Many moons ago, when our parents were young and everything was draped in a tone of sepia, deciding which career path to follow was a monumental decision.
Once you’d picked it, that was it.
Nowadays, petty Gen-Y has far more flexibility. Why? Because we suck and we’re quitters. Just think about how many times you’ve dropped something because you didn’t like it.
Christ we’re useless.
There’s several problems with not locking yourself into a job/path. Firstly, you jump from course to course, and job to job. You’re wasting everyone’s time and a lot of your own energy + literally setting fire to money. Secondly, you’re creating a massive disadvantage for yourself. The minority who did figure out what they ‘want to be when they grow up’ (srsly jelly) are now a couple of years ahead of you in the role and are poised for leadership opportunities down the track.
Here are some insights to help ensure you’re not changing career every two-odd years, because:
MYER-BRIGGS TYPE INDICATOR
Firstly, just with everything in life (besides ‘Yonce), the Myer-Briggs Type Indicator isn’t without its flaws. When used with a pinch of salt, though, it can be a darn good way of figuring out ~who you are~.
The MBTI test is an introspective (i.e. looking deep within yourself) questionnaire used to reflect psychological preferences in how one makes decisions and views the world at large. In other words: it’s a test to tell you what you’re all about.
Try and remember all those high school tv shows/movies (e.g. Degrassi) (lol Drake, wot doin’?) from the 90’s where students took a personality test to help them figure out what job they might enjoy. If you need more of a prompt, usually there was one female student who was told she’d make a good homemaker and the plot turned subtly feminist in describing why being a stay at home mum was a-okay. Ah, the 90’s; full of positive subliminal messaging and charm.
Mother-daughter duo, Katharine Cook Briggs and daughter Isabel Briggs Myers, got a hold of the typological theory proposed by Carl Jung and created the assessment. Jung, (Freud’s protege turned archenemy) put forward the idea that there are four principal psychological functions by which humans experience the world – sensation, intuition, feeling, and thinking. He also believed that one of those four thangs is dominant for a person all the time.
The test poses a series of questions and your answer to them reflects what makes you tick. Once it knows what you’re all about (which is always a riveting read), it can point you in the direction of roles you’d be suitable for.
You can take the assessment (for free – yay) HERE.
To enlightenment, and beyond!
LOOK AT YOUR PAST WORK
Now that you’ve used an external tool to assess your internal, it’s time to pair it with some more data. Figuring out what job you want can often be decided by what you’ve excelled at in the past.
It’s easy to forget what you’re good at when most of your time over the past few years has been dedicated to party-rocking/having a banging social life.
Maybe, just maybe, your parents did you a solid and kept some of your old assignments or exams that you absolutely nailed. If that’s the case, have a pick through them and see what’s up. It’s not just about looking at the content (just because you got an +A on an essay about Ferdinand Magellan doesn’t mean you want to be a historian or naval explorer), you need to look at the work as a whole. If you did well, you probably cared at some stage of its execution.
It could be the collation of information, and organisation of that information, that made you tick. There’s plenty of fab roles out their that require someone who can sift through info and compile it together.
Alternatively, maybe you were hella dope at math but loathed it as a subject. Once again, there’s plenty of jobs out there that are suited to the mathematically-inclined, but in no way focus on it.
In summary, take a look at things you’ve done over the years and pick them apart to find out what element of it made you wet. Odds are it won’t be the glaringly obvious.
TRY AND GAIN SOME EXPERIENCE
Hopefully by now you’ve landed on a couple of positions that could get you off for the rest of your life.
There’s no better way to confirm your suspicions than giving it a red-hot crack. BUT, squeezing your way into a role without any qualifications is a right pain in the booty.
What you’re going to need to do to get yo’self some work experience is channel your inner Jesus and perform one hell of a miracle. That miracle takes form in the cover letter to end all cover letters.
FYI: if writing is one of your weaknesses then you’ll have to beg a friend/fork out a bit of money to pull this one off.
Employers love a bit of passion. If you honest to god give a crap about working in that field, and you clearly express that in your cover letter, you might stand a fighting chance of getting in there.
If one knocks you back, try another. If they tell you to f-off, go back to the first one. Be annoyingly persistent.
FYI #2: Prepare to be broke. It’s the worst part of work experience but trust us, you’ll be saving yourself a financial headache down the track once those HECs bills start rolling in.
Also, be aware that you’re just sampling what will likely be a very watered-down version of your future job. Say you want to get into PR – your work experience employer isn’t just going to hand you all of their accounts for you to have a field day with, you’ll probably just be fetching coffees. What you’re trying to get out of being there is a clear understanding of what your future job will be and if you’ll even enjoy the monotonous parts of it.
Finding your dream job (one that you’ll stick to) is an absolute pain, so we hope the above info was useful. Check out the flexible/killer courses Careers Australia has on offer HERE – they’re a great institution to hit up and get qualified with for all yo’ future endeavours. They’ve even created a career-questionaire that can give you further insights into what you’d be good at. Find out what career would suit you through Career Crush HERE.
