Use your interests to identify a career
Page 1 of 5
Being clear about what interests and what bores you is an important part of job hunting for two main reasons. First, this can help you find the job or career you are suited to. Second, most employers are very keen to check that you know yourself well and that you are pretty sure you will be happy in the job if they decide to offer it to you. Many of you will have some general idea of the sort of job or career you are heading for, but some will not. Career indecision is very common and even those of you who do have a clue may still be nursing self-doubt.
Many career psychologists believe that your vocations/work can be viewed as belonging to one of three main types: working with people, data or practical/scientific. Many careers guidance tests and questionnaires are based on this approach.
This three way hierarchy is very basic, simple structure, but it should at least give you a framework for considering the general areas of work available. Of course, many students and graduates have work interests that fall into more than one of the main divisions. For example, you may be drawn to both caring for people and the practical/creative arts, in which case you could look at occupations that involve both dimensions, such as occupational therapy or teaching art. In a similar vein, you may be a chemist, but are interested in working with people, not just looking at test tubes, so you could explore the marketing and commercial aspects of product development.
Equally, many jobs today require you to integrate aspects of all three - people, data and practical - dimensions. The balance between them will depend on the type of career and on the organisational setting in which you work.
Working out which is the right career for you is not an exact science. Science can help of course, and your local careers advisory service may have several career/personality tests available. The only real drawback with these tests is that they are only as good as the information you provide. In order for them to be helpful, your answers to the questions they pose need to be as accurate as possible and this could be the tricky bit.
