One of our fellow members here in our Our World, who works as a career counselor in New Zealand, was gracious enough to share some advice on honing your decision-making skills and getting to better know your strengths, passions, and decision-making style. We hope her advice will help you make informed, confident decisions as you consider your own career path. If you are interested in becoming a contributor to Our World, please
email us at blog@ffawn.org.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MAKING BETTER DECISIONS
Knowing yourself and what works best for you will make you feel more confident about your choices particularly regarding your career.
If you are dithering over a decision, it may be that you don't have enough information. Subconsciously your mind is stopping you from moving forward into unknown risks. Do you really know what the job is like, how much a qualification would cost, how much childcare would cost, or if there is any financial support available? If not, how can you make a life-changing decision? So get out there and start researching!
Unfortunately many people gather their information from the wrong sources - canvassing a range of colleagues, friends or family to gain opinions of each choice they make. The end result is usually to leave you even more confused! Even the best input always needs to be filtered through your own values, interests, risk-taking comfort level and self-belief.
So gather information from the right sources while acknowledging their biases and using your own self-knowledge to filter it - Career Advisors, College Services, Employers, Recruiters, Human Resource Managers, and Employers are all people with valuable information on careers, jobs and training.
KNOW YOURSELF
Remember, however, that no one can possibly know you as well as you know yourself. They don't share your fascination with architecture, or how people's minds work, or your love of working with children, so why would you let them make your decisions for you? It is the decisions based on good information, including knowing yourself, that are the easiest decisions to make and the hardest to regret.
There are many personality type tests, career assessment tools, and life coaching books that can help you to define what is most important to you, what tasks or work types interest you and where your greatest skills lie. The best of these then combine your answers to suggest types of work where you will be more successful and fulfilled.
You can gain further confidence by looking at decisions you have made in the past and how you made them, allowing you to see what has worked for you and what hasn't. Deciding to go to law school only because your parents had always planned for it, deciding to take a film class rather than marketing because your friends were all taking it, deciding to take yet another administration job with a pay increase rather than a salary drop to get into graphic design as you had always dreamed of - usually these are the decisions that lead to a lack of fulfilment or a sense of frustration.
Many people feel that a dream job is just that - a dream, but even taking one of the small steps toward a dream can mean every day is more fulfilling.
For more information on assessing yourself and possible career choices, you can take assessment tests like the
Motivational Appraisal of Personal Potential (MAPP), which is completely free, or the
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® (MBTI), which you'll need to pay for in order to receive a complete interpretation of your score. You can also try some of the
free tests compiled by About.com
here. I do however recommend combining any assessment with the services of a Career Counselor to interpret the results.