How to choose the best career for you: A guide for university students

Careers, Jobsearch, Jobseekers / 22 September 2023

After concentrating on your studies for the last few years, deciding which career path you want to pursue can feel a little nerve-wrecking. You might even wonder why you would spend time considering it, when there are plenty of job adverts to apply for.Here’s why finding the best career for you is important:

It helps you play to your strengths and preferences, both of which increase your chances of career success and longevity.
It saves you time by making sure that you don’t apply for unsuitable vacancies or spend years working in the wrong job.
It helps you build a well thought-out career plan so that you can take control of your future.

Let’s look at what you need to consider to choose the best career for you.

Identify your skills and qualifications

Your skills are the tasks that you’re good at and capable of carrying out. Skills are split into hard skills and soft skills. Hard skills are the technical abilities you’ll use to work in a job, whereas soft skills are linked to your personality. Many of your current skills will be transferable to the workplace.

Examples of hard skills include computer programming, accountancy, and installing an electrical system.

Examples of soft skills include negotiation, problem solving, and working well in a team.

Next, consider what qualifications you have. These could include high school, college, and university qualifications, or any course you’ve successfully completed.

Find out what jobs are a good match for your combined skills and qualifications.

Work out who you are

Matching who you are to your chosen career path is more important than you might think. It can make the difference between working in a rewarding job that inspires you or holding down a role that makes you miserable. It increases your quality of life, productivity at work, and enjoyment of your career.

There are three main factors to consider:

personality
work preferences
values

Why would you consider your personality when deciding what career is right for you? Let’s use an example of two maths graduates. One may choose to work as a teacher because they have great communication skills and enjoy sharing their knowledge. The other may decide to work as an accountant because they are more detail and task oriented. Your personality affects the way you react and perform in given situations, including at work.

Your work preferences are the aspects of work that you value or enjoy, for instance:

type of work environment
level of autonomy
amount of collaboration
communication style
level of competitiveness

Work preferences are related to aspects of your personality, such as introversion or extraversion. By understanding your work preferences, you can identity the type of job that best suits the way you like to work.

Your values are the beliefs or standards that represent what is important to you and what you care about. It might be honesty, justice, equality, or sustainability. Your values can often indicate a career path, such as working in a green job, or provide a way to identify employers who share your values. Working for a company that aligns with your values can increase your job satisfaction.

What career paths are a match for your personality, work preferences, and values?

What do you need to live?

While your career path is a long term plan, there’s no denying the fact that your first graduate job must support you in the here and now. Consider exactly what salary package you need as a minimum, what would provide you with a comfortable lifestyle, and what would be ideal.

Your salary package includes not only your monthly pay, but also your workplace pension, paid holiday, sick pay, parental pay, and other perks and benefits.

Explore career ideas

Now you’ve identified:

your skills and qualifications
your personality, work preferences, and values
and what you need to live,

the next step is to find out which careers are a good match.

The best way to explore career ideas is to build a full understanding of what different jobs involve. For instance, an art graduate might consider working as an illustrator, an art gallery manager, or an art teacher. Options for a computer science graduate include data scientist, software engineer, or cyber safety. Until you research each role and what that role looks like in a real-life setting, you don’t know whether it’s truly a good match.

Recruitment adverts are an easily accessible way to discover what tasks and responsibilities are involved in a job. Visit company websites to find out what their workforce are involved in. Read trade magazines, such as Financial Accountant Magazine, The Engineer, or Marketing Week to learn about related career paths and developments in that industry. Visit online job boards like Joblookup to read through job adverts and descriptions. The careers hub at your university will also have plenty of useful resources.

Researching a range of jobs can separate which careers are suitable for you as a whole from those that only fit certain aspects of who you are and what you want.

What if you still don’t know what you want to be?

If you still don’t know what career you want to choose after considering your skills, education, personality, work preferences, and values, and have researched a wide range of jobs, don’t worry. You’re not alone. Many graduates struggle with finding a career that suits them. Here are some additional steps you can take to help you with that decision.

Take a career quiz

A career quiz is an online test that asks you questions about your interests, skills, values, and personality so that it can match jobs to your profile. The benefit of taking a career quiz is that you’ll often receive suggested jobs you wouldn’t have considered or even know about.

There’s a wide range of free career quizzes out there, including:

Speak to the career hub at your university

University career hubs provide guidance and support for students and graduates who are looking for a career. You can book an appointment with a careers adviser who can help you explore your options, identify your strengths and weaknesses, and plan your next steps. You can also take advantage of their careers resources such as workshops, events, and online tools.

Talk to people who work in a range of jobs and industries

One of the best ways to learn about different careers is to talk to the people who work in them. Ask questions about their job, such as what they do on a daily basis, what skills and qualifications they have, and what advice they would give to someone who wants to pursue a similar career. You can find people who work in different fields through your family, friends, classmates, teachers, mentors, or alumni. You can also use online platforms like LinkedIn to connect with professionals in your fields of interest.

Wrapping it up

Deciding which career to follow is an important decision. Take the time to consider which jobs are a good match for your skills, qualifications, personality, work preferences, values, and needs. Research a wide range of careers in depth to build a full understanding of what each role involves. Look into the type of employer that would be a good match for your career aspirations and your values.

Finally, don’t forget there’s no right or wrong answer here. The ideal job for one graduate may not be a good match for another graduate with a similar degree. Get to know who you are and use that as the basis for your choice of career. Good luck.