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It may be pretty nerve-racking when you have to face this question ‘what career should I choose?’ You may be immersing yourself in the worry-free studying life without thinking too much on your career selection previously. A sudden change of your life transaction may result in a sudden dilemma when you are asked to select a suitable course which will determine your future career path. As you are choosing a career which is going to accompany you for almost half of your life, if you make a wrong decision, even though it won’t be the end of the world, but you may either nag about your sorrowful career life until you retire or waste your time in swapping to the career that you really love in the mid of your working journey.

Interest

In my opinion, there are few factors we should consider while choosing a right career. The very first factor is none other than interest. What do you really like to do? Ask yourself. Do you like to cook? Do you feel contented when somebody praises you on the delicious meal you prepare for him/her? Do you like to dance? Do you feel gratified when you perform in front of a group of like-minded audience? Do you feel intrigued when running a scientific experiment? Do you feel satisfactory when you manage to crack the code of a scientific fact? Shortly speaking, it is advisable to opt for a career that you won’t feel exhausted from doing it.

Aspiration

Secondly, aspiration plays a significant role in choosing a right career. Something that you like to do may just be your hobby. Hobby is something that you love to do during your leisure time. Yes, you may be interested in playing badminton, but it does not guarantee you have the aspiration of becoming a professional badminton player. There is a difference between your interest and your aspiration. Aspiration is something you like to do and enjoy spending almost half of your life to earn an income from doing it. Interest is something you like to do but you may not be able to rake in a single cent from doing it. Aspiration normally comes together with interest, but interest may not be necessary to attach with aspiration. If you want to choose the most ideal career for yourself, besides recognizing your interest, you still have to ensure whether you aspire to grow your interest into your career.

Strength

You may aim for becoming a national badminton player, but you are stumped in training yourself to be a more proficient player. If you do not see your strength in this field, then your dream of becoming a professional badminton player may be far remote from you. Recognizing your own strength is as important as recognizing your interest. I am not trying to tell you that you need to possess all medical knowledge before you recognize your aspiration as a doctor and enroll yourself in the medical course. That is impossible. But at least you are advisable to be well-versed in science subjects before even thinking of studying medical course.

Every individual will surely be blessed with strength in certain fields. Someone who is outstanding in art may not be good in science and vice versa. Of course, having related strength in your aspiration may not be a must when choosing a career. But I am sure it will help to increase your success rate in the relevant field. For instance, you aspire to become a businessman in the jewelry field. There are two possible scenarios:

Scenario one: You have such ambition purely because you like jewelry.

Conclusion: You have interest and aspiration in jewelry field.

Scenario two: You have such ambition because you like jewelry and have the ability to design jewelry. You end up becoming a jewelry designer. But you hope to be able to commercialize your design.

Conclusion: You have the interest and aspiration in the jewelry field. On top of that, you have another 50% strength of becoming a businessman in the jewelry field. You just have to polish your strength to 100% by pursuing more knowledge in business such as attending business management course, reading more business related books, consulting the successful businessmen and of course learning from experience.

If you are in the second scenario, you will stand a higher chance to succeed in your ambition compared to someone who only has the interest and aspiration in it. In this case, running business is something more subjective. Some people say successful businessmen were born with talents and intelligence in doing business. This statement may be true and it cannot be reflected on all businessmen.  Having congenital business intelligence will surely enhance the success rate of a businessman. But having great perseverance and persistence is one of the major traits of a successful businessman. A person who is willing to learn from mistakes can possibly grow to be a successful businessman even without the congenital business intelligence.

Personality

Choosing a career which can suit your personality will enable you to comfortably stay with your career until your retirement life. For example, if you are a creative thinker, choosing proofreader as your career will make you feel stodgy. One day, you may be bored to death as you are unable to obtain a breakthrough in your monotonous life. If you are an outgoing person, being a telemarketer may be less ideal than being a marketing executive who can deal with customers face to face. Hence, try to consider a career that can beautifully match your personality as well.

Social Value

After recognizing a career that you really want, then you also have to take ‘its’ value into consideration. Do you think your desired career can bring positive values to the society? Is it legal in the community’s points of view? Let me provide you a more ironic example. Someone enjoys the process of making love very much (this is her interest). She feels contented to be able to make a tempting income from making love (this is her aspiration). She is very confident with her ability of satisfying her sex partner (this is her strength). She is a bold, vigorous and unconstrained person. (This is her personality) Due to all these factors, she thinks being a ‘public relations officer’ is very suitable for her. But does it bring good values to the society? Or will it actually encourage more extramarital sex transactions? Shortly speaking, when choosing a right career, you may have to consider whether it is a mutually-accepted career by the public. You may think that your chosen career has nothing to do with the public. But if you are choosing a notorious job, you may end up being despised by people around. If you are willing to confront with such obstacle, then I have nothing to say about, as this is your own choice.

Market Demand

After confirming the career that you choose can fulfill your interest, your aspiration, your strength, your personality, the social value, your final step to determining your most ideal career is to ensure your chosen career is not a deserted career in your state or country. I am NOT trying to deliver a message that ‘you must find a popular career’. Your chosen career may not need to be very popular, but at least it must have a certain level of market demand, so that you won’t face any problem to get a job after your graduation from the relevant course. For instance, I have a friend graduated from the forestry course in Malaysia.  But there is no market demand in this field in the state she is living unless she is willing to transfer to other state of the country. Due to this reason, she ends up involving in the administrative job instead of a career related to forestry.  As we are staying in a competitive working environment, hence we have to be realistic enough to select a career that we love but also with market demand at the same time, instead of stubbornly heading for a career that nobody in the market would appreciate.

In the process of deciding the study course that determines your future career, you may shortlist a few possible careers that come across your mind. Then, list down the six factors that I shared above, which comprise interest, aspiration, strength, personality, social value and market demand. Subsequently, try to analyze your possible careers one by one by relating them to your listed factors. Below is an example:

You may repeat this process for every of your possible career, the one which can fulfill all your factors perfectly should be the career you should consider. Hope this article is instrumental in answering your question ‘what career should I choose?’