Know your personality before choosing a career

By Peter Kamuri

Choosing a career can be a challenging undertaking and to succeed, you have to take full charge by making choices that work for you. As such, it is critical that you make informed choices and one way of achieving this is to peg your career decisions on a good understanding of yourself.

When making career choices, you are the person best placed to choose work that suits your own unique skills, individuality and interests. Most employers will show interest in you when you can prove to them that you know whom you are and what you are capable of doing.

Knowing yourself can be challenging, but the clearer picture you have about yourself, the more likely you are to choose a satisfying career. So how do you get to know yourself? You start by doing a self-assessment. This involves becoming aware of what your interests are, and of course, what you dislike. Make a list of your personal qualities, skills, needs, and interests.

Feel Satisfied

Are you ambitious? Outgoing? Intolerant? Your personality plays a great role in determining the sort of occupation make you feel satisfied since every occupation calls for certain personal qualities. Therefore, identify your personal qualities by listing them down. Get additional help from people close to you, as they know some of your qualities you are not aware of.

What skills do you possess? Skills refer to what you are capable of doing using knowledge acquired over time. It is these skills that should guide you towards certain careers. Identify the skills you have such as ability to operate certain machines, computer literacy or the certificates you have.

Some people go for some occupations without a clear mind of what they want the job to offer them. So you must list your needs to make an informed decision.

What are your interests? The things you do during your free time can give you a bearing on the type of work that would interest you. Interest in writing, for example, may land you a career in journalism. Do you working on projects as part of a group? If so, perhaps teamwork would suit you.

By making career choices based on you capabilities, you are likely to avoid some pitfalls many people encounter when choosing careers. This is perhaps why most people change careers several times during their working life.