How to Choose a Career - 4 Steps!

Hey everyone, this is self made Millennial. I'm Madeline Mann. Today we're going to be talking about the four steps you can take to find the right career for you. It is such a daunting task to figure out exactly what career is right for you, which is why I have boiled it down in this video. I'm going to give you exactly step by step each way with tips and examples. If you pursue this process rigorously, you will find the perfect career for yourself. First, I want to acknowledge how difficult it is to find the right care for you. It took me so many hours, so much soul searching. For a lot of us, we see the obvious careers, right? We see lawyer, doctor, academic, film director, and we don't really understand what else is out there. So many of us after college take the hitchhiker approach to our career. We just stick our thumbs out there and see what company will pick us up and give us a job. And then we just let our careers follow it where it may. Hitchhiking is very dangerous. You might get murdered. Let's be more systematic about the way we think about our careers. Step one. Figure out what you love.

Start by making a list of all the things that you enjoy, that you're passionate about, that you're interested in. It could be statistics, event planning, design, public speaking, nature, the environment. Really write down as many things as you can and what will help you fill out this list is if you start talking to people in your family or in your network about ask them about their jobs, even if it's not a job that you necessarily see yourself doing. But ask them what are some, some of the things they like doing in their job and you might uncover some other things that you might be interested in. So for me, when I was doing this exercise, my top three interests were journalism, music, and psychology. Next, after you have these interests, start looking for different kinds of jobs that would fit these interests. For example, for psychology, I started coming up with all kinds of different roles, such as school psychologist, market researcher, advertising, human resources and recruiting, academic researcher, therapist, human capital consulting. Once you've made this list, then start researching the ones that genuinely interest you. Search for blogs and articles and job descriptions to get a sense of the career, including your research, looking for how in demand these different careers are. You can find a lot of information on Glassdoor. Here's an example of a page on Glassdoor about some of the best jobs in America. And it calculates it by looking at the salary and the number of job openings and then the score for the job satisfaction this information will be crucial for you to understand exactly what it's going to be like to pursue this career and give you a bit of a reality check of how difficult it's going to be to find a job in this career. When I was trying to figure out my career, I did this exercise and found that being a journalist was on the list of worst careers to go into on Glassdoor, which was a sobering and realistic perspective I needed to address. Step 2 Scrutinize each potential career path.

Now that you've done your research and you're narrowing down your list, let's take these jobs that sound interesting to you and look at the Venn diagram to understand if it's a viable career for you. So when thinking about each potential career path, try to see where it falls within this Venn diagram. What you love, what you're great at, and what pays well. What you love is what we went over. It's things that get you excited. What you're great at is something you're gonna have to be really honest about yourself with. We all find things that we love and are passionate about, but my question is always, can I be the best person at this? If your answer is maybe or no, then it probably doesn't land in this circle. Finally, what pays well, which, as we said before, is both salary, but also how many job openings there are for this role. When I was trying to figure out my career, I did this exercise and at the time, my two main focuses were working at the campus newspaper and performing as a singer songwriter all around campus and the San Diego area. I took a closer look at those passions and saw where they fell on my Venn diagram. It didn't take me long to discover that neither paid well or had a ton of openings for journalism. I'd spent enough time around successful journalists who were living deadline to deadline, and I saw the effort they were putting in. And I realized that while I'm good at journalism, I'm not as good as them. I wouldn't be as committed and as them. So while I was pretty decent at journalism, I didn't put it in the circle of what I'm great at. Same with music, I saw passionate, hungry musicians who were really putting themselves out there, getting those gigs, practicing 24 7. And I did music as more of something that was fun and a way to express myself. And so I also knew that I would never be in this circle of what I'm great at, what I think I could be the best at. So in the end, I realized that Both of those passions were only lived in this circle. I am absolutely not trying to discourage you from going into an industry like journalism or music. What I'm saying is you have to make sure that you are going to be in the top. You're going to be one of the greatest at it since it is more competitive. I also know a lot of people who do pursue these careers and five years in, they're so demoralized and they feel like they need to switch careers and that they wish they had explored other options earlier. So if that could possibly be you, that's what this whole exercise is about. So really take the time and aim for the center. Moving right along to step three, do informational interviews.

You now have a smaller list, based on your Venn diagram activity, of things that could be really great for you to pursue. Now you need to go out and find people who are in those careers and do informational interviews with you. This is the most important, important step and the step that a lot of people miss. I do have a video on exactly how to have the most effective informational interview. So go find that and watch that for all of the details about this. An informational interview is a time where you sit down with a professional and ask them questions about their job to better inform the career decisions you make. The reason why this is so important is that while you've done all this research before, this is where you'll really get the clear understanding of what that job is like. Because the information online gives you a good overview. But nothing is like hearing someone's personal experience. To be able for you to see yourself in that role, you must do at least one informational interview for every career you're considering. When I was doing this, I did so many. I toured a school and saw what it was like a day in the life of a school psychologist. I went to a consulting firm and saw what human capital consulting was like, and I worked in a psychology lab and saw what psychology research was like. All these things helped me get a glimpse into these careers without really wasting too much time on it. This is the most efficient way to test out different careers and just make decisions quickly. Step four is to choose a path and create a plan of action.

Now that you've done lots of informational interviews and you feel really excited and confident about a specific career you would like to pursue, go out and find more people in that profession to do informational interviews with. You want to gather as much information because you're about to make a life decision about this. So especially get their path that they took to where they are today. And what you're going to do is you're going to write down the path that everyone took. And when you're creating your career plan, take pieces of what stood out to you of each of those paths and employ it in your own plan. I really took this advice to heart. I did an informational interview with an exceptional mentor and I took exactly her path to success and duplicated it. I got the same masters as she did, I got an internship at the same company she worked at and then went on to be employed there as well. It really was helpful to follow that step by step plan and know where I was going. Bottom line is you don't have to blaze your own trail. I mean, everyone's path is going to be unique. But definitely ask for help from others because you're not the first one to do this. When choosing the right path for yourself, make sure you clearly know what you want as far as what industry, what kind of company, and what kind of role you want. One big mistake I notice for people who are trying to figure out their careers is they often focus on the role first and then whatever company and industry takes them, they go for that role. But this is actually completely backwards. Make sure you're extremely intentional about what industry you go into. Then once you feel like you know what industry, have a good idea of the kinds of companies you'd like to work for. And then within those companies, look for a role that most closely matches your interests. But if there's any wiggle room or compromise you should be making about your career plan, it should be at the role. Because ideally you should be in an industry you're passionate about at a company that is meaningful to you. And if you're in the right company, oftentimes they will find the right spot for you. You can grow into the right role. So the role might not be the perfect fit up front, but you can move into that role. For example, through my informational interviews, I realized that the industry I want to participate in is technology industry. Then from there I decided I want to be a part of growing startups. Then finally I thought about the type of role I wanted to, which was resources, which was employee growth and development, which was recruiting, that I kept a little bit more broad because I knew if I got in any of those areas in the right company, in the right industry, I would be able to find my place. I know that my career would be so different right now if I didn't focus on the industry first. You know, I could have been HR in a law firm or in the hospitality industry and those positions are actually very different from what I'm working on today. And know that it's not terribly easy to switch industries, so make the conscious decision up front so that you don't have to then backtrack or really have to hustle to get into a different industry once you realize it wasn't the right fit. Those are the steps to finding the career of your dreams. I really wish you the best. If you follow these steps, I promise you you will really uncover some amazing opportunities. I have a lot of videos on how to get these jobs when you don't have connections or you don't have experience, so look out for those to make sure that you're really pursuing these opportunities in the best possible way. Leave your career stories in the comments. I love to read them as well as pop a like on this video if it you thought was helpful. Make sure to subscribe to this channel because I come out with videos every week and I don't want you to miss one. Thank you so much everyone and see you next time.