Ever feel like everyone knows what career path to choose except for you? You’re not alone. It’s difficult to focus on one career, especially if you are interested in a number of fields.
You may have several interests and various favourite subjects so picking just one to focus on for the rest of your life can be daunting. Whether you’re finishing university or you haven’t even been, choosing a career path is one of the hardest decisions you’ll ever have to make.
Luckily, there are a number tools, which can assist you in these difficult choices. So, here are tips on finding the right career when you are interested in everything.
1. Personality tests
Even if different fields have rejected the accuracy of personality tests for recruitment, that doesn’t mean they can’t be thought-provoking for jobseekers. Before actually looking for different online tests, consider what you would like to learn about yourself. Seeing as you are looking for career advice, your best bet is to start by doing career-orientated tests. Certain job boards, like JobbSafari, even provide various tools for candidates (which they can then feature on their profiles). The results from a personality test shouldn’t be your focus at this stage in your career. Try to consider the questions as a check list toward better understanding yourself. Here are some examples of questions a personality test is leading you to ask:
- Do you like working in teams or do you need your space?
- Is work-life balance important to you or would you rather develop your career early for more opportunities later?
- Are you a perfectionist?
- How do you handle criticism?
2. Job Boards
Job boards are an incredible tool for jobseekers, which are largely underappreciated. Not only can you find jobs, but job boards offer a wide range of additional services – usually for free – to its users. From salary checkers to advice columns, you can learn about careers all over the world and in a vast array of fields without even leaving the comfort of your own home.
Salary checkers
At the Jobboard Finder, we include special features from job boards in the review section of job board profiles. If there is a salary checker or calculator, that will be indicated in the review. We even have a few country-specific articles on salary checkers with more to come. The salary information comes from the posted job offers in the database or from the jobseekers, depending on the job board. Some job sites, like Neuvoo, even explain the tax breakdown for different countries.
The salary is always a deciding factor for jobseekers and employees. To avoid any unpleasant surprised years down the track, check out the salaries and consider how it affects your desire to pursue a career in different fields.
Some salary checkers, like the one on Keljob, even indicates the best cities for different professions. Are you willing to move for a higher salary?
Blogs
A blog is a wonderful tool in marketing. It allows a website to promote the focus of their work and to create content for readers on a regular basis. Through a blog, job boards strive to answer questions their users might be asking. For that reason, they are also a great way for jobseekers to learn about different trends in employment. If you are interested in everything and don’t know what career to pursue, visit some blogs on niche job boards. A niche job board is a job site focused on a specific industry or audience. Some examples of interesting blogs are:
- FlexJobs (for remote work)
- HighEd Jobs (for university and school staff)
- Medicis Jobboard (for medical professionals; which is actually a newsfeed)
- eFinancialCareer (For finance and bank professionals)
If a job board has a blog, this information is also included in the special features on the job board profile.
Job files
Some job boards have job files to provide additional information about various professions in their database. If you don’t know what a job title actually refers to, you can visit the different job files to learn about the daily tasks, the salary, the necessary education and hiring companies. A number of different job files come to mind but one of the best ones are on the JobTeaser site. To provide a different more personal outlook on different working environments, the JobTeaser team has interviewed people about their daily routine for a large range of jobs
3. Networking
Have you ever been to a party before and met new people? Well, that’s basically what networking is, only in a professional setting. When you interact with people from different backgrounds and with several professional experiences, you can learn from them. This will help you build your own career. Networking events come in many shapes and sizes: it could be an exclusive party or a seminar in your university. By attending events at university, at the library, around your neighbourhood, you have the opportunity to meet new people and learn about their careers.
You can even network from the comfort of your own home thanks to sites like LinkedIn, OPTnation and so on. If you don’t have an account on LinkedIn, check out our article on creating one.
4. Work Experience
This leads me to our next handy tool on the list. While gaining work experience isn’t exactly a tool, it can be an invaluable learning experience. In many countries, you can start doing work experience as young as 15. Whether you want to discover the workplace for a day or a few months, there is no harm in contacting companies and requesting work experience or an internship. To find relevant companies, you can use company listings on job boards, some of which even have filtering options. If you would like an internship, student job boards are the way to go. One of the most well-known sites in Europe is StudentJob. You can also visit Absolventa for internships in Germany, Absolvent for ones in Poland and YJBYS in China. The possibilities are endless!
Final words
No one said choosing a career was easy but you don’t have to do it alone. The internet has provided you with a number of great tools to discover different jobs and discover which one is right for you. Job boards are your friends, let them help you build your career.
Author: Ali Neill
As the job board tester and blog editor for the Jobboard Finder, Ali works on job boards from all around the world and keeps a close eye on the recruitment trends thanks to a number of sources, including the website’s social media pages.
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