The ICT Job Hunter Blog

In my last post, I looked at the first step to finding your career passion.  While the questions that were outlined for your consideration did not relate directly to your career, this was quite intentional. 

Often, when we are struggling to get to the heart of a matter, we can be inclined to think too narrowly, and this can certainly be the case when it comes to deciding on a career – especially a career that we feel passionate about.  What often happens is that we start off with, and often get stuck with, a whole list of job titles, and it’s as though we try to fit ourselves into one of these little boxes.  What we are trying to do here though, is to come at the issue from the opposite perspective and put YOU first, not the job title.  By making what fires you up the top priority, you will probably come up with a completely different set of boxes from which you can begin to narrow down the field as themes begin to emerge.    

So, now that you have looked at what you enjoy, what about what you are good at?  I mentioned a few days ago about loving the things that we are good at, and being good at the things that we love, but how often do we actually use the natural skills and talents that we were born with as part of our working lives? 

Every single one of us is born with one or more natural talents.  We might be great listeners or have a special aptitude for figures or be really good with our hands.  In many cases, we use these natural talents in other areas of our lives, such as in our hobbies or in our interactions with friends and family, but do not even consider them in terms of our careers.  Instead, we get ourselves into one of those little job title boxes and just go through our careers adding more and more skills to our portfolios that have nothing to do with what we are innately good at or what we enjoy.

Once again then, let’s take a step back and look at a different set of questions:

1.    What were your favorite subjects and classes at school and why?

2.    What do you think you are naturally good at?  What comes easily to you?

3.    What do other people think you are good at?  In what areas do they come to you for help or advice?

4.    Is there a particular job or career that everybody keeps telling you that you would be good at?

5.    Are any of your friends or family in a job or career that really grabs your attention?  What is it about this particular career path that appeals to you?

6.    What type of work environment suits you best?  Do you prefer to be around lots of people in a busy atmosphere where there is lots of change, or are you more comfortable working alone or in a more steady and predictable environment?

7.    What area of volunteer work have you been involved in or would you choose to become involved in and why? 

8.    Regardless of whether you qualify for whatever reason, what is your dream job?

Again, when you come to tackle these questions, don’t limit your responses.  If your natural instinct when it comes to considering voluntary work is to say that you would like to help mistreated elephants in Africa, then go ahead and write it down, whether it seems possible or not.  This may not end up as your eventual career path, but it may form part of an underlying theme if, for example, you have indicated other desires or values elsewhere which relate to environmental concerns or concerns with regard to animal welfare.

Also as before, try to separate your own interests from what other people think you should be doing.  All too often we make our career choices based on other people’s desires and expectations, rather than our own, and can end up in jobs where we are actually like fish out of water.  Your career choice should be based on your personality, how you perceive the world and how you make decisions, and we will look at this in more depth in step 3. 

In truth, most people tend to think in traditional terms about traditional careers and they can feel frightened, skeptical, threatened or even jealous if we appear to be considering something outside the box, which can in turn color any advice or opinions they give.  This, however, is not about how other people think you should be living your life and earning your daily bread – it’s about what YOU feel passionate about.

Having said this, it can be useful to take other people’s perceptions of you into consideration – not their desires for you, but their perceptions of you.  Sometimes it takes other people to notice our natural talents.  Human nature is such that we tend to belittle our own abilities and assume that the things that we do can be done easily by everyone else.  This is very often not the case, however, and if you find that people constantly seek you out in relation to particular subjects or issues, it is because they recognize something in you which you may not yet be able to see in yourself.