Career Management

Career management is “conscious planning of one’s activities and engagements in the jobs one undertakes in the course of his life for better fulfillment, growth and financial stability.” We often start thinking about out future careers at a very young age. We start off wanting to be things like a princess, astronaut, or Rockstar. We then move to things like president, doctor, or chef. But as we get older, we are expected to choose a career for real this time. When trying to figure out what you want to do for the rest of your life it can be very scary. I have changed my mind about what I want to do about 100 different times, and I’m still not sure I’m doing the right thing. It is okay to feel that way, you just must choose something that you are passionate about and are going to enjoy doing. Figuring out what career is going to best for you is known as career management, here are some steps to help you along.

1. Assessment: Clarify and understand your interests, skills, values, and personality. Your job must fit you, don’t chose a career to make someone else happy. When it comes to your career you need to focus on what is going to make you happy, because you’re the one that is going to have to wake up and do it every day. A lot of times in choosing a career people want to solely focus on money. While making money to live the lifestyle you want to live is important, it’s not the MOST important. There are people that make lots and lots of money and still hate their job, because as they say, “money doesn’t bring you happiness.”
2. Research: Explore career or job opportunities that you think you would be interested in doing. Doing research on a specific career before you chose it is very important. Look up information on the internet, watch videos about that career, and try talking to some who does that job to get a better idea of what you’ll be doing. You might think a job is going to be one thing and you find out it is something completely different.
3. Make Decisions and Set Goals: Evaluate the pros and cons of each career choice and create goals and timelines. Once you have done your assessment and researched the careers, weigh the options. Decide what you like and don’t like about each career and decide what one you think is going to be best for you. Once you make that very important decision its time to start setting goals and timelines for what you must do to get a job in that field. This could be figuring out what kind of grades you need to get throughout the rest of high school or what colleges you need to apply for.
4. Take Action: Once you have your goals mapped out start working toward achieving them. It won’t do you any good if you only write your goals down and never work towards achieving them.

Readjust if Needed: It is important to remember that while this decision is important, its not permanent. You can always change your mind as you go along. If you already started college and you realize you’re not doing what you want to be doing, that’s okay. You can always make the choice to change your major no matter how far along you are. For example, I was in my third year of college when I realized I wanted to do something else, so I made the switch and was very happy that I did. You never want to be stuck doing something that you hate, if you need to change your mind then change it.