Too Many Choices

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Dr Denise Taylor

20 October 2012

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Making a career choice isn’t easy.

I’m reminiscing on the old days, when choose was limited. This morning I’ve had to check for new TV channels, I tend to watch the ones that are listed in Radio Times, and not even all of those. I don’t watch much TV and don’t usually look at all the ones that are available, so many – however would I choose which to watch?

Career choices

When people are thinking of careers they often think of the familiar ones, the equivalent of me watching BBC4, 5USA and Film4, but there are so many more options. You may feel you need to restrict yourself to the more traditional ones but should you?

Noticing – looking outwards

If you are wondering about a change of career, or the first career for you, it can be very worthwhile to look out there, and ask questions. Find out about the jobs people do and how they got into them. Reviewing career websites can help too – over 12,000 are listed and many will be those you have never heard of. Choose sites such as Inside Jobs to explore different jobs.

Looking inwards

It can be as useful to look inwards. If you are on a career journey, either alone or with a career coach you will have considered your strengths and personal qualities.  Thinking of the skills you want to use, your talents and strengths, your values and motivators and also who you are as a person. A huge list can be overwhelming but a short list can lead to all sorts of possibilities.

You could list, for example – a background as a physiotherapist, passion for gardening, strength in both problem solving and design with a desire for a career that will give you recognition and flexibility.

Then you could ask people you know, what sort of career does this suggest to them.

You may be surprised by the comments you get. It may not be a career you have heard of, but it could be a suggestion that gets you thinking in a different area. Some people you ask will say straight out that they ‘don’t know’.  What can help is to ask them ‘but if you did know, what would you say?’  I do this a lot with my career coaching clients and many times they then do find an answer. Some people are scared of giving the ‘wrong answer’ so you must encourage them to make any suggestion, no matter how weird it might seem.

 Career blog posts

My blog posts vary, but I want to move to more like this – short exercises/tasks that you can choose to take on, or not.
I would really like to know how you get on – if you try and it works, will you tell me?

Or if it didn’t work or you decided not to, I’d love to know that too. Over the coming months I want to create some new exercises to get people thinking about what to do in their career and your feedback will be very helpful.

Denise Taylor is a double award winning career coach and Chartered Psychologist with Amazing People, established in 1998. When you are unsure of your career future, need help with job search or seek to improve your presence in an online world, Denise can help. Denise is the author of 7 books including How To Get A Job In A Recession, Now You’ve Been Shortlisted and Fat to Fantastic
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