Get your own Free Home PageSTEP FOUR (30 minutes)
Now that you have done some exploration, let's take a step back. Think about the activities you have been doing and whether they have been valuable in helping you realize more about what you enjoy. Select one option that you think you need from the list below in order to improve your results so far. If you think you need more than one, do whichever ones you think you need.
- If you couldn't answer a question in step one, either go back and try to answer it, or ask a good friend or family member how they might answer it for you. Add any new insights you get to the original page. Many times, getting another point of view can be valuable and help you see things you overlooked. If you are having trouble thinking of an accomplishment that you are proud of, remember that it can be something that is not done at work or school, such as battling cancer, running a race for the first time, or seeing a problem in the community and fixing it. You don't need to be intimidated and expect the scope of the problem to be huge. What is important is that you are proud of the accomplishment and that you enjoyed doing it.
- If you didn't have an easy time identifying your skills and strengths in step two, add to that list by looking at other skills you may have. You can use the list created for you by O*NET, a U.S. Government site, at this link.
- If you feel like your work for step three was good, but maybe you could have found someone more helpful or gone to a website that gave you more information, take the time to delve deeper into your research.
- If you would like to explore more job options which you might not have thought of in your search, you can get a local newspaper and go through the classified advertisement section letter by letter and write down any ideas for jobs you might find there. You can also search The Occupational Information Network - O*NET by going to the site, clicking on "Find Occupations" on the left and then searching by job families, and looking for types of jobs you are interested in. If you still don't find the job options you had expected to have, think about jobs that people you admire have (even if you're not sure how you could get to their position) and write those down.
After doing one or several of these exercises, you should have a better sense for job options available to you.
Or, if you'd like, just go back to my main career page here.
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