A good education can land you a job but a great education can change your life – goes a famous (and apt) saying.
Deciding what career path we want to be on is one of the toughest decisions that we ever have to make. But how do we choose what we want to pursue as a career? How can we know what fits us best?
What interests you is a great place to start. Here’s a look at some careers that can be pursued based on your interests.
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As teenagers, most of us are expected to come up with an answer to one of life’s most important questions – what we want to pursue as a career.
Why is interest important when choosing a career? The moment we graduate from college, we begin looking for jobs that we can fit into perfectly. We narrow them down based on our degrees and the salaries they come with. Often people take up professions that have no relation to their undergraduate or graduate degrees. It’s because (for a variety of reasons) we may not give enough thought to our interests matching our careers.
The truth is that working at jobs that don’t excite us can eventually lead to burn-outs. For a fruitful career, it’s best to chosse professions that we would love to be in.
Before choosing a career, you must first understand what your interests are. You need to:
Our interests can be broadly put into different categories. A very popular theory known as the “Holland Codes” helps to categorise people based on their personalities. These help to understand what type of jobs or careers people can take up and excel at. Here, we look at a spinoff of Holland’s theory to help us better relate to ourselves and our interests along with more specific job opportunities. Let us take a look at the different categories and the career options for each of them.
The creative or artistic minds are those that are free-thinking, highly imaginative, and very compassionate about originality. These are the ones who focus on expressing themselves in different forms like art, dance, written content, music, movies, photography, and many other creative mediums. Generally, those with an artistic mind would do well to take up courses on languages, fine arts, theatre, music, filmmaking, fashion designing, graphic designing, and literature. Some of the jobs that artistic people can take up are listed below.
Creating art has always been seen as a sign of an active and imaginative mind. Jobs in the arts include painting, sculpting, designing decor, photography, modeling, and others.
Digital marketing is a relatively new field of opportunity and requires a lot of imagination and creativity to produce content that can connect with potential customers and employees. Digital marketing includes creating graphical content, editing, producing videos, writing catchy material for campaigns, advertising, and making use of technology such as virtual and augmented reality for creating impactful content.
Generally, content creators write about the latest trends or talk about how and why certain things work the way they do. Content writers can also create an impact on their target audience by resorting to producing meaningful content that can help the latter in many ways. Content writers can work for advertising agencies, schools, business organizations, consultants, and others.
There are a lot of opportunities for creative minds in the music industry. They can become instrumentalists, music producers, music directors, singers, lyricists, and music conductors.
The traders or the ones with a business-oriented mind are those who are good with people, managing processes, interested in working on problems and solving them and influencing behaviours of others. The courses that those interested in business can take up are accountancy, mathematics, business studies, supply chain management, economics, tax management, human resource management, and others. Some of the jobs that can be taken by those with a business-oriented mind are given below.
Business management role requires a person to manage businesses, understand and encourage employees, work with customers from various walks of life and take care of finances. Business management also requires people to study different businesses and trends so that they can provide the relevant services.
Business-minded people can think of entrepreneurship as their breakthrough into the trading world. They work towards the development of new businesses based on the most interesting ideas or careers based on interests. Find out also more what are the characteristics of successful entrepreneurs.
This job requires people to understand the business markets and learn about how to invest wisely so that their profits can be maximised. They need to understand a service or product very well before backing it with capital.
Strategic planners are essential for any organization or business. They are responsible for making strategies that can help to mobilise goods and services, manage employees, manage capital and other resources.
Event managers can take care of anything – from planning weddings, personal events to hosting large functions and conferences for international corporate conglomerates. Event management requires a lot of skill in terms of planning, managing, and communicating.
The people with analytical minds generally have an aptitude for thinking logically, creating analysis and possess scientific temperament. They should choose courses related to engineering, mathematics, technology, political science, economics and others.
People who are interested in creating new things or redesigning existing products should take up engineering. Engineering can include computer science, mechanical, electronics, electrical, civil, chemical and architectural. These jobs are generally related to the production, designing, development and deployment of products and services.
Those with an interest in understanding how and why things work the way they do should take to learning the natural sciences. This includes chemistry, zoology, botany, mathematics, and physics.
People with an analytical mind can make great politicians. These politicians can improve the state of a country by proposing plans to uplift a country, legislating, helping the people to gain economic growth and independence, and formulating plans to maintain healthy relationships with other countries.
Analytical jobs can help to form an analysis of certain aspects of a business or any other industry so that the necessary actions can be taken to either improve or to maintain the quality of the service or product. They make use of available information in order to understand the patterns and behaviour.
By becoming an economist, a person can understand how wealth is transferred between people and how the production, distribution and consumption of goods works.
Those possessing an analytical mind can take up teaching as a profession as they can easily convey new and hard-to-understand concepts to others quite efficiently. They can also take up research-oriented jobs.
People can also take up careers related to forensic science, physiology, laboratory maintenance, investigative journalism, and dentistry.
People who possess the worker’s mind are those that have the power to change the world for the better. These kinds of people are interested in taking care, nurturing, serving, caring and being concerned with the health of other humans, animals and plants. They take up jobs that are related to improving our lifestyles. They are also good at following protocols, adhering to strict plans and love doing tasks. In order to get into such a career, people will need to pursue degrees related to agriculture, operations management, hotel management, nursing, customer service, sales, and library science among others.
Farming is for those who are willing to stay close to nature and love physical activities. Through conscious farming, people can meet the demands of the consumers without having to compromise on quality and by also making use of environmentally friendly methods.
Those who are interested in working in the hospitality industry can take up jobs related to working at restaurants such as chef, host/hostess, manager, food quality inspector and others.
People with a yearning to serve their countries and their communities can take up a job in the army, navy, and air force sectors or the regional police units.
Technicians are those with expertise in different applications and their technical perspectives. They take care of equipment at hospitals, manufacturing units, and research laboratories.
The best kind of jobs are the ones that help to save the lives of others. Healthcare-related jobs for those with a worker’s mind are nursing, paramedical professionals, healthcare concierges, nursing aides, care workers, and others.
In the end, choosing a job that you love will ensure that you enjoy what you do. It’s never too late to choose a path that you truly are passionate about.
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