Whether you are entering the workforce for the first time or are interested in making a career change, it is essential to know where to start. Knowing how to get started can help you navigate your job search and reduce any associated stress.
Learning how to launch a particular career also ensures efficient use of your time and resources. This article explains what to know before starting a career and lists the steps and tips to help you begin your profession.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines a career as a person’s course or progression through life (or a distinct part of life). This definition relates a career to many aspects of a person’s life, learning and work.
Career is also often understood by whom?
For example, to relate to the functional aspects of a person’s life as a career woman. A third way the term career is used is to describe an occupation or profession that usually involves specialized training or formal education, considered an individual’s life work.
Failed Verification, In this case, a career is seen as a sequence of related jobs, usually pursued within an industry or sector.
One could speak, for example, a career in academia, a criminal career, or a career in the building business. The word carrier ultimately derives from the Latin carus, referring to a chariot. The online etymological wordbook claims a semantic extension whereby the meaning of career appears to be from one’s public or professional life since 1803.
It is used to refer to the literary career of Goethe in dozens of books published in 1800. Other biographical figures include professional jobs and professional careers, so the phrase was probably in regular use by the year 1800.
What do you need to know before starting a career?
There are many things to keep in mind before starting a career. Preparing for this stage of your life can increase your chances of success. There are three things to keep in mind before starting a career:
- Strong Resume: Prepare to write an effective resume that best highlights your skills, experience, education, and achievements. A well-organized and firm overview gives you a better chance of securing employment.
- Transferable Skills: While it is essential to develop your skills, keep in mind that you can use your soft skills in various industries. Work on strengthening your transferable skills if you take a job unrelated to your first career in the future.
- Teaching Qualification: Employers want employees willing to learn on the job. Even if you have completed your academic career, continue qualified teaching to help you advance.
Also read: High-income skills you need to learn today.
How to Start a New Career
Before starting your career, it’s important to have a strategic plan to help you find success. Here are some steps to help you with the process of starting your career:
Check this out:
1. Make a List of Your Talents and Interests
Make a list of your hobbies, skills, and passions. Consider anything you enjoy doing, even if it’s unrelated to a traditional career.
For example, if you enjoy spending time outside, cooking, or helping other people, list what you find satisfying about each activity. Note any themes or patterns in your lists to help you find a suitable career match.
Identifying your talents and hobbies can help you figure out what you’re passionate about and what career might be a good fit for you.
2. Consider Your Career Preferences
Determine what type of job and what you want out of your career. Knowing your career aspirations can help you determine what kind of education you need and what types of positions to apply for.
In addition, consider your preferences regarding the job’s commute times, location, average salary, and specific work schedule. Identifying these criteria can help you prioritize and narrow down your research.
3. Review Your Qualifications
Each job in the workforce requires specific skills and qualifications. Before pursuing a career, consider your education level and your abilities.
Assessing your skills and qualifications can help you determine the next steps for your professional development and future career. It can also help you identify which jobs might align with your current credentials.
4. Research Industry and Careers
Research different jobs and industries that best suit your qualifications and interests. For example, if you love science and helping people, consider a career in the healthcare industry. Use an online search engine to research industries and jobs in various sectors.
Read the job description to learn more about the responsibilities of each position and the skills required to determine whether you are qualified for the post.
Also Read: Best Side Hustle Jobs Ideas To Earn $1000 Easily
5. Consider Volunteering or Interning
Consider becoming a volunteer or apprentice to provide you with more insight into a career or industry. Online research opportunities or talk to your college’s career center to learn about various intern or volunteer positions that you find interesting.
Remember that most internships or volunteer opportunities do not offer you monetary compensation. However, they can provide valuable experience to help you in your future endeavors.
In addition, interning or volunteering allows you to shadow working professionals and ask them about their jobs.
6. Find a Patron
Connect with a professional working in the industry you are interested in. Establishing a professional relationship with someone in your potential field can help you gain valuable insight and advice based on their personal experiences.
Consider researching industry professionals whose work you admire or whose jobs you find interesting. Then, connect with them via email. A mentor can also connect you with other industry professionals who can help you establish your career further.
7. Pursue the Right Qualification
Once you’ve made a career choice, research the general requirements for the job you’re interested in. Some jobs require specific degrees or certificates. After your research, pursue available qualifications for the position you want if you still need a job.
8. Apply for the Posts
After you’ve pursued the general qualifications for the job, you’re interested in open research positions. Once you have found a job that suits your qualifications, apply online or in person. Therefore, carefully review the job description you are interested in to ensure that you meet the specific requirements for that role.
Also Read: Easy Ways to Make Money Online
Career Management Process
Career management or career development describes an individual’s active and purposeful management of a career. The ideas involved in career management skills are represented by the Seven C’s of Digital Career Literacy in the United States, Canada, Australia, Scotland, and England, and blueprint models, particularly relating to Internet skills.
Core skills include the ability to reflect on one’s current career, research the labor market, determine if education is necessary, find openings, and make career changes.
Career Choice Factors
According to Behling et al., the decision of an individual to join the firm may depend on any one of three factors.
Objective factors, subjective factors, and critical interactions.
- Objective factor theory assumes that applicants are rational. Therefore, the choice is made after an objective assessment of the tangible benefits of the job. Factors may include salary, other benefits, location, career advancement opportunities, etc.
- Subjective factor theory states that decision-making is dominated by social and psychological factors. Job position, the reputation of the organization, and other similar factors play an important role.
- Critical Interaction Theory advances the idea that a candidate’s observations play an important role in decision-making when interacting with the organization. For example, factors such as how the recruiter stays in touch with the candidate, preparedness to respond, etc. are important. This principle is more valid with experienced professionals.
These principles assume that candidates have a free choice of employers and careers. The paucity of jobs and intense competition for desirable jobs seriously affect decision-making. In many markets, employees work specific careers simply because they are forced to accept whatever work is available.
Additionally, Ott-Holland and colleagues found that culture can significantly influence career choice, depending on the type of culture. According to US News, there are several things to consider when choosing the best career for you. Some of them include natural talent, work style, social interactions, work-life balance, whether you’re looking to give back,
whether you’re comfortable in the public eye, whether or not you’re dealing with stress, and finally, how much money you make. Wish to give. If choosing a career seems like too much pressure.
Here’s another option: Choose the one that feels right today to make the best decision, and know that you may change your mind in the future.
In today’s workplace, choosing a career doesn’t mean you have to stick with that job for the rest of your life. Differences Between Entrepreneurs and Businessmen, Make an intelligent decision and plan to reevaluate down the line based on your long-term objectives.
Also Read: 7 Simple Jobs for Housewives
Changing Career Occupation
Changing occupations is an essential aspect of career and career management. Throughout life, both the individual and labor markets will adjust. It is expected that many people will change professions during their lives.
In 1979 the U.S. Data collected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics through the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth showed that individuals between the ages of 18 and 38 will hold more than 10 jobs.
There are many reasons why people want to change their careers. Sometimes a career change can result from a long-awaited layoff, while other times, it can happen unexpectedly and without warning.
A survey conducted by Right Management suggests the following reasons for changing careers.
- Downsizing or restructuring an organization (54%).
- New challenges or opportunities that arise (30%).
- Poor or ineffective leadership (25%).
- Poor relationship with the manager(s) (22%).
- To improve work/life balance (21%).
- Contributions are not being recognized (21%).
- for better compensation and benefits (18%),
- For better alignment with personal and organizational values (17%).
- Personal strengths and abilities are not appropriate for an organization (16%).
- The financial instability of an organization (13%).
- An organization relocated (12%).
Also Read: 33 Best online earning websites to Make Money at home
Career Support Systems
There is a range of different educational, counseling, and human resource management interventions that can help individuals develop and manage their careers. Career assistance is typically given when people are in education,
transitioning to the labor market when they are changing careers, during periods of unemployment, and during the transition to retirement. Career professionals, other professionals, or non-professionals such as family and friends may offer support.
Vocational career support is sometimes referred to as career guidance as in the OECD definition of career guidance activities may be on an individual or group basis, and face-to-face or distance, including helplines and web-based services But can be.
These include career information provision in print, ICT-based and other forms, assessment and self-assessment tools, counseling interviews, and career education programs to help individuals develop self-awareness, opportunity awareness, and career management skills.
Testing programs, job search programs, and transition services to sample options before selecting them. However, this use of the term career guidance can be confusing as the term is also commonly used to describe the activities of a career counselor.
Types of career support
- Career information describes the information that supports career and learning choices. An essential sub-set of career information is labor market information (LMI), similar to hires of various professions, the employment rate in different disciplines, available training programs, and current job openings.
- Career assessments are tests that come in various forms and depend on quantitative and qualitative methodologies. Career assessments can help individuals identify and better articulate their unique interests, personality, values, and skills to determine how well they may match a specific career. Some skills that career assessments could help determine are job-specific skills, transmittable skills, and tone-operation skills.
- Career assessments can also give a window of potential openings by helping individuals discover the tasks, experience, education, and training that demand a career they want to pursue.
- Career counselors, executive trainers, educational institutions, career development centers, and outplacement companies often administer career assessments to help individuals focus on careers that roughly match their unique personal profiles.
- Career comforting assesses people’s interests, personalities, values, and skills and helps them to explore career options and research graduate and professional schools. Career relaxing provides one-on-one or group professional assistance in disquisition and decision-making tasks related to choosing a primary/ occupation, transitioning into the world of work, or further professional training.
- Career education describes a process by which individuals come to learn about themselves, their careers, and the world of work. There’s a strong tradition of career education in schools. Still, career education can also do in a broader range of other surroundings, including further and advanced education and the plant.
- A generally used frame for careers education is DOTS which stands for decision learning, opportunity awareness, transition learning, and self-awareness. Hourly, advanced education is thought of as being too narrow or too researched and grounded and lacking a deeper understanding of the material to develop the chops necessary for a specific career.
Career Success Stories
Career success is frequently used in academic and popular writing about careers. It refers to how a person can be described as successful in his/her working life so far. During the 1950s and 1960s, individuals typically worked for one or two firms during their careers. Success was defined by the organization and measured by promotion, increase in pay, and/or position.
Such a traditional career was exemplified by the career stage model of Donald Super. SUPER’s Linear Career Stage Model suggests that jobs take place in the context of stable organizational structures. Individuals move up the organization’s hierarchy seeking more and more external rewards.
Early career success can lead to disappointment later, especially when a person’s self-worth is tied to their career or achievements. Professional success comes early in some areas, such as scientific research, and later in other areas, such as teaching.
Earnings can be expressed either in absolute terms, e.g., what a person earns, or in relative terms, eg. The amount that a person makes as compared to his starting salary.
Earnings and status are examples of objective success criteria, where objective means that they can be factually verified and are not purely a matter of opinion. Many observers argue that careers are less predictable than previously thought due to the rapid pace of economic and technological change.
This means that career management is more clearly the individual’s responsibility than their employer’s organization, as a job for life is a thing of the past. It has placed greater emphasis on subjective criteria of career success.
These include job satisfaction, career satisfaction, work-life balance, personal accomplishment, and finding work consistent with one’s values. A person’s assessment of their career success is likely to be influenced by social comparisons, such as how well family members, friends, or contemporaries have done in school or college.
Many forms of career capital influence the amount and type of career success an individual can achieve.
These include social capital (the range and depth of personal contacts a person can draw on) and human capital demonstrable abilities, experience, and qualifications. Economic money, wealth, and other material resources allow access to career-related resources and culturally Capitalized skills, attitudes, or general knowledge to operate effectively in a particular social context.
