How to choose a
career path
How to Choose a Career Path
Choosing a career path is really a series of smaller decisions that add up to a big impact on your well-being and happiness. You might think of them as your best bets along the way, based on information you have at the time, and keeping in mind what you can - and cannot - control.
We show you how to choose a career path using these three basic principles of good decision making:
1. Know yourself–your strengths, values, personality, and skills
Self-reflection and learning activities like these will help you decide which career path best fits you.
Discover which Holland personality types you are most like, then match your results with promising careers, college majors and training programs.
Read about John Holland's Theory of Career Choice to understand how your success and satisfaction in a job, school, or college is related to your personality.
Do the activities in Learn about Yourself and Identify Your Skills to understand yourself better.
Explore what career well-being means and how to strengthen yours.
2. Know your options and learn about each one
To learn about career paths, go to Learn about Career Options.
Job Satisfaction will help you optimize yours when you choose a career or a job. It can also help you understand why you are dissatisfied in your job and what to do about it.
To learn about education options, go to Career Clusters and Pathways - How to choose one or Choose a Major or Training Program.
Is starting your own business an option? Visit the Self-Employment Key to explore this idea.
Are you thinking of strengthening your job skills but you are unsure which ones are important? See The Foundation Skills.
3. Make a good decision
At High-Quality Decision Making you will learn a 4-step method based on many scientific studies that is widely used in business and medical settings. It’s easy to understand and use.
Still not sure? Go to Career Indecision and consider getting help from a professional counselor: Career Counseling
How to choose a career with the best bets now
Career Key can help you make the best educated bets (decisions) you can, with the information available and degree of control you have right now. Sometimes the best decision means putting off a decision until later. But putting all decisions off until “the sky clears” is not realistic or advisable - who knows when that will happen?
You can always take action - it just might be a short-term decision instead of a long-term commitment. Whatever your goals are right now, we have some time-tested advice to help. Please consider us as part of your support system - we know this is a difficult time for everyone.For example, no one could have forecast the COVID 19 pandemic or economic recession. And no one knows when (and how) we will return to a pre-pandemic “normal.” There is no information you should have known or actions you should have taken that would have made any difference.
While this lack of control over our current health and economic conditions is admittedly scary, it reminds us that life contains many things outside our control. Making significant life decisions, such as choosing a career, an education program, or changing careers always involves a degree of risk because we cannot control all the inputs. Our career advice Resources help you minimize those risks as much as possible.