YOU NEED TO KNOW THE WHOLE PERSON--TO CHOOSE A GREAT CAREER!
Many people hope for the “magical” career choice by passively floating through school or jobs, allowing a family member to decide what they should do, narrowing their career to the jobs that are available currently, or guessing wildly about their life path without much forethought. I teach a Careers course at the University of Oregon in Bend and often see college students nearing graduation with much fear and panic because they do not know what career or job they would like. They often feel despair that their passive wait for “the dream job” while getting a degree has not been rewarded and their “magic” clue has not popped up.
Good career choice involves serious self exploration and hard work--passive waiting for magic or for someone else to answer the questions does not work. Research confirms that when we make our career decisions this magical passive way, it leads to poor job satisfaction, lower productivity, lower life satisfaction, and increased chance of physical illness! For example--70% of Americans would change jobs if they could, 34% think they will burn out on the job in the next 2 years, 70% of workers experience stress-related illnesses (Miller, 2005).
In order to be successful at choosing a well-matched career--we need to know ourselves very well. What does this “self knowledge” include?
- our values--what guides our life (e.g., creativity, tradition, honesty, security)
- our personality strengths & limits--life-long traits (warm, generous, independent)
- our interests and dislikes--(towards tasks, jobs, classes, people, books & media)
- our physical abilities and energy levels--for specific task types (sitting, lifting)
- our psychological & developmental strengths & limits--(ability to tolerate stress)
- our skills and experience--task abilities that we carry from one job to another
- our leisure and family time needs---the balance of life priorities
- our financial needs--the salary goals for our life priorities
In previous generations our grandparents did not need to know the core self to this level to choose a career--they were expected to follow in their parents footsteps or more recently follow their likes and dislikes to one primary career and/or job. We no longer stay in one job at one company for our entire life and often we need to make a career shift on the spur of the moment--especially in the current economy.
These days we change careers more frequently & quickly. Recent studies estimate the average number of career changes made in a lifetime ranges from 7 to 16 times!
How can you be expected to cope with the frequent and quick career changes in this global economy? You need to know your core self extremely well so that you can shift quickly and efficiently on your resume, your application information, your job interviews, and on your plan to gather skills and experience. You can move quickly and successfully when you have the solid understanding of yourself to share with an employer or college interviewer. And ultimately career success and life satisfaction will sky rocket with this kind of self exploration and careful decision-making!
Article by Dr. Kathy Hoyt, originally printed in Family News, Bend, Oregon, 2009.