Find your Ideal Career: don’t make a mistake!

You’re fed up with the status quo of your career! You are finally ready to find a new career. Not just a new job, but a new career. A brand spanking new, love-my-job career! Your ideal career for 2015.

But don’t make the mistakes many people do every year searching for their perfect career.

Here’s the top 5 things you shouldn’t do when seeking your ideal career.  Some maybe obvious, but others might surprise you.

1. Don’t fish around looking through job ads trying to find your career. Job titles are not careers. They are company labels for a salary slots. Moreover, they just might make you more confused about what you like because you may find so many. You could become more discouraged because none of them sound appealing at all. Searching for a career like this is a waste of your time!

2. Don’t waste your time taking free career tests. They are scams to hook you into buying their product or getting your email. And they cannot produce valid, reliable, or accurate results because they haven’t been researched and tested.

3. Don’t employ the services of a touchy-feely, dreams-based counselor who uses fun, free form exercises. A career expert who can’t nail down your strengths, talents, abilities, values, and interest with research-based testing in within a month is only testing your patience. You need ideas or clues to launch your imagination in the right direction and pique your interest in areas your mind hasn’t yet found. Don’t waste your time fishing for the right pond of careers. Get the clues as to which pond your career lies in.
4. Oh, and don’t just rely on career tests! Even the best tests have great clues but don’t have everything. Sadly, most people who just take career tests (1) Can’t see past their former expectations and re-frame their understanding of themselves and success. (2) Not only that, but they can’t possibly see a path to that career from where they are or (3) see how they can make the money they need and want. Career testing without the expert advice of a seasoned career counselor sets you up for disappointment.
5. Don’t just take one type of career test. You  might find a test that gives you a good lead on your perfect career in this new year. But can you pick out your perfect career from a list? Or which job utilizes the abilities in you that scream for expression? Always remember: one type of career test only gives one perspective.

And, for the young adults. . .

6. Don’t rely on an interest test if you are a young adult. I used to say that the Strong test was all you needed. But the information and recreational overload available to us today, in addition to increased authoritarian structures, suck the creativity out of young people. They no longer really know what they like – they haven’t had or taken the time to find out. Maybe you do understand yourself and your interests. Or maybe you, like many young adults, have allowed pitiful engagements instead of personal passions determine your interests. To be safe, you need more than an interest test to point the way.

Next, “What 3 Things to Do to Find your Ideal Career . . . With Clarity and Certainty”