Navigating your career can be incredibly difficult. To help, we have invented this simple seven-step guide to simplify your career development and help you find a career to thrive in!
In this guide, we will cover all areas of career development, from deciding what career you want, to preparing for job interviews and nailing confidence in public speaking.
Following this step-by-step guide will aid you in finding a career that you love. A career that you are passionate about—one that you are excited about every single day. So sit back, enjoy and get prepared to land the career of your dreams!
Step 1: Learn how to find the career you want
The biggest struggle of career development is at the very beginning: when we must try to figure out what career we want to do for the rest of our entire lives.
How do you find your ideal career? Do you do something that you enjoy? Something you’re good at? Or, something that will earn you a lot of money?
To find a career that you’re likely to be very good at (and enjoy!), we have a variety of different tests. Each of these tests is designed to help you make the decision by gaining a deeper understanding of yourself. Personality tests allow you to build self-awareness surrounding career searching.
They can prompt you into self-reflection and encourage you to have an understanding of your individual strengths and challenges. By understanding these, you can find careers that fit your unique personality. There is a whole range of different career tests that you can take, from the 16 types to the Holland Codes and the DISC assessment.
Different to personality tests, career assessments consider a broader range of factors in comparison to personality tests. Career assessments tend to look at personality, as well as skills, interests, and work-life goals. They are often used in schools and colleges to help pupils find a long-term career that their skills and interests are best suited to.
Step 2: Learn how to look for those amazing jobs
A huge part of landing your dream career is knowing exactly how to search for it! In order to land that dream career, highlighted by your personality test and career assessments, you need to be able to narrow down an extensive list of job listings.
Job searching, or ‘job hunting’, is the process of actively looking for employment. It can be a hugely overwhelming process. You will be faced with hundreds of jobs to sift through, all requiring different skills and experience. This is why it is important to know how to look for the ones best suited to you.
To do this, you can take a number of online courses that are designed to help job searching newbies job search like a pro! If you don’t learn to search for jobs properly, you will waste precious time and energy finding (and applying for) jobs that aren’t suited to you. As a result, this may lead to unnecessary rejection and huge knocks on your confidence.
Step 3: Write a resume and cover letter that blows the socks off future employers
So, you’ve found a career you want and narrowed down your search to jobs that are best suited to you. Now, you need to find a way to stand out and land an interview for the job.
The best way to do this? Write a resume that shows your skills, and attach a cover letter to support your claims!
A resume (or CV) is a short document that gives you the chance to show prospective employers why you’re the right person for the job. It includes a general and broad list of all relevant skills and qualifications.
In this day and age, making a good first impression is important because employers take little time reading job applications. Therefore, it is absolutely crucial to be able to write a resume that stands out and grabs their attention.
A cover letter often accompanies a resume. However, it differs from a resume. Instead of being a written overview of your skills and experience, a cover letter is specifically written with the job you’re applying for in mind – allowing you to highlight certain areas you think would make you right for the role.
As recruiters only spend around 5-7 seconds looking at applications, nailing both these things means that in that short space of time, a recruiter will pick you out from everyone else.
Step 4: Take some time to invest in taking some extra courses
Throughout your career, you must never become complacent and stop learning or expanding your knowledge. Investing time in your learning can put you years ahead of others. It shows diligence, dedication, and a desire to be better.
When we think about learning new skills for our career, many people think about going back to college, university or school. Indeed, if you want to become a doctor but don’t have a single degree, you are going to need to attend university to get the skills required from you. However, if you have experience in a certain industry, or want to enter an industry that doesn’t require a university education, there are plenty of online courses out there that teach you everything you need to know!
Top-selling course companies, such as Skillshare and Udemy, have thousands of courses available for all skill levels at a range of different costs. Through these fantastic platforms, you can learn about anything from photography and lightroom to public speaking and novel writing.
Step 5: Learn how to network – people can’t hire you if they don’t know you exist
The golden rule of business (contrary to point 4): it’s not what you know, it’s who you know.
Networking is not just about shouting your name louder than everyone else, it’s about building status, awareness, and noticeability. To do this, you need to be persistent, consistent, proactive and show people what you are about. You can network on social media (e.g., LinkedIn or Instagram) and by reaching out over email or calls. Or, you can network by attending network events.
However you decide to network, the bottom line is: if people don’t know you exist, they can never contact you to offer you new, and exciting, positions.
Step 6: Learn how to prepare for any potential job interviews
You can’t land your dream job if you don’t know how to answer interview questions correctly.
You’ll get asked a whole host of questions, ranging from “Tell me about yourself” to “Why do you want to work for us?”
To prepare for an interview, there are many things you can do, such as:
- Researching the company
- Knowing your unique selling points
- Truly know why you want this job
- Lining up questions to ask the interviewer
- Being assertive and taking responsibility for the interview
If you can do all these things, you stand a good chance of nailing the interview. If you nail the interview, you are likely to get into the later stage of the recruitment process. The further down the recruitment process you go, the more likely you are to get hired and land that job that is so well suited to you.
Step 7: Learn to public speak properly to grab the attention of those in your field
Similar to step 5, you can’t stand out from the crowd if no one can hear you. To get spotted, a top tip is to learn how to present to others and speak with confidence.
Speaking with confidence allows you to communicate ideas clearly and efficiently so that you can stand out. Being able to public speak with confidence will have many career progression and advancement benefits. Excellent public speaking demonstrates leadership, poise, confidence, and professionalism.
If you can get your point across to a group of people in an inspiring manner, people will listen to you. If people listen to you and like what they hear, they will want to offer you an opportunity. The more opportunities you get, the more you can progress throughout your career.
Your turn: Go out and land your dream career!
Using these steps will allow you to find the career that you want. In only a few steps, you will learn how to search for jobs in a career that you really want. To top that off, you will learn how to interview like a boss, speak confidently and much more!
Like what you’ve read? Going to use it in your own career development? If you do, be sure to let us know in the comments section below how you get on!
