What career to choose when you don't know what to do?

Choosing a career path can be quite stressful; there is so much pressure to choose the “right” career.  But how does one define what is the “right” career?  Some will have confidence in what path they want to choose, but there can be a great deal of ambivalence with making such a choice for others.  When it comes time to make that decision, here are a few suggestions to help you choose a career:

Considering taking an aptitude test.  There are numerous types of questionnaires that you can take that will help guide you in what career to choose.  You should be able to find some of them by doing a simple google search; there is the ASVAB/battery test, and there is a RIASEC test.  The battery test will list many different options based on the response you answer to a list of questions.  The RIASEC is a test that will break down your different types of personalities and what careers would match based upon the personality results.

You may consider doing something to help determine what career path you want to choose to identify your values system.  Create a list of your top, let us say 10, values that rank from most important to leave important.  Do you consider financial stability to be most important?  Do you consider flexibility to be important?  Do you consider innovation and creativity to be a necessity?  Once you have a good understanding of your values, you can create a list of jobs that best fit the items that are most important to you. 

Another way to help you make a career decision is to complete a decisional balance worksheet.  If you are stuck deciding between two (or more) different options, you use a decisional balance worksheet to help you organize your thoughts on the different options.  Or creating a pros/cons list will work just as well.  Either way, this activity will help you clarify if you are uncertain about what career path to choose.  Consider also having that values clarification list as part of this pros/cons exercise as well.

It is important to remember that absolutely no decision we make in our career is a permanent choice.  We will always have the option to redefine our career paths as we choose to.  Putting too much pressure on ourselves can be unproductive; try to look at it from a perspective of opportunity and excitement!