Making Informed Career Decisions
Since a Career encompasses more than just our paid work experience, it is important to consider other elements when deciding to pursue a particular path or opportunity. Here are some areas to think about:
- Advancement and Professional Development
- Skills being built – personal and professional
- Schedule and flexibility
- Organizational values and personal motto
- Wages or Salary and Benefits
- Security of position
- Relationships and building a network
- Commute
- Prestige
- Workload
- Work setting and format
- Organization size
- Supervision
- Reputation
- Value alignment of individual and employer
- Service type
Developing Career Development and Management Habits
- Assessing oneself and continually identifying values, skills, and attributes in addition to short-term and long-term career goals. Link to self-assessment tools
- Working collaboratively with community support and identifying other domains of life that need to be evaluated such as mental, physical, and social.
- Continually track and update professional, academic, and personal life experiences on a master inventory – that way you have the details you need for curated application documents.
- Build your network regardless of where you are in your career, and make connections with people of shared interests online or in person.
- Be mindful of your online presence and update any professional online profiles as your education and career progress.
- Continually look at ways to upskill or diversify your skill set through areas like events and short-term training