If you finish the activity way before your hour is up, go back and add detail or select more than three things to write down. The more detailed you are in your answers to these questions, the easier it will be to use them to look for patterns like a career detective.
STEP TWO (30 minutes)
First, take 15 minutes to review your answers from last time and look for patterns like a detective. Take another piece of paper and jot down any skills or strengths that you notice you have in rereading your notes. Some answers will lie in your answers, but others may require you to think about what made you successful. For example, if for number four you said you like to have autonomy in the office sometimes, you are good at working independently. If your answer to number five required coordination, leadership, creativity, persistence, athletic strength, friendliness, or any other positive quality for your success, jot that down. Once you have a list of your strengths, this may help you to think of jobs or careers that could use people with your strengths and abilities.
Now take one more piece of paper. On the paper, make two columns. Label the first column "Job Limitations" and label the second column "Possible Jobs".
Look again at your answer to number four on the paper and note any limitations (e.g. work hours should be 9 to 5) in that column. If you have any geographic constraints, write down which cities or towns you can work in. If you must work at home, write that. Also, think about whether your educational background will help narrow down your job search. Write down the highest degree you have earned or plan to earn (e.g. high school diploma, A.A. in Business, B.A. in English, etc.). If there is any kind of work you cannot do such as physical labor, or any minimum salary that you absolutely need to get, write that down as well.
Now look at the second column, "Possible Jobs". Knowing what you have down from all of your pieces of paper, write down at least 10 kinds of jobs that would interest you and you think you might be qualified for. As long as the jobs meet the criteria you have under the other column on the right and you would be happy to take the job, you are allowed to write them down. Even if it's something that might sound silly like being a clown in the circus or if you have a business idea that you have never started, write them down. Don't stop at 10 if you keep having job ideas...keep writing for at least 5 minutes. If you are unsure about whether you might qualify for a position and you have always been curious about it, just write it down and don't worry about it.
STEP THREE (one hour)
Now hopefully you are very excited about some job possibilities that you have. Look back at the list you made of possible jobs last time. Now select five jobs from that list that you would really like to find out more about. Depending on what is easiest for you and how old you are, you can choose to do one of several things with this information:
If you have a family member or friend who knows a lot about jobs, especially the types of jobs on your list, talk with him or her and go down your list of circled possible jobs, asking him or her whether you have the qualifications to do this job and making sure it meets your criteria and you could be good at it. If the person tells you information that means it would be less possible to get this job as your next job, you can cross it out. If it sounds like it might be really good, put a star next to it. When you finish this, make sure you have at least three job possibilities with stars, even if it means you have to ask the person about jobs you did not circle in that column or means you have to ask them what jobs or training people get before doing your dream job, which you circled.
If you are good at conducting internet searches, you can find out about each of these jobs individually by searching the type of job and seeing what credentials are required, where the jobs tend to be located geographically, and something else that might make your job especially compatible or incompatible with your strengths. A site you may want to use to find out about these jobs, which might answer many of your questions, is The Occupational Information Network, which is sponsored by the U.S. government and includes links to many common jobs and information about them. To research this way, go to the site, click on "Find Occupations" on the left and then search by job families, looking for types of jobs you are interested in.
If you have access to a career counselor through a school or community group you attend or if you already see a counselor, instead of doing the other two options above, you can simply share the five jobs you have selected with that person and have them do a reality check for you, just as I suggested you could do with a family member or friend.
STEP 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.
STEP FIVE (30 minutes)
For the final step of the exploration process, take a new piece of paper and write down your top three jobs that you may want to learn more about that you would be qualified for. To do this, you probably want to refer back to the lists you made before and the research you did. Make sure as you write the list that these are jobs someone with your credentials would be qualified for and that exist in the geographic region you will be in speaking a language you know. If you have only written down jobs that you would not be qualified for, write a list of 3 of those dream jobs and then 3 intermediate jobs which may lead to your dream jobs. For example, if you want to be a lawyer but you only have a bachelor's degree and need to work before law school, you might write down that you want to work in a law office, do public policy research at a think tank, or work for an elected public official (although those would not be the only answers -- there are no "right" answers as long as these are things you would enjoy that you could possibly get a job in).
Make sure that you have three realistic possibilities down. If you do, then it's time for one of two options (you choose, depending on your plan and how you think it's going):
1) go to my career links page to take career inventories to find out more about yourself
2) go to my page on finding a job to use your list of three possible jobs to search for those jobs.
Or, if you'd like, just go back to my main career page here.
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