Have you ever felt stuck in your career? Employee stress and burn out can account for a lot of dissatisfaction in your life. After all, you are at work some 8 hours a day or more. That’s 1/3 of your day if you don’t count sleep. That’s a long time to be dissatisfied.
If you feel stuck, here are 6 great ways to find your ideal career:
1. Brainstorm on a sheet of paper - I’ve talked about this before and it’s a strategy I use all the time. Take a pad of paper and write down at the top your objective in question form. Then, simply list out 20 answers to your question. For example, you could write “What should I be doing with my time and life?” Then stay seated for a half hour to an hour coming up with answers to that question. The key to this exercise is coming up with 20 answers - don’t quit until you have 20 answers. You can repeat every day until you get the answer you seek.
2. Ask 3 close friends - Sometimes our friends know us better than ourselves. While meeting with one of your friends, mention you are at a crossroads in your life and career. Ask what they think you’d enjoy doing. You might be surprised at how easily they can zero in to your strengths and abilities and report a perfect job area.
3. Ask your boss and coworkers - much like your friends in the example above, your boss and coworkers most likely see you in a way you do not see yourself. In fact, they are likely most familiar with your strengths and weaknesses in the work environment. Compile all the answers you get from them and see if there are any common threads you can explore.
4. Call a headhunter - If you are searching in your career, it’s likely you have a resume. Sometimes you can catch a headhunter or recruiter during their slow times and meet with them to pick through what you might be good at. I’ve done this at different times in my life and the people seem open to talking with people. After all, if you don’t get paid, they don’t either. The ideas I get are usually good.
5. Take a career assessment test - There are several sites on the Internet you might be able to take one of these tests for a fee. But using my ‘headhunter’ tip above, many headhunters have this software and don’t mind you taking the test in their office. I’ve taken these tests two times in my life and they usually take an hour or two, but they are thorough. They ask you to answer a series of questions about what you are good at, what you like to do, what you prefer doing over what you don’t. If you take one, you will likely see some new exciting areas to explore in your life.
6. Keep a journal - Do you keep a journal? If so, read through, looking for common threads in your writing. Keep your eyes peeled for trends and activities you like as well as don’t like. In fact, finding examples of what you don’t like and what frustrates you is almost as important as finding what you do like. For example, if you hate an overwhelming boss, you’d probably like a self-directed position. If you hate nosy coworkers you’d probably prefer your own office.
Discovering what you really want to do with your life is the most important decision you can make. We spend 1/3 or more of our lives at work. So figuring out the right career is important to keeping that 1/3 of our lives happy and productive.
What your goal after graduated from Finance degree? Perhaps to have a stable career and life, but this does not happen overnight. It takes blood, toil, sweat and tears which is also the career goal in finance.
How do we do? Well, people always said that a good education opens doors. A finance career works the same way, since there are different companies that can work after graduation in which is why we must first make an investigation to determine what aspects of the industry interests you most.
To give an idea, some of the things you could be in after graduation could be commercial banking, commercial lending, corporate finance, financial planning, investment banking, private equity sales and trading.
When you are able to do some research in each of them, it will be easy for you to develop the skills needed to excel in this in the future.
A career in finance can occur if you are graduating with a degree in mathematics, economics or statistics. But as the market is very competitive, you have to make yourself shine by earning an MBA degree years later. You do not have to get one after a couple of years of work, because there are some people who are studying in their 40's.
Apart from that, it is best to read up journals and participate in conferences and become a member of a professional organization. You have to be informed of the latest trends and build up your network because that someone you know may get you that job you are looking for.
Two examples of these organizations include the American Bankers Association and the Association for Financial Professionals. They have events scheduled all year round that will allow you meet new people with similar career goals.
For those who have no idea what aspect of financing yet to pursue, this is the time to solicit the help of one of their teachers. Surely, this person can tell what kind of work is closely related to what is taught in class. With that in your head, it's time to look for companies engaged in exactly that.
While you are still in school, another thing that could help will be to apply as an intern in one of these firms. Some companies will give a salary while other won’t. If you do well here, they will probably give you an offer even before you graduate or encourage you to work for them full time.
If the company you are looking for doesn’t have any vacancies at the moment, leave your resume or application anyway so that if an opening comes up, someone will give you a call so all you have to do is give it your best during the interview.
At the same time, be active in your school organization because an alumni member may on the lookout for new talents which will be beneficial for the company.
We all need to focus on something so an idea can become a plan and then executed. A career objective in finance is just one example, because people with other interests can do the same thing and succeed at any task to do.
