Exploring Career Paths

 By Aliyu Jemilat 

Exploring career options include learning about various occupation and field of employment in order to comprehend the qualifications needed, the duties of the position and any room for advancement. It is important for student and those who are attempting to decide on what career they want to pursue in the future.

Here are few steps to consider while trying to explore your career path.

·         Begin by assessing your interest, abilities, values and personal preferences. Think about your strongest academic areas,  your ideal job atmosphere. You can only find your potential job that you will do well on and even advance your skills only when you have interest in it. So self assessment to know your area of interest will go along way in choosing your career paths.

·         Carryout research: Once you have a career grasp of your interest, start looking into potential job opportunities or paths. You can start learning more about various professions, join profession discussion forums or groups, pay close attention to the works responsibilities, the educational requirements, income ranges, employment prospect. Try as much to get every details of the career to know if is something you can dwell in and succeed for a very long time if not, start by thinking towards your other options.

·         Reach out to people who are already employ in sector that interest you for informational answer. Carryout interview to find out about their professional paths, everyday task, difficulties and the aspect of their jobs they appreciate. Start making judgment regarding your choice, if you can really cope with the challenges or if the benefit over ways the obstacle. If you can’t get personal interview with them, you can log into their profiles and read their about or follow them up.

·         Don't hesitate or be afraid to seek advice from teachers, career advisors, school counselors or professional's for guidance as they can provide supports, information and tools for examining potential career opportunities.

·         Consider enrolling in internship if you have the opportunities rather than sitting and waiting on opportunities of the job to come, you can enroll in internship even if you are not pay, it will be sacrifice for greater course, because as you are given your services for free, you are gaining knowledge and experience in a field you have interest on as you have first hand exposure to the work place culture.

·         Learn about educational requirements for the occupation you are interested in because occupation may require specific degrees or certification. Some could require vocational training or apprenticeship as prerequisite.

·         Consider the prospect for professional advancement and growth within your chosen field. Especially having technological skills because the world is dominated with digital expert due the advancement in ICT. So whether your prospective career requires technical skills or not, you need to acquire it because of the dynamic world. You have to create long time objective and make plans for your future development by learning about possible career routes within and outside the profession

·         After acquiring all the essential data, reflect on them, check on how it affect your personal aims and goals before making a decision

In conclusion, be willing to evaluate and modify your career decision in light of your research and personal development. Just keep in mind that choosing a career path is a fluid process and its acceptable to change your opinion as you learn more and gain more experience. 

The objective is to make educational choices about your future and identify a profession that fulfills you and is compatible with your interest and skills because you can only succeed where you enjoy what you are doing and giving it your best shot