Until you can answer this, the odds of landing a good job are seriously stacked against you.
“But,” you say, “I really don’t know what I want to do!”
You’re not alone. This uncertainty is part of being a young adult. In fact, it’s part of being an adult at any age in today’s work world. Heck, lots of your parents’ friends continue to struggle with this question of what kind of work they’d really love to do.
Maybe you have no clue yet about what kind of job you want. Or you may have some strong ideas but limited knowledge of the actual job market in those areas. Wherever you are is okay. Unfortunately, it often doesn’t feel that way, as Olivia, a Georgetown University psychology major recalls:
“Senior year I had no idea what I wanted to do, but I was surrounded by people who did. I had friends going for interviews with banks, consulting companies and law firms. Some had job offers before Christmas. That just fed my anxiety. The whole thing was overwhelming.”
In researching my book Graduate to a Great Job: Make Your College Degree Pay Off in Today’s Job Market, I interviewed more than 30 recent grads from liberal arts programs who landed excellent jobs. More than 50 percent of those I interviewed left college not knowing what kind of job they wanted. They may have had some broad idea. (“I want to do something in a non-profit.” “I hate the idea of working in a big bank.”) Beyond that, they were pretty clueless.
Help Me Find a Career
When it comes to getting a good job, you make it much harder on yourself if you don’t develop some focus on what type of work you want. But stop worrying about lifelong career choices! Unless you’re going to med school, career planning can come later after you’ve gotten some serious work experience. For now, you just need to identify your skills and interests enough so your story makes sense to others. For example, you might end up telling people you’re looking for:
–A marketing position with a small high tech firm that uses my writing and social media skills, and takes advantage of my fluency in Spanish.
–An entry-level sales job in financial services where I can use my communication and analytic skills to improve performance.
–A position in administrative support in a non-profit organization where I can apply my excellent organizing and problem solving skills.
When looking for work after college you’ve got to convince potential employers you know what you want to do, and that their job makes sense for you — at this time. And you need to have this spiel down, even if you don’t believe it 100%. Here are four ways you can reduce your anxiety by bringing better focus to your job search:
___1. Make an appointment at your school’s career services office. Have you asked around to see if any classmates can recommend a particularly helpful career counselor there? Just because your immediate friends aren’t using the careers office doesn’t mean you shouldn’t check it out. These people are being paid to help you succeed after college!
___2. Ask a career counselor about useful career tests you might take. Some of these might seem lame and provide results that surprise you, but these tests can also give you insights that help you think about your strengths and interests in new ways.
___3. Set a goal to conduct two informational interviews per month if you’re an underclassman, more if you’re a senior or a graduate. If you’re on campus, you can pursue professors, local companies, or interview your roommates’ parents by phone. Just get started!
___4. Once you have particular careers or fields in mind, do more research on them. Learn about typical career paths and the realities of working in the field day to day. Combining web research and informational interviews will accelerate your learning and build confidence.
Check out Graduate to a Great Job for more ideas on how to focus — and accelerate — your job search. And subscribe to this blog to get more practical lessons from my research on successful job search tactics in the continually changing economy.