Choosing a career is a personal decision, though one can get information or consult professionals. This is a very sensitive decision to make, since it determines your happiness, job satisfaction and career development (Tingstad 34). The following steps can be followed in making a good career choice.

Step 1: self assessment

Before making any career choice, first learn about yourself. You should be able to know your values, personal interests as well as skills, which in combination with some certain personal traits, this will make some careers to fit you and others to be inappropriate. Make use of career tools, to collect the information and, consequently, make a list of various occupations that deems suitable. On this level, one can choose to engage counselors or professionals to help them administer these tests, a bigger number do opt to make use of career tests available on the web. At this stage, one should be able to know his/ her leisure time, flexibility of work schedule, salary due to needs, motivational drives, interpersonal relationship, prestige, security etc. This helps in classifying the occupation that one need (Choosing a Career).

Step2: list of the selected occupations to explore

Look over the occupations listed during career tests. In order to eliminate some, circle the ones that you had considered previously and they are appealing to you. Write them separately in order to explore them. In exploring, look at the job description as well as other requirements needed, advancement opportunities, job outlook and earnings. To illustrate this, one may not enjoy duties of a particular career and may deny him/her happiness, job satisfaction of which he/she may opt to change the career in future. The earnings can be lower than thought; also the job outlook may not look promising. This reduces your lists of occupation.

Step 3: carry out informational interviews

For the short list, gather in-depth information. Interview some people with first hand information about such career. If a doctor, arrange to meet and interview him/her the requirements or qualifications needed. Enquire the job demand, codes and ethics, commitment and sacrifices to be made etc.  Check these results from your research against what you know about yourself, to see whether it can be suitable to you. Some jobs may require a degree as a qualification of which one is not willing to put time and energy to prepare, while others, their earning may not be as expected (Guidance for choosing a career).

Step 4: goals setting

The career that you have chosen, begin to set goals be it short or long term.  Put a good plan for yourself, this plan will enable you to make some decisions on how to achieve and pursue the goals. Here one may plan how to acquire the knowledge needed, time taken, career growth and development as well as funds required.

Step 5: train for the career

There is a possibility that you will be required to train for the chosen career. This may take pursuing a degree, internship or take a course which will enable you learn new skills. After training is over join a company or an institution and work.

This method of choosing a career does help a lot, it eliminates regrets and change of career in future. One is able to take a career that suits his personality and therefore happiness and job satisfaction is achieved.