiming for.  Career passions often develop and emerge from experience. 

Try to pay a bit of attention to how you actually spend your time. There are clues in how you spend your time as to what really interests and excites you.  Perhaps you can combine those interests with your skills or qualifications and start to create a picture of what would be a satisfying career for you.

Positive and negative experiences both shape us.  Your confidence can be greatly affected by a disinterested or uninvested manager, by a toxic workplace, by a job that took advantage of you and may have used you up and burned you out.  It can be painful to explore negative experiences but they do provide clues to what you have learned so far. 

By the same token, perhaps there was something that was a profoundly joyful experience, such as an event or moment in school or college that really shaped you and taught you something significant about yourself.  Try tapping back into that joy, and remembering what you learned about yourself in those moments. When did you feel most proud.

Here are some core questions to ask yourself. See if you can come up with anything new that you haven’t considered before. 

In digging a little deeper, it may help to recruit help from someone in your life knows you really well and who you can rely on to help you as you sound things out.

What Am I Interested In

For any job you’ve had, you can ask yourself ‘what about this interests or interested me the most?’  Brainstorm quickly through every job you’ve had, no matter how short or informal they were.  Your answers will start to give you clues about what is satisfying for you in the world of work.  

If your work week is deeply unsatisfying to you, what is your favourite part of the week?  Perhaps there is time with someone you find extremely interesting, a voluntary activity that you love, a hobby or interest that absorbs you and generates your energy like nothing else. 

What have you given up that you used to really enjoy?

What Am I Looking For

Ask yourself some concrete questions: what have you learned from your experiences about what suits you, what you’re good at, what you’re capable of.  From things that went wrong, what have you learned about jobs or environments that may suit you better, or about your responses to stress: being honest and truthful can help you to understand yourself better.

In thinking about the career you want, you may be trying to correct a course.  Try spending a little time thinking about what you are trying to correct and what you have learned about yourself along the way.

Where Are My Opportunities

Have you fully explored the place you are standing right now?  Try to take stock of what you have achieved so far in your life and whether there are opportunities there that you haven’t fully considered.

If you are a college graduate, there may be opportunities such as internships or recruitment drives for graduates that can give you crucial experience in areas you are curious about.  Websites such as www.gradireland.com are tailored to your stage of life and the questions you might have.  The Public Appointments Service graduate recruitment drive is currently open if you could see a place for yourself working for the public or on policy in areas of education, defence, conservation, economics or health.

If you are working, have you taken a close look at management traineeships or mobility schemes that could further your career?  There may be opportunities to try out other roles, to take on additional projects that will stretch your experiences and introduce you to more people. 

What Am I Overlooking

Perhaps you are contemplating jumping from a role that is unsatisfying without fully considering the opportunities it could give you.  Your work could open up access to travel, to transfer, to other branches, to other departments, to training.  Could you open up a conversation with your line manager or or somebody who understands your company (and with whom you have a good rapport) about your hopes and expectations for the future before you decide to leave.

From work or college, there may be a mentor figure who can point you towards opportunities that you haven’t considered or do not know about, or who.  Making contact with a mentor figure or an old lecturer could be a very helpful support to you. 

There may be a friend or someone in your wider circle who is working in an area you are curious about and you would love to know more about how they got there. I’m sure they’d be delighted to tell you all about it.

Try quickly writing up a list of people you know that could take you one step closer to roles you are curious about. Try thinking of opportunities that your company might support you in. You might surprise yourself with an idea you haven’t thought of before.

 What Is Holding Me Back

At the end of the day, what is a career.  It’s a series or work or life roles that you take on over your lifespan.  That learning doesn’t come with a deadline.  You have plenty of time to work this out but the choices that you make are going to influence these roles. 

Value the experiences you’ve had and what they’ve taught you about yourself.  Value what you have learned from setbacks or mistakes.  Try to make considered choices where you have taken time to process these experiences and what they mean to you.  Clarify what you want your next step to be.

A little fear is understandable in the face of change. It’s our way of staying safe.

The truth is that the only way to embark on a career is like anything else: one step at a time.

Imagery sourced from Unsplash with thanks.