It is no surprising to hear that people chose their career path or major in the university based on hearsay, trends, being ‘advised’ to take the path, or you simply do not have the luxury of choices. Does these sound familiar to you?

“That path does not yield good income prospect and this path is better, you should take this path”

“I am paying for your university’s tuitions, you should listen to what I chooses for you”

“I have no luxury of choices to choose from.”

            Well, we all know that too often (but not all) people along that line ends up in being miserable with no career satisfactions, no career happiness, and no career meaning. Eventually, leading to the state of burnout and exhaustions, development of clinical depressions, anxiety, OCD, tears that could not be seen and shared, bitterness that could not be understood and most of all, “no one listens” statement begin to kick into our mind, and then it spirals down to other worse case scenarios.

            Well of course if our circumstances do not favour us with career options, the career choices that kicks in are usually for survival need and we ought to consider it first. Why so? Your stomach needs it, period. However the circumstances may be such as you have no career opportunities or you’re under pressure to follow ‘advice’ for career path chosen for you, do we stay in these career paths without improvements and developments, or better, changes down the road? The answer is simply no. Chirag (2018) commented that if you do not like where you are right now, then move! You are not a tree. But before you even move, you need to first to be able to secure yourself with stable grounds. Here in this article, the word “Career” is a unified word in which it represents career pathway with jobs and also university choices of major.

Knowing Thyself, Knowing Others

            If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle. (Sun Tzu, The Art of War).

            When was the last time we felt the very zest of passion when we are doing our job and building our careers without even feeling exhausted? To some of you who are still experiencing and maintaining this, great! Please keep up and keep on. For those who have lost this zest, we have works to do.

            From the quote “You need not fear the result of a hundred battles” can be interpreted as clarity. Clarity in achieving one’s goals or objective without much deviation. And in our discussion of career clarity it is the same thing. When we put efforts in knowing our own career attributes and career needs, there would not be much regrets with the career decision that we have made for ourselves. On the contrary, we can achieve much of career happiness, career satisfaction, and most importantly career meaningfulness. Simply because we already knew what are our strengths and opportunities, weaknesses and career choices (SWOT) that renders us the state of burnout and probably regrets. So, what are career needs?

Career Needs / Career Attributes

            Up to date, career scholars and practitioners have not only been practicing but also gathering information from their works. Putting all into careful analysis for trends and patterns of changes in accordance to the ever-changing labour market demands and supplies. There are four identified attributes that we all possess and we ought to pay attention to. The career values, interests, personality, and skills; in short, we call it the VIPS.

Career Values

            Career Values represents the personal principles and beliefs that help define your ideal professional environment. They are one of the most important attributes in nurturing job satisfaction, career advancement and success. (Indeed Editorial Team, 2021). The principle and belief discussed here are not of spiritual nature but values the we uphold with meanings defined by ourselves. Some people may prioritize their value of “Work Life Balance” higher than others due to the perspective in the usage of time and being satisfied with the average of pay cheques. While some may prioritize “High Earnings Anticipated” or “Profit Gain” value with lower attention catering for “Work Life Balance” value. It is never a right or wrong benchmark to use in the first place coming to the topic of career attributes. It is about how much in knowing who we are, what are our SWOT, and how could we shine best in the career pathway that leads us towards the sense of fulfilment in career satisfaction, happiness, and meaningfulness.

Career Interests

            Career Interests defines our preferences of industry pertaining to work activities and environments. By pursuing the career pathway with high career interests allows you to shine with your talents that aligns with your values. There are six areas of career interests defined (RIASEC) and they are Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, and Conventional (John Holland).

            Realistic can be known as the doers as these group of people like well-ordered activities or enjoyed working with objects, tools, and machines. People in this group may be farmers, hands-on engineers, machinist, and etc. Investigative are the thinkers where they do best in activities involving creative observation of the world or nature. Such as the scientists, dentists, chemist, and etc. Artistic shines as the creators working in unstructured activities and enjoy using materials to create art. We see dancers, musicians, technical writers, artists, entertainer, etc.

            Social aspect is the helpers where they enjoy activities in informing, guiding, training, developing, enlightening, and probably even to lead people. Social workers, counsellor, career coach, politician, and etc. Enterprising is the persuader or the influencer where this group of people enjoys reaching organizational goals or achieving economic gain. We see people in this area in salesperson, businesses, stockbroker, etc. And lastly the Conventional defines people enjoy working with orderly manner, data manipulation, record keeping, organizing written or numerical data, and etc. People in this area are such as office clerk, accountant, administrative work, court reporter, etc.

Personality

            This is an area where many of the established studies have their own framework to defining a person’s characteristics and behaviours. Alonsagay (2022) shared that the better one’s character traits mesh with one’s career, the more productive and positive one’s job performance will be. Alonsagay furthered with an example with introverts and extroverts. Extroverted people are more likely to do well in a social, customer-oriented workplace, while introverts do better with independent and analytical tasks.

Skills

            Skills are something that we all have either through duration of formal training or we have picked them up somewhere from the daily lives. Both are equally important in our career choices. There are two types of skills, the transferable and non-transferable skills. The transferable skills are something that could be applied across industries and job type such as communication skills, teamwork and interpersonal skills, and other soft skills. While non-transferable skills are usually the hard skills required to do a specific job. It could only be utilized in limited areas such as cash-flow planning in accounting, operation in assembly and disassembly of a power plant machine, etc. Through identifying your own set of skills can help you charter your course towards fulfilling career paths. Also to watch out that although there are skills which motivates you, there are also skills that could exhausts you leading you to the state of burnout!

The External Labour Market Information

            As highlighted by Sun Tzu’s quote above, aside from knowing yourself your internal attributes as discussed above, we ought to also know about the external situation of the labour market. Having known your own attributes and career direction is only half a battle won and in order to help you to secure a career with realistic demand out there, engaging a career coach or a career counsellor can be highly valuable in analyzing and gaining the info needed.

            For example, with the knowledge of your own career VIPS you already know what type of career genre you would thrive when you get in. Imagine that a holiday tour guide is a career path you know you could thrive and enjoy but the period of the pandemic is still largely active where travelling lockdowns are mandated. This career option would not be viable and second career option should be explored. Take another scenario of a cameraman on a helicopter filming. There are basically two people with different jobs involved, the cameraman and the pilot. However, with the advancement of digitalization and AI intelligence, a drone is deployed these days to do the filming while only a controller is employed to do the job.

            In conclusion, awareness of yourself without knowing the market situation can lead one into distress. On the other hand, trying to fill in the market trends and demands without knowing your own VIPS can be reckless and impulsive, which may land you in the same distressing spot as well. Through lifelong learning and curious attitude can it then bring us changes that we need for career satisfaction, happiness, meaningfulness, and opening doors of opportunities we may have never dreamed of. To quote Chirag again, “if you do not like where you are, move! You are not a tree.”

Written by: Gideon T.

            Contact us should you find yourself to be stuck in your career life and in need for insights to make career transition; or in need of clarity in making your university’s major. There is a reason why a career coach or a career counsellor exist! Please feel free to contact our counsellors at Healing Mind Haven. We all hope to be part of your journey towards well-being.

References:

Alonsagay, A. I. (2022). 3 reasons to choose a career that suits your personality. Retrieved from https://www.upskilled.edu.au/skillstalk/choose-a-career-that-suits-your-personality.

Chirag, H. (2018). If you don’t like where you are, move! You are not a tree. Retrieved from https://medium.com/@hetalchirag/if-you-dont-like-where-you-are-move-you-are-not-a-tree-b2c5b2d12a07.

Holland Codes. (2022). Holland Occupational Themes. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holland_Codes.

Indeed Editorial Team. (2021). Career values: how to identify yours and cultivate success as a professional. Retrieved from https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/career-values#:~:text=What%20are%20career%20values%3F,satisfaction%2C%20career%20advancement%20and%20success.