Finding Your Right Career Fit

3-Minute Read

Have you ever wondered whether you are wasting away many hours, and days, and years – at a career that you are not too ‘sure’ about? Or maybe you are already absolutely sure that this job is just not the right fit for you?

This would be the time to start considering what career truly ‘fits’ you.

You may not realize this, but you and your job are a relationship. You spend many hours together. You learn a lot about each other (hopefully). You get emotional from time to time if the job is not giving you what you had hoped for in the course of that relationship.

Therefore, in this blog, I am going to tell you how to start hunting for the perfect professional match that will give you a happily ever after between you and your career.

I am a lawyer by profession, and even though it looked like I had it all figured out, and I knew where I was going in a career (After all, I purposely chose the type of training needed for that career), having gone for formal training did not make it any easier for me in deciding what to do with the rest of my life after I graduated from law school. For instance – Litigator? Contractual law work only? Immigration law? Family law? Which could I possibly choose that would be perfect for me??

You may be in that same boat, after completing a training program, and still unsure of what you want to do. Or maybe you did not undergo any formal school training, but you are, nevertheless, clueless about where you want to go from here.

Whichever scenario you fall into, training or not, it is the same boat – You don’t want to spend the next 10 to 40 years going around job circles without a destination, without a purpose – and without a good financial reward that would, at least, make your life comfortable.

Here are the 5 steps that I took in getting started on the journey to matching up with my professional ‘true-love’ career (Yes – I know it sounds romantic – But when you have met your career-match made in Heaven, I think you will think of it the same way!).

1. Zero in on your “Happy Place”: Did you know that if you have a ‘happy place’, you occupy a respected position that someone else may not have? Most of us know one activity or more that we love to do which makes us the most happy when we are engaged in it. For me, that activity is writing. I can sit down for an entire day, typing away on a new story or novel, and may sometimes even need to remind myself to stop for breaks. Therefore – What is your happy place? Scuba diving? Sleeping? Eating? Bike riding? These examples may seem tongue-in-cheek, or like they are poking fun. In actuality, no matter how non-serious the activity sounds, if it is the one thing that you absolutely adore to do, you can make a career out of it that matches you to perfection.

Yes – Even if sleeping is your happy place. There is a career for that. You will discover more about making careers out of the most ‘ordinary’ things in my later blogs.

2. What do you know about your Happy Place?: In other words, do you have any training in that area, or is it simply something that you have been doing mindlessly, a pass time that you don’t think twice about? Don’t get me wrong. You don’t need to go to college, or earn some expensive diploma in order to become an authority on that subject that makes you so happy. There are abundant resources available in our information age that will enable you to learn, and keep learning about that activity you love so much, and then, you are able to take it out there to the world and give it to others as a gift that they can enjoy as well. Imagine a career that empowers you to give something to others that is meaningful? You start to contribute resources that are useful and valuable. That is a career that could only originate from knowing your happy place, and learning about how to capitalize on it, bringing it as a gift from you to the world that needs it.

3. What kind of worker are you?: It is one thing to discover your Happy Place, and start to understand bringing the gift of it to others. However, you would need to consider the sort of environment that works best for your personality, your lifestyle and your needs. Are you the type of worker that would be best suited using your ‘happy place’ wisdom with an employer? Or do you have the type of drive that makes you an entrepreneur, so that the best place to build on your true career discovery would be as your own boss, a business owner? These are things that need to be considered on this journey of self discovery. To determine whether you are best suited as an employee versus a business owner, you want to ask yourself questions such as: What is more important to me? The security of a paycheck; or living with the uncertainty of not knowing how the next rent will be paid, a struggling entrepreneur until the cash starts to flow in? A happy medium on this choice to be an employee or entrepreneur is to get a job, and work your ‘happy place’ career on the side until you no longer need to work for someone else and can go full throttle into your happy place career.

4. Resume or Business Plan?: Once the decision is made on whether you are best suited as an employee or an entrepreneur, the obvious next thing to do is to start knocking on the right doors to get in to the employer’s space – or your business owner space. As an employee, you clearly need the right resume. There are tons of resume writing services out there, for which I will provide details on a follow up blog.

On the other hand, if you are the entrepreneur type, then you are probably looking at how to create a business plan in order to get your Happy Place business started. There are many resources available for business plan set up as well.

5. Get Your Foot In The Door: After you have polished off the resume, or made the business plan, this is when the real work begins. Start meeting the right people that will get you into that right job as an employee. Or if you are the entrepreneur kind, start mingling with the right group that will mentor, support and teach you how to start flying. It is relationship building for the perfect career.

If you follow these 5 steps to starting your professional journey, you are on your way to living a life where every day is working in your happy place, a professional match made in Heaven.

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