Know How to use Career Exploration in 2024
What is Career Exploration?
Career exploration is an ongoing process by which one learns about oneself.
Contains:
- trying new experiences
- learning what your strengths and weaknesses are
- Finding What Stimulates You Mentally
Discovering Your Potential and Abilities
Through career search, you discover what employers look for in employees and create a strategic plan to help you achieve your goals – your career plan.
Why is career exploration important?
Ideally, your career discovery journey will begin in high school as you decide on colleges and universities.
Part of exploration is developing the skills you need for your future.
A big part of this is through your education, and you want to make sure you commit yourself two years to a bachelor’s degree only to pay so much money that it’s the wrong course for you.
This is why career searching is so important, and the sooner you start the process, the better.
People often look back and say they wish they had more information before deciding on a course or wish they had made better decisions.
Of course, at a young age, it is not easy to know what your chosen career should be, but if you can gain some self-awareness, it is half the battle won.
Career exploration is essential as it can help eliminate certain career options.
Many careers can attract you – you want to be a doctor or have a passion for art. You may like the idea of a fast-paced job or be adamant that you want to work for yourself.
Learning where your strengths, weaknesses, and interests lie can help you determine which path is best.
For example, you love becoming a doctor and saving lives, but as you go through the career search stages, you find that science is not your strongest subject. Becoming a certified doctor can take up to ten years and a lot of money.
Are you ready to spend that much time?
Ahead in your work life, career exploration allows you to re-evaluate your position.
You’ll know if you need to take more courses or learn a new skill. You’ll be able to identify what you need to get a promotion or whether to consider a new career entirely.
What are the goals of career exploration?
When searching for a career, you may figure out which career is best for you and how to get there.
To be more precise, the goals are:
To identify your current interests and skills
To establish a list of potential careers or next career steps
to narrow down those options
Creating a realistic and actionable plan with SMART goals
How to do career exploration
Step 1. Take the Self-Assessment Test
Career Explorer has a free comprehensive test that identifies your personality archetype and matches you to a career and educational program.
There’s also the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and the Strong Interest Inventory.
Your career or guidance counselor may also have personality and career tests available for you.
Step 2. Explore Each of Your Potential Careers
Step 3. Narrow down your options
Step 4. Get Experience
It would help if you decided which career path would be a good fit for you now that you know the journey.
The career you are most interested in requires a doctorate and years of work experience before you can earn a reasonable salary, which is not something you should worry about. You can commit to this.
You may discover that a job you thought was difficult to get is more accessible than you previously believed.
By the end of this phase, you should be left with realistic career options and paths to get there.
Now that you know your potential career, you must consider which university or college is best for you.
Do you need to attend a school in a different state, and if so, are there any additional exams and admission requirements? Would you benefit from enrolling in a school renowned for a particular degree, or is an institution with an average ranking satisfactory?
University is the next big step in your career planning, and it can decide your career.
You can work at a different company than you want to join, but gaining relevant experience in that field will help you determine whether this is the career for you.
Depending on where you are in your education, this could be through an internship, volunteering, shadowing, or an interview.
For college and university students, check your school’s extracurricular programs to see if any match your curriculum.
Most program leaders will promote activities to complement your studies at the start of the academic year.
Get involved as much as possible. The result will either be that you realize that you don’t enjoy the work and can start to re-evaluate your plan or that you will love the job and now have a resume full of work experience.
