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How to Pick a Career: Everything to Consider

How to Pick a Career: Everything to Consider

How to Pick a Career: Everything to Consider

I absolutely love my job. It fills me with a sense of accomplishment, joy, wealth, and the occasional splash of sadness or anger (which keeps things interesting). I hope to keep this career for decades. I want to show you how to pick a career that you’ll love just as much.

In college, I hung around the career services office nearly every day. What better place to prepare for the future? While there, I gleaned interview tips, I met hiring managers, I got my resume built, and I even had a one on one class with the head of career services. I learned a few things before landing my dream career. Within this post, I’ll share everything I learned about how to pick a career. Let’s get to the meat of this post.

Step 1: Find Out What Makes You Happy

The only way to excel at anything is with passion. So the logical question is, what makes you passionate? For Step 1, you should find out what excites you. This is harder than it sounds. That’s because there’s a lot of noise in our daily lives: groceries to buy, your current job to do, helping your friend through a recent crisis, binge-watching Game of Thrones, etc. The list is never ending. But you need to make time to find out what makes you happy. I recommend waking up an hour early tomorrow to do nothing but think. Just stop and think. Quietly. Think back on your life. When were you happiest? What were you doing?

Don’t second-guess this approach. It may seem far-fetched to create a career out of what makes you happy. Business should be stressful, right?! Wrong. Very wrong. You may think there has to be a divide between business and pleasure. But I believe the line between business and pleasure should be permeable. Remember, you will only be able to excel if there is passion. Just scraping by is no way to live. Let’s move on to Step 2: money!

Step 2: Monetize the Happiness

Now that you know what makes you happy, think of ways to monetize it.

Do you like to play video games? Learn how to design them, enter paid tournaments, or create a Let’s Play channel on YouTube like PewDiePie. Last year, he made over $7 million playing video games.

If something makes you happy, it likely makes other people happy as well. When lots of people like something, there’s business to come from it. Some career fields are also in great demand today with technology and software development among the lead, if your interests are somewhere in them, earning six figures annually like with the average software engineer salary amounts to might lure you into the profession.

Step 3: Closely Examine the Money

How well do you want to be paid? When do you want to be paid? These questions need answered in Step 3. Reason being, you could start a YouTube channel. It could end up doing really well. But it’ll be slim pickins for at least a year. This isn’t a viable option for bringing in cash ASAP.

The same goes for starting your own company. It takes time. Start working on it at night and on weekends. But since you want to know how to pick a career, I’m guessing you want money much faster than that.

Look for full-time employment in the industry you enjoy: video games, makeup, cars, real estate, restaurants, etc. Make sure there’s a market need in your area. Also, how well are they paying? Is $40,000 enough for you right now? What’s the earning potential? If the job excites you and the money is there, it’s time to grab your share.

Step 4: Network like Crazy!

Once upon a time, I worked for a recruitment agency. I can’t even put into words how important it is for you to network instead of just blanketing the countryside in resumes. Network. Please. Just do it. I know it’s not easy if you’re an introvert – but it can be done largely from home.

Networking has progressed a lot in the past decade. We now have Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and more places to get your name in front of an employer. Yes, you are free (and it’s encouraged!) to use social networks to find a job.

Connect with as many people in the industry as possible. Follow subject matter experts, retweet witty comments they make, mention to them you’re looking to break into the industry.

NEVER feel too shy to reach out to the mighty elite. As they say, it’s lonely at the top. Many people in the upper echelon of an industry are thought to be unreachable. What that means is most people are too intimidated to make contact. But you’re not too shy, are you? Nope. Reach out to them. Email them. Call them. Show them how you’re going to be a mover and a shaker in the industry. They will respond positively.

Step 5: Think Long-Term

If you do all the steps above, you’ll have quite a few career prospects. Take a second to make sure they will be the right fit for the long-term. Or if a particular job doesn’t seem right for the long-term, see if you can easily transition into a better job. Make sure you can stick with this career for decades. Jobs to be careful of are physical jobs or very high-stress jobs. If you want to be a nurse, for instance, make sure you have an upgrade path for the day you can’t stay on your feet for 12 hours a day. Wall Street bankers are known to literally collapse under the pressure. Making $250,000 per year is great, but only if it’s sustainable.

Step 5 is also reserved for job shadowing or internships. You don’t truly understand something until you’ve done it. Some boots on the ground experience will help you be 100% sure the career is right for you.

How to Pick a Career Is Not a Quantitative Question

What I mean is that there’s no specific answer I can give you. You can’t simply take an online career test and go work a fun job for the next 40 years. A computer can’t tell a person how they feel about a job. You have to do a little soul-searching and a lot of networking.

The 5 steps I’ve listed above will get you where you want to go. They will take some soul-searching. They will take some time. But you will find a great career this way.

Oh, and don’t forget… hustle like crazy!!! Employers want to hire the hardest working people, not necessarily the smartest.

Follow these steps for how to pick a career. They’ll do well for you. Comment below and I’ll answer any specific questions you may have.

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