How To Choose The Right Career?

Out of 903 Universities, 39050 Colleges and 10011 Stand Alone Institutions offering multiple courses in various fields, every year, there are 33.42% applicants for art courses, 14.13% for engineer and technology courses, 14.11% for commerce courses and 38.34% applicants for other courses.

About the competition in the market

On an average, each corporate job offers 250 resumes out of which 4-6 are called for interviews and only one gets the job. (Glassdoor) So, one question that strikes every student’s mind is, “How do I choose the right career option for myself?”

Now, you will find three types of theories on the internet:

Philosophical: Run behind your dreams, and the world will follow.
Scientific: Certain tricks and tips to know about your IQ and aptitude.
Stories: Case studies telling you how the best of best people chose their career paths.

Talking about this particular article, it is an amalgamation of all of the above. So, be ready for a knowledge-enriching dive into one of the most important aspects of any student’s life – Career.

Level One

One major decision that you as a student have to take is the type of course that interests you. Keep it simple. Choose between an academic course or a vocational course. Then go for a self-directed search. Once you make this decision, answer the following questions.

• What interests you?
• Which is that one hobby which makes you happy every single time?
• How do you like working, indoors or outdoors?
• What is your motivation behind finding the right career?

Have you answered the above questions?
You have cleared level one.

Level Two

Answer a simple question, where do you see yourself in the next ten years? This may not be an exact answer, but the life that you imagine can give you insights about what sort of profession you may like.
For example, if you imagine yourself playing a psycho-drive game on your couch, ten years down the line, you may like to be a software developer in the virtual reality space.
So, get extremely imaginative here. No one is going to question you. A series of tests that may help you is the Pymetrics test where you are confronted with mind games that analyze your problem-solving skills.

Done?

Level two accomplished.

Level Three

It is very important for you to differentiate between your passion and your interest because your passion may be your profession but your interest may just be your hobby and nothing more.
For example, you may like acting but your passion may lie in direction. Therefore, create a sheet with both the options (passions and interests) and then pick up something from the passion segment and list down career options available around it and its viability as a career option.

Look at this flowchart for better clarity:

Level Four

Scout for the right people over mediums like Quora, LinkedIn or Twitter and curate your own aptitude test. You can ask these experts a number of questions for free! Just find a lot of them and be sure that some people will reply. You can also try apps like EduThrill, which give you an option to play quizzes on various topics. This will not only be engaging but also be an aptitude test for you.

Conclusion: You can talk to people of a specific industry, take a series of tests on apps and do your own R&D.

Once you are done with this, you are done with the process.

Some Tips For You:

1. The best way to land any job and company is via referrals, so improve your networking skills. Companies expand their talent pool to 10X by recruiting through their employee’s network. Check Talent Titan’s AHC 5.0 for reference.

2. Make a LinkedIn profile and optimize it with the best of information. Send in mail messages between 9-10am on weekdays to get better results.

3. There are a lot of job opportunities, concentrate on building the right skill set. According to some studies, 75% of the global workforce will be made up of millennials by 2025.

4. Aptitude can be curated but the right attitude is something which you can command. So, do not think of shooting random bullets. Define your attitude, choose your destination and then it is going to be a long drive.

All the best!