Tips from psychologists on choosing a profession if you don’t know what you want
If you are struggling with the choice of profession, check out the following ways.
How do you choose a job if all the professions don’t seem right and there is nothing you are attracted to?
If you find yourself in this situation, you can take two courses of action:
- Examine all the available professions. It’s hard to make a choice when you don’t know what to choose from. Look at channels about professions on Youtube, listen to what experts say on the subject, visit all kinds of sites and sites, there are many of them now.
- Seek help from a career counsellor. He will study your abilities and help you find your ideal career direction, and maybe even develop a plan of action for the next 5 to 10 years to achieve certain goals in your profession.
- Like something you can’t make much from. You can never know in advance what will bring in income and what won’t. Once knitting was the craft grandmother’s and brought very little money, but now, with the skill of knitting and good taste, you can earn on this good money. Worth a try, but it is better to have the option of a related speciality.
- Remember about a few important points:
- Do not think that the more complex your activity, the more you will earn. That principle hasn’t worked for a long time. Now you can take a course in any beauty industry and a couple of months have more income than specialists with red diplomas.
- In pursuit of the dream, do not forget about reality. Do you think that having talent as a musician, you can easily get on stage and earn millions? That’s not true. Fame comes to a few, and thousands of talented people just haven’t been able to breakthrough. Consider your abilities.
- Think about what hobbies bring you positive emotions? Many hobbies can be monetized and make their main profession. For example, you can use history homework help, if you don’t like this subject and focus on something that is more important for you.
Mistakes And Tips For Choosing A Profession After School
The question “How to choose a future profession” is better to ask in high school.
In junior high school, you are just learning how to manage your time, to be independent. In middle school (grades 4-8) you are already quite self-organized, you have free time, and you start looking for activities for yourself: clubs, sections, etc.
This is the most appropriate time to expand your boundaries, get new experiences (participate in competitions, festivals, research projects, internships, camps with any orientation). Having tried your hand at music, dance, various sports, science, and having read a lot of books, it will be easier for you to decide after graduation what you are drawn to and what you are not.
- The main mistakes when choosing a speciality: Choosing the profession of your parents and grandparents to continue a dynasty, a family business.
For example, your parents are doctors. And, whether you want to do it or not, they insist that you go to medical school.
- Go to the institution of your friend’s choice.
Teenagers tend to be very attached to their high school friends. After school, kids’ lives change a lot, they want to keep close people close to them. But that’s not a reason to choose an inappropriate speciality.
- Choose a currently fashionable profession, without making predictions for the future.
The professions that are relevant now will not necessarily remain so in a few years.
So why is it so important to choose the right profession? It often happens that even after enrolling and studying in an educational institution, a person is undecided about what he or she wants to work for. The diploma is received, but the problem of choice is just as acute for the graduate.
Professional self-determination usually comes to people already after the acquisition of a speciality. And here, if you have chosen the right direction, you will be interested in finding a job in your field. And if there was no interest in the subject or it was lost during training, then there comes a period of despair, looking for work, not in the speciality. Of course, you can always retrain. But the time spent on education, no one will return to you.
According to a survey conducted among job seekers with higher education, 41% of them are not working in their speciality from their diploma. That is, they have wasted about 5 years of their lives.
Therefore, it is very important to understand your desires, abilities, and opportunities, and choose the right path, because education can be a great springboard to move up in your professional life. In addition to knowledge, at university, you can get useful acquaintances and connections, which will be very useful in the future.
Three Important Principles In Choosing A School
- Assess your chances of success
Has the institution been established long enough? An institution can be considered reliable if it has been operating for at least 7 to 10 years. Find out if the educational institution offers opportunities for student internships if it cooperates with international organizations, partner universities in other countries.
You should also find out about the teachers: are they practitioners who apply their theory in their work? In this case, you would have an opportunity to get really valuable information.
Do not blindly believe the university’s predictions of easy employment and the shortage of personnel in this area of the labor market. Study the information on your own to know for sure if you will have a chance to advance in your chosen profession, how fast the career growth usually happens, what the salaries of specialists are.
You can go to open days at educational institutions you are interested in, talk to students and alumni. And it is better if you begin to do this not in grade 11 when there is very little time to choose, but earlier.
Schoolchildren should choose their university. Parents can only advise, but it is even better if they help their child learn about all the existing professions in advance.
- Choose the format and opportunities of the university that are right for you.
If you would like to participate in a student exchange program, you should choose an institution that has such a practice. It is also important to find out in advance if the university offers internships, work placements, summer school intensives, and various group projects.
Such an internship will certainly be very useful to you, it will help you gather an interesting portfolio. All this can interest your future employer, because the communication skills received during group classes, the ability to defend your point of view, to present your work, characterizes you as a great specialist, not just with the diploma.
Try To Listen To Yourself
The choice of the university where you will study for more than one year is a very important decision. As a rule, it is composed of several criteria. First, you should study the rating of the institute, read the reviews of graduates. Second, it is useful to personally communicate with the students of the institution, for example, at the Open House. And the third, most important criterion is your feelings. Your decision may be different from the opinion of others, it may seem irrational.
To choose with the help of your inner feelings, try to use the following method: close your eyes and imagine that on each of your hands there is one decision (on the right palm one, on the left – another).
Relax, try to turn off your head, and trust your feelings. Which hand goes down, that decision will override. This choice is made by that part of the brain for which the person is not responsible, such a kind of cue from the “inner self” as to the right thing to do.
