I Don’t Know What Career to Pursue? Here’s What to do (2023)

I Don't Know What Career to Pursue? Here's What to do.
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Job search can be an overwhelming process, especially if you dont know what career to pursue. There is a lot of learning, relearning, and unlearning that goes into it. 

It’s easy to think that you don’t have any strengths or passions when you don’t know what career to pursue. Firstly, let me assure you that’s not the case.

So let’s look at the 6 steps you can follow to identify your career path.

Figuring out career skills based on your past work

To start this process, think about different activities you enjoyed taking part in, or something that you felt you were good at doing.

Pick out examples from your school or college experiences to back this up. For example, let’s say you enjoyed working on a certain project. Try and understand the different aspects of it you liked. Maybe it was the research aspect you liked, or you enjoyed the thrill of giving the final presentation in front of the class.

So now based on that you have found two skills – research and communication.

Journaling is great way to identify your career skills.
Photo by Jessica Lewis Creative on Pexels.com

Similarly, try to identify your skills. Here are some examples:

  • Writing
  • Listening
  • Painting
  • Internet research
  • Making social media content
  • Watching films
  • Talking to people and,
  • anything and everything else in between.

Make a list, and write it down.

Also, it’s important to understand your skills don’t have to be something you are good at. It’s just something you like to do, and want to learn more about.

Finding the job profiles that fit your skills

Once you have identified and listed down your skills, we need to understand which job profiles fit your skillset. You might get some ideas while making the list itself.

A quick google search will help you broaden your options.

There’s a good chance you will end up with an overwhelming number of search results once you look it up. Go through it all until you find something that catches your eye. Anything that makes you think “that seems interesting”, and then try to learn more about it. 

Let’s say you look up job opportunities where your communication skills can come in handy. You’ll probably end up with suggestions like –

  • Sales Development Representative
  • Meeting/Event Planner
  • Social Media Manager
  • Teaching

This step will help you to recognize under which job profile you will be able to maximize the potential of your skills

Understanding Job Descriptions

Job Description will help you understand what to expect in terms of your role and responsibilities pertaining to the job profile of your interest.

This also gives you a good idea about how certain profiles might have more sub-divisions.

For example, after deciding to look up sales-related jobs, you will come across more specific positions like inbound sales, outbound sales, marketing, or companies looking to sell different products like a SaaS platform or a physical product.

Job descriptions
Job Description example – Linkedin

So now it’s time to scroll through job portals and read as many job descriptions as you can. These are the things to look for –

  • Company details
  • Opportunity
  • Requirements
  • Responsibilities
  • Compensation

Try to understand what responsibility each of them entails and if it’s something you see yourself excelling at in the future. Start shortlisting the positions that interest you. 

By now you would start getting a pretty good idea about what opportunities are there available for you.

You can see yourself taking up that certain job role, and thinking about how you would adapt and innovate within that role. The more you can see yourself taking up a position and being happy with it and harder you need to work on achieving it.

Upskilling

The job descriptions will give you a pretty good idea about how well equipped you are for a job and what more you need. And so now it’s time to work on these skills.

In this day and age of the internet, you can pick and learn any skill and improve it over time. You can try –

  • Youtube videos and blogs by industry experts.
  • Online courses through platforms like Udemy and Coursera,
  • Talk to someone you might know who is experienced in that field.

The aim here is to understand what you might be lacking and work on it.

You can also learn how to use different tools used by people working in the job profile of your interest.

For example,

  • In a sales position, tools like Lusha, Mailchimp, and Hubspot are used to manage lead generation, outreach, and client relations respectively.
  • Someone in a marketing position will need to be privy to Google analytics and various SEO tools.

So don’t just stop at gaining surface-level information. You have to dig deep and gain in-depth knowledge about the role, the skills needed, and the tools used to be successful at a particular job. This will help you stand out among other candidates.

Develop a Resume accordingly

So after going through several job descriptions you will have a good understanding of the expertise and the skills needed to be eligible for certain job profiles.

Now it’s time to develop a resume highlighting those particular skills. It’s a good idea to make certain edits or even have multiple resumes prepared for different roles.

Once you understand what a certain job profile is asking for, you must present them exactly with that necessary information. The recruiters evaluating your resume are usually looking for those certain keywords.

Hence it’s important to keep it brief and to the point. Mention the skills you identified and picked up along the way through your journey.

Mention any internship experience you might have which will highlight these skills. In case you don’t have work experience, mention any projects in school, college, or even personal ones, through which you share a connection with the job role.

Start applying !!

The final and most obvious step, start applying for all the job profiles that were shortlisted and then play the waiting game.

Other than the traditional method of applying through job portals, try out other mediums as well.

  • Visit company websites and apply directly over there.
  • Look up company email ids and send them emails with a cover letter and your resume.
  • keep following up until you get a response.
  • Start networking through LinkedIn and connect directly with relevant HRs.

The aim here is to get responses and start setting up interviews. Once you start attending these interviews you’ll begin to understand the industry expectation. 

It’s important to remember that it’s just not the interviewer trying to learn more about you but also about you trying to learn more about the job as well.

Conclusion

These are steps are personally took when I was clueless post-college. After years of education and schooling, one would hope to have clarity on what career path they would want to pursue. But, that’s not always the case. Sometimes the only thing you know is what you don’t want to pursue as a career. Which frankly is not as bad as it sounds. If nothing, that’s still a good start.

The important thing to remember here is that the real gap between doing nothing and doing something is trying. At the end of the day, it’s a trial and error method. You gotta keep at it. You will learn new things even if you don’t find what you are looking for. It’s all about building on the things you learn.

So the idea here is to get a start and remember that it’s a process. You might come across various tips and tricks, but no single tip or trick will change much. It’s a culmination of everything you learn and the way you present it. The fact that you are here reading this is a good start in itself, now it’s time to continue and build on it.

If you have any other ideas please leave them in the comments section below. We would love to hear them. Thank you for reading, and good luck!

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