How to Find Out What Career Fits Me

I Don’t Know What Career Fits Me

Found yourself asking, “I don’t know what career fits me” recently? You’re not alone. Our education has been slow to catch-up with industry trends and half of us don’t know what careers are even out there today, let alone which ones fit us. In this guide, we’re here to provide a mini introduction to 21st century careers, and some steps to help you figure out which career fits you.

What Job is Right for Me?

There are several ways you can figure out what job is best for you – and it involves looking at three different factors:

• Your experience.
• Your skills.
• And your interests. 

Let’s unpack these.

Your Experience

Your previous experience is important (but not essential) to defining what career fits you. Some jobs require years of training in a specialist field, whilst others require skills that are more transferable. Corporate careers can be roughly divided into two categories: technical roles and strategy-based roles.

Technical roles will generally require hard skills, such as computer programming proficiency or knowledge of specialist programming tools. 

Strategy-based roles on the other hand (encompassing everything from Sales, to Marketing to Operations), tend to require a variety of skills that can be more easily transferable – such as communication, organisation, collaboration and, yes, strategic thinking. 

If you want to become a developer, you’ll have to either go to college and get a Computer Programming Degree, learn online via a coding Bootcamp or self-teach yourself (and produce a portfolio of work). 

For a sales and marketing role, on the other hand, one can often do a whole host of degrees, or equivalent, in subjects as diverse as Politics to Biology. Any degree can equip you with skills that may very well come in useful when working to build a brand or product.

In terms of career experience, the same is generally true. For technical roles, you’ll likely need experience in a technical capacity – even if just for a personal or volunteer-based project. Other roles may require less directly similar experience, so long as you can communicate how these skills can transfer across.

Your Skills

Naturally, experience tends to build certain skills, but some people have other abilities that make them suited for certain careers. For instance, those with excellent reasoning abilities often see the world as made up of complex patterns, noticing opportunities for optimisation and growth where others do not. This is very valuable when it comes to Operations Manager roles and other strategy-based positions.

Other people prefer creativity and being free to push boundaries and express themselves. These people make great content writers, designers and copywriters.

If you’re unsure what your skills are, the best thing to do is take a personality test. Gyfted’s psychometric tools were designed by 12+ psychometricians, and offer intelligent insights into your character based on cutting edge personality models – completely free:

• Take the Emotional Intelligence Test and Communication Styles Test to understand your social skills, or
• the Reasoning Ability and Reasoning under Pressure Assessments to understand your cognitive skills.
• Alternatively take the Personality Test for extensive (and free!) feedback on all aspects of your personality and skills.

Your Interests

Finally, and most importantly, you need to assess your interests! What is it that gets you most excited? Have you ever been given a task that truly gripped you? Figure out exactly what it is that got you so motivated and then deep dive into careers that let you do that every day. 

Remember – if you have an interest in creativity, you don’t have to be an artist. Creatives can find stimulation in even the most “uncreative” of industries – such as a UI Designer for a hospital, or Content Marketer for an Agriculture firm. Similarly, technical people can find roles in practically any industry – from Civil Engineering, to Fashion.

How to Figure Out What You Want to Do 

Taking all three of these factors, you’re now ready to assess what it is you want to do. 

Look firstly as broadly as possible. What types of careers or professions are open to you based on your previous experience and qualifications? 

Secondly, what types of role might suit your skills and interests? For example, If you’ve got a college degree and a year’s experience in an office-based administrative role, you’ll most likely be a good candidate for an entry-level position in anything from Sales to Operations to Marketing. However, you might love working with people, which could make you particularly suited to an HR role. 

Finally, don’t forget to look into other factors, such as the size of your company. Working for a start-up is a very different experience to working at a big corporation, and certain personalities fit better at one than they do the other. To find out more, check out our recent blog post, “Will I Thrive More in a Startup or Big Company Environment?” or alternatively, take Gyfted’s Remote Mindset assessment. 

What Job Fits My Personality?

By following this process of elimination, you’ll likely end up with a few solid options for roles to apply for. Now it’s time to get some real world experience, to see which is a solid match for your personality. Try shadowing someone in your chosen role, or get volunteer work. An internship is a great way of temporarily working with a company and learning the ropes very quickly. 

Alternatively, you can reach out to someone on LinkedIn. People invariably love talking about their career and offering guidance and it’s a great way of charting someone’s journey to their current position and figuring out your own. For more advice on how to set career goals, check out our blog post. 

Hannah