How to Choose the Right Career

Steps

Consider Your Interests

1. 1
   Consider your dream career. There is an old saying that if you’re trying to choose a career, you should think about what you would do if you didn’t have to work. If you had a million dollars and you could do anything, what would you do? Your answer to that question, while maybe not literally the best career choice for you, may give you insight into what you should do.
   
   
   
   • If you want to be a music star, consider going into audio engineering or music composition. These careers are easier to pursue and you will be much more likely to succeed and provide for yourself in the future.
   • If you want to be an actor, consider going into media broadcasting. You can get a degree in communications or work your way up the chain of command in a local news or other television studio.
   • If you want to travel the world, consider becoming an airline steward or stewardess. This is a great way to make a living and pursue your dream of traveling the globe.
2. 2
   Consider your hobbies. It is very easy to turn your hobbies or something you love doing into a future career. Many hobbies correspond to real world needs and positions. Consider what you like to do and how that might fit into a career.
   
   
   
   • For example, if you like playing video games, consider becoming a video game designer, programmer, or QA specialist.
   • If you like drawing or art, consider becoming a graphic designer.
   • If you like sports, consider going into teaching and getting certified as a coach.
3. 3
   Consider what you enjoy or enjoyed in school. Academic subjects translate well into future careers but may require more schooling than other types of careers. Your favorite class in high school could very well launch you into your future career but you have to be willing to work for it.
   
   
   
   • For example, if you loved chemistry, you could look forward to a future career as a lab technician or a pharmacist.
   • If you liked English class, consider becoming an editor or a copywriter.
   • If you enjoyed math, consider becoming an actuary or an accountant.

Consider Your Skills

1. 1
   Think about what you are or were good at in school. Think about the subjects you excelled in in school. Though it may not be your favorite thing to do, choosing a career based on something you are skilled at can help you excel and provide yourself a secure future.
   
   
   
   • Look at the examples from the previous step if you need ideas.
2. 2
   Consider what skills you excel in. If you are particularly good at certain skills, such as fixing things or making things, this can provide you with a great future career. Schooling may or may not be necessary, but skilled labor is often in demand and you will find it fairly easy to find work.
   
   
   
   • For example, carpentry, auto repair, construction, and electrical work all benefit from people who are good at fixing things or working with their hands. These also tend to be stable, well-paying jobs.
   • Other skills, such as a skill for cooking, can also be easily turned into a career.
3. 3
   Consider your interpersonal skills. If your skills lie more in helping and communicating with other people, there are jobs for you as well. People who communicate and interact with others well can easily get careers as social workers or in marketing and similar business positions.
   
   
   
   • If you’re more the type to take care of others, consider nursing or work as an administrative assistant or office manager.
4. 4
   If you don’t know, ask! Sometimes it’s hard for us to see the areas in life where we excel. If you don’t think you’re good at anything, ask your parents, other family members, friends, or teachers what they think you’d be good at. Their ideas might surprise you!
   
   
   

Consider Your Current State

1. 1
   Explore yourself. Figuring out what you should do with your life may sometimes require you to get to know yourself better. If you want a career that will really make you happy, you have to have a very good understanding of what you want and what you enjoy. For some people, this means taking some time off to decide what’s important to them.
   
   
   
   • There is nothing wrong with this, so don’t feel bad. It’s more important that you figure your life out as early as possible, rather than getting knee deep in a career which makes you hate your life.
2. 2
   Consider your financial situation. Your ability to pursue or change careers may hinge on your financial situation. Some career paths require special schooling and this is sometimes expensive. However, you should not feel that being poor bars you from getting the education you want. There are lots of government programs to help you pay for schools, as well as scholarships, grants, and apprenticeship programs.
   
   
   
3. 3
   Think about the education you will have as you enter a career. It is important to consider what education you already have or will have as you begin pursuing a career. If finances may bar you from pursuing more schooling, you may need to consider what you already have. It may also be necessary to stick with your existing high school or college degree if there are time limitations or other restrictions. If you find that you are limited to jobs relating to the degree you already have, consult with a career counselor to find out what options are available to you.
   
   
   
4. 4
   Think about returning to school. If restrictions do not bar you from pursuing more schooling, you may want to consider this option. Not everybody excels in school or needs a traditional college education, but most career paths have associated training which you can do and will help you advance more quickly.
   
   
   
   • Technical colleges, for example, may be a good option for those who would prefer not to pursue a traditional education.
5. 5
   Do more research. If you're still confused, consider doing more research on this topic. You can find more helpful information here or consult with your adviser or college of choice.
   
   
   

Consider Your Future

1. 1
   Consider the careers you have easy access to. Consider what career options are available for you to easily move into. These would be careers in which you have both the necessary skills and an “in”. Examples would be working for the same company as one of your parents, working for a family business, or working for a friend. If your options are limited, choosing a career in which you can quickly enter may be your best option.
   
   
   
2. 2
   Consider your future financial security. One of the most important things to consider is if the career path you’re choosing will provide you with an acceptable level of financial security. In other words, will you be able to make enough money to support yourself and your family?
   
   
   
   • Remember, this doesn’t have to be a lot of money or enough money by somebody else’s standards. All that matters is that it’s enough for you and what you want for your life.
3. 3
   Consider your future job stability. It is also important to consider a future career’s stability. Job markets fluctuate as society needs different things at different times. Certain jobs are also always in demand or frequently unstable. You will need to consider if the career you choose is stable enough for you and your desires for the future.
   
   
   
   • For example, many people recently went into law school and racked up often in excess of $100,000 in school debt because they thought they’d be making a very high wage in the future. However, law positions are not in demand as much the last few years and now those people have huge debts and no way to pay them.
   • Another example is working as a writer or any career based on freelance work. You may sometimes have plenty of work but there may be years when you have almost nothing. Working in this way requires a certain level of determination and discipline and is not for everybody.
4. 4
   Look at the Occupational Outlook Handbook. One way for you to gauge if a career option is a good idea is to look it up in the Occupational Outlook Handbook. This is a guide, compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which looks at what kind of education is required for different jobs, how much people in those careers make on average, and how much the demand for that job is likely to increase or decrease.^[1]
   
   
   
   
   

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Genesis 2.0 is Ready for You, Right Now … Posted: 07 Aug 2013 11:22 AM PDT The release of a brand new version of the Genesis Framework for WordPress is unlike any other for our team. Today, we’re proud and prepared to share the latest incarnation of it with you … Genesis 2.0. Genesis 2.0 is a major leap forward for the framework, as we corral essential web standards like HTML5 and schema.org to make your WordPress website as fast, secure, flexible, and findable as it can be. If you’ve been waiting to install Genesis 2.0 on your site, it’s time … Click here to get Genesis 2.0 right now. If you have some questions about what Genesis 2.0 is all about, I’ll be addressing a few of those in this post … A First Impression The first new feature that will catch your eye is the default Genesis design. It has been completely revamped to run even better as a stand-alone theme for your site, if you wish to use it that way. And yes, it is completely mobile responsive. The release of Genesis 2.0 is a milestone for us in that all new themes that we release, as well as all updates to existing themes, will be mobile responsive. With Genesis, you don’t need to worry anymore about reaching your audience, whatever device they find you on. Under-the-Hood Enhancements But the improvements in Genesis 2.0 are far more than just cosmetic.  And the two most prominent and empowering under-the-hood changes being Genesis 2.0′s support for HTML5 and schema.org markup. HTML5 All new themes and ones we update moving forward will now be HTML5-ready out of the box. What does this mean? The benefits of HTML5 markup are numerous: It makes your website future compatible It improves cross-browser compatibility It makes your site truly mobile-friendly It allows for extensible design and supports video and audio like no other markup language. It is cleaner and more efficient in terms of storage, API interaction, and other ways impact user experience. Schema.org Microdata With built-in support for schema.org, Genesis 2.0 allows you to enhance your site’s search engine optimization and results display through proper classification of the most important and defining elements on your pages. Joost de Valk’s Yoast.com was one of the first sites to switch over to Genesis 2.0. Here is how he described the importance of schema.org support: Let me start with explaining why you should be bothered with schema.org if you weren’t convinced yet. Not just Google uses schema.org, all 4 major search engines, Google, Yahoo!, Bing and Yandex use it for several different purposes … but it’s not just them. Recently, Pinterest joined the party by announcing support for Product, Recipe and Movie schema’s through their Rich Pins effort. So, in my opinion, schema.org markup is a must for everyone serious about their websites optimization. Google describes the importance of schema markup thusly, in answering a question from their FAQ “Will using schema.org improve my site’s performance in search?” “Google doesn't use markup for ranking purposes at this time — but rich snippets can make your web pages appear more prominently in search results, so you may see an increase in traffic.” Genesis has always provided those foundational SEO elements for you, and now it will be able to step up the game on your behalf. Updated Security Audit It’s very important to us that we provide you the absolute best framework possible, so once again we hired WordPress Lead Developer Mark Jaquith to perform a full review of code for security as he’s done in the past. Here’s what Mark has to say: It’s clear StudioPress made security a priority when developing Genesis and from a security standpoint, Genesis 2.0 is at the top of its class. Introducing the Sixteen Nine and eleven40 Pro Themes Accompanying the release of Genesis 2.0 are two themes that capitalize on Genesis’ newest features. Sixteen Nine lets your verbal and visual personality shine through while proving that design can be simple and stunning. A custom background, mobile responsiveness, and HTML5 are the base on which you can build a look for your site that rises above all others. With the new updated version of the eleven40 theme, form and function converge to create a look that will draw your readers in no matter what device they are on. The intelligent design of eleven40 incorporates mobile-responsive flexibility and HTML5 to deliver the right look at the right time. If you’ve purchased the eleven40 theme previously, you can download the new version (for FREE) over at MyStudioPress. It’s Time to Geek Out … What we’ve already mentioned are far from the only under-the-hood enhancements in Genesis 2.0. For just a moment, let’s get super-geeky and dive into some of the nitty-gritty details that will enable Genesis 2.0 to deliver even better performance and stability to your website: Better named loop hooks for HTML5. Network Upgrade now upgrades the Genesis database for all sites in a network when running WordPress in multisite mode. Widget classes are now coded in PHP5 format. Admin CSS and Javascript are now minified. Inline HTML comments have been removed to reduce page size. The Scripts option now has its own metabox when editing an entry. Custom Post Type archive pages now have a settings page so you can control the output. Genesis tracks displayed entry IDs so you can exclude entries from showing twice on a page. Entries without titles now display a permalink after the post content. Changes like these are why page load times for sites built on Genesis 2.0 will be able to be measured and discussed in milliseconds … assuming, of course, you have solid, preferably optimized-at-the-origin WordPress hosting. And, as you would expect, Genesis 2.0 has adapted to all of the security updates in WordPress 3.6, ensuring that your Genesis-powered site will be better looking, faster, and more secure. Get Started! Enough with the details. You want to get started implementing Genesis 2.0 on your sites … and we want you to as well! Regardless of your experience, whether you're a newbie to WordPress and theme frameworks or a grizzled developer, Genesis 2.0 will allow you to do more with your WordPress site than you ever thought possible. Click here to purchase Genesis 2.0, and take your WordPress site even further. Comments on this post have been closed. If you have questions about Genesis that you’d like to get answered before purchasing, please contact our Support Division directly. If you’re an existing StudioPress customer, please log in to MyStudioPress for all support questions. For non-support related discussions about WordPress, CSS, design, and site feedback, please jump into the StudioPress Community Forums anytime.

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