Many people struggle to make a clear career choice early on in life. Of course, there are always exceptions.
Those fortunate few decided exactly what they wanted to be before they even graduated elementary school!
You’ll be relieved that these people are most certainly the exception and not the rule.
So what about the rest of us?
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Most people don’t know how to make a clear career choice
Most people take classes that they enjoy during school without a future career in mind.
For others, finding a career fit is challenging because they find themselves rushed to “declare a major” during the second semester of freshman year.
Education is a big financial investment
The average cost of attending a four-year college or university course in the United States rocketed by 497% between the 1985-86 and 2017-18 academic years.
As a result, many students find themselves on a path that financially they can’t afford to leave.
While it is possible to stumble into a good job, career alignment often doesn’t come by accident.
Finding your “path” comes from a deep understanding of yourself and as a result of strategic job search planning.
How do I find a career that fits?
I have an old friend, Jeremy, who is really bright.
Jeremy made great grades in school and has a very strategic mind.
Right out of high school, he got into woodworking. He loved working with his hands and enjoyed the praise of friends and family when they purchased his goods.
Five years into the role, he realized he never wanted to make another bench or farm table again.
Making chairs day in and day out, Jeremy would question his career choice and dream about another life.
Reports have shown that anywhere between 20% and 90%+ of people feel or have felt career misalignment.
Know yourself before making a career choice
“Follow Your Passion” was some of the leading career advice in the 90’s.
“You spend most of your life working, do what is going to make you happy.”
The problem is hobbies don’t always make great careers, especially when it doesn’t line up with our values.
Aligning your values with your career choice
There are three kinds of values that I want to briefly outline.
- Extrinsic values: These are values concerned with the by-product of the work. For example: “I want to make a good living” or “I want a job where my boss recognizes my value.”
- Intrinsic values: These values are intangible. For example: “I want the work I do to have meaning” or “I want to have a seat at the table.”
- Lifestyle values: These values are associated with how you want to live. Examples of these include: “I want flexibility at work so that I can pick up my daughter from school” or “I want to live in a big city so that I can access restaurants and culture.”
As a certified YouMap Coach, I was trained to support my clients to help them assess and rank their values.
The Finding Your Fit guide by Angela Watts is a great place to begin when assessing your career values.
YouMap helps identify your top 10 values
Examples of these values include:
- Diversity
- High income
- Trust
- Respect
- Autonomy
- Creativity
How to find your career strengths
According to Gallup, a global analytics and advisory company, people who focus on using their strengths are:
▪️ 3x more likely to report having an excellent quality of life
▪️ 6x more likely to be engaged on the job
▪️ Teams that focus on their strengths are 12.5% more productive
Introducing Strengths Finder
Career and personality assessments can be a great place to uncover your “special sauce” and understand yourself better.
The Truity Career Personality Profiler
Job Search Journey recommends the Truity Career Personality Profiler (affiliate)
Truity’s Career Personality Profiler will measure both your interests and your personality traits so you can choose a career that will keep you motivated and satisfied.
Take the Career Personality Profiler and discover which careers will maximize your potential, take advantage of your natural talents, and line up with your core values.
Truity’s Career Personality Profiler is based on the powerful Holland Code and Big Five systems, for accurate results to get you started on the right career path.
You can try the Truity Career Personality Profiler here for free (affiliate)
Gallup Strengths Finder
The Gallup Strengths Finder Assessment is another personal favorite.
The Strengths Finder assessment provides an individual with their “Top 5” strengths. 34 different strength themes are divided into four domains of Strategic Thinking, Relationship Building, Influencing and Executing.
It’s also an extremely cost-effective assessment.
You can purchase the assessment yourself on the Strengths Finder website for around $20.
It only takes about 30 minutes to complete the assessment.
Other personality assessments can help you find your career fit
In the US alone, there are about 2,500 personality tests on the market.
Some are better than others.
Some of the most popular personality assessments include:
- Truity Career Personality Profiler
- Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
- WingFinder
- Strengths Deployment Inventory
- Workstyles 360
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention YouMap as a trusted assessment.
What I love is that it leverages Strengths Finder and a couple of other assessments to establish the four pillars of career fit: strengths, values, preferred skills and interests.
Did Jeremy find his career fit?
Jeremy knew what he didn’t want to do, but he wasn’t clear on the path forward.
Like many of us, Jeremy didn’t have good career mentors. I watched from afar (aka Facebook) as he bounced from job to job once he left woodworking. He worked for his Uncle’s car dealership in a sales role and then did some landscaping.
None of these opportunities was a fit. Even though he was “successful” as a car salesman, he didn’t view himself as a success because he valued status, the corner office and a company job.
It wasn’t until he was in his 30s that he decided to go back to school. He took some math and econ classes and realized he has a strong aptitude for numbers.
He was balancing work, school and a family…. but somehow managed to work a part-time internship into his schedule for a semester. That internship turned into a financial analyst offer after graduation.
He’s now on the future career path to being a controller. The work he is doing now marries his strengths and his values.
It’s not too late to do the work you were meant to do.
