How on earth do you choose a career? So many people have absolutely no idea what they want to do / be and look on with envy as their friends confidently pursue the career that they appear to have known they would enter since they were tiny.A quick internet search will produce a list of over 12,000 careers, alphabetised and whilst working your way through this kind of extended list will not on its own help you decide what to do, it can be interesting at least to see jobs listed that you have probably never heard of and didn’t know existed. It can certainly show you the variety of job roles that sit around some of those that you may be more familiar with.Should you start with what you’re good at, with what you like or with what is going to lead to employment? If only the answer were that simple right? You probably want to go for a combination – in an ideal world you want a career that you enjoy, that you are good at and surprisingly, which pays the bills.Perhaps one place to start is with what you know you do not want. If you know that you will hate being stuck in an office day in and day out then at least you can begin the process of narrowing your choices. Some of the young zookeepers at Twycross Zoo told us that they always knew that they wanted to work outdoors. For others, they may not be sure about exactly what job role they want, or where they want to work but they are certain that they want to work with children or at least supporting children in some way. Once you’ve started narrowing things down, you’re part way there.For others, their career choice is driven by the values that they hold. Perhaps they are drawn to working in an environmental role or in social justice. It’s more about taking some time to inspire you than anything else at the beginning stages. The question might be, do you know yourself all that well? Questioning how you would feel if the future you worked in a particular role can be pretty enlightening.Once you’ve developed at least some idea of whether you want to work indoors or out, with a team or alone etc. you can do some research into a variety of careers. From here you should be able to find out what career prospects are like for these roles and then voila – you’ll be ready to decide on a qualification and training route that will set you up for a successful future career.
