A Guide to Career Decision Making
When trying to choose a career or make a decision about further study, you should
You already know you need to make a decision so
Step 1 is to clarify what you know about yourself. You might consider your skills, interests, values, and, if your decision involves more learning, your preferred learning style. Interests are what you enjoy doing; skills are what you do well; and values are what motivate you to work. Your learning style is how you prefer to learn.
In terms of your career journey, interests tell you what direction to pursue; skills tell you how long it will take to get there; and values tell you whether or not the journey is worth taking.
Step 2 is to explore the options and see how what you know about yourself fits them, eliminating the options that don't. This helps you draw up a short list of ideas that you want to decide about. It may involve both expanding and contracting the list of ideas over a period of time as you get more information and experience to fill the gaps in your knowledge.
Step 3 is to decide what you really want to go for from the short list. To make a good decision at this point and later on, you need to step back a bit and examine your own decision making style - how you typically make decisions - and the advantages and disadvantages of that. We can suggest different methods and tools, but only you can know if they will work for you. If you have a lot of difficulty at this stage you may need to go up a level to...
Step 4 - thinking about what influences your decision making, and sort it out - perhaps with the help of a careers adviser or student counsellor
Where do you need to start?