5 Tips to Help You Choose Your Career Path

Before you get to the point of preparing for interviews or thinking about upskilling, there’s a step that requires just as much time and effort. Deciding on your career path is never easy. What doesn’t make it any easier is we’re often forced to make these decisions before entering college or university. That’s a lot to ask, especially when research shows that Canadians will change jobs up to 15 times in their lifetime. What we want to do is help you through this process. Understanding that choosing your career is a mix of your skills and interests, we’ve created exercises that we believe can help you get to a sound career decision. And once you make that decision, understand that you can use these exercises to change your mind as your interests grow and change, and your skill set develops and expands.

These simple exercises can help you determine a career path

Here are some simple but effective ways to figure out the best career path for you:

1. Ask yourself questions about your career interests

• What am I passionate about? — Think about what gets you excited just at the thought of doing it. Don’t necessarily think of work things. Think of what you do in your everyday life that brings you the most joy. When you’ve found that feeling, you know it’s where you’re supposed to be.
• What are my skills and capabilities? — Passion can only take you so far. If you’re skilled at doing the thing you’re passionate about, then you need to either find ways to improve your skills or think of something else. It’s a good idea to start with what you know you’re good at before deciding to branch off. Prepped has a Skills and Capabilities exercise you can use to get started. You can access the exercise under the Know Your Strengths tab.
• What are my must-haves in a career? — Think of the ideal career situation. What does it look like? What do you need to make that situation absolutely perfect? List them all down even though perfect doesn’t exist. Once you have that list, though, think about what on that list you absolutely can not do without.

2. Take a career quiz

We know this sounds a little like Buzzfeed, but hear us out! Career quizzes simply provide you with options. Some of these career options you may not have thought about, and that alone makes it worth it. What these quizzes do is ask questions around your personality, your skills and your interests, many of the same questions we suggested in the first point, and make job suggestions based on your answers. They don’t take very long to complete. You can finish one from Job Bank in a few minutes, and when you’re done, you’ll at least have a starting point for what career choices are possible.