As individuals, we are all uniquely different – ever wondered how our individuality prompts us to take on diverse occupations of the world? Individual biographies determine our natural progression of careers. Some of us are doctors, engineers, analysts, writers, musicians, academicians, and so on. Differences in individuality are what prompt individuals in deciding on a career.

Career, perhaps, plays the most dominant role in our personality—in a way developing our lives in parallel with it. Careers also prove a fruitful study in behavioral science—in understanding the personality of an individual. Hence, it makes sense to try to find an answer to the question of how we choose careers to know how we can develop careers.

Professor Donald E Super offers a seminal insight into the science of occupations. We enlist them here in five easy pointers:

1. Understand The Salience Of Career In Your Life

All of us have laid varied importance to the role of career in our lives. For some people, career makes up a major part of their individuality; while for others, a cut out role as the natural successor of patriarchal business works just as fine. The reality is that what earns you bread and better makes for more than 60 percent of your personality. 

2. Don’t Lust After Occupational Titles

Many Indians are enamored by occupational titles, even without knowing if the job is suited to them.  Such titles can prove misleading, especially for a student who is still not acquainted with real work. So many Science students in India, for example, are misled by titles like doctor, engineer; while commerce students by CA, just blindly following them, and realizing horribly later that the occupation was not meant for them. Failure in attaining these widely sought-after titles also endangers your self-esteem and confidence level.  

3. Have A Career Content Plan Ready

This essentially means that even though you are not sure about the kind of job you have to do, you can have a career content plan ready. If you like to express yourself, don’t just stick to writing. Take a broader idea, i.e. to communicate, and explore all possible options of communicating. You could then work as copywriter, content writer, journalist, PR Professional, and move onto thirty different roles if you wished to. And also, don’t let your career plans get distorted by family members, peers, early failures, and impulses.

4. Don’t be Too Planful, or Planless

Explore a little. Exploratory behavior, that is action and reflection that increases self knowledge about work values, vocational interests, and occupational abilities, as well as knowledge and information about the kind of work are one great way to discover preferred occupations.  Congrats — the words, “looking ahead’ and “looking around”, are after all, not all that bad!

While that was all about being planless, you should also possess a certain degree of planfulness. It essentially means awareness that educational and vocational choices must be made eventually, and that you possess an inclination to make these choices. It comprises two steps – information and decision-making. Information means knowing all about the narrowed down career options, and decision-making involves deciding on the career plan based on the available information at hand.

5. Experiment Till You Are 25!

Experiment till age 25 or so by taking on multiple jobs, hopping jobs, trying on different lines of work—after which you can settle into a permanent job, or line of work. The next 20 years, till your mid-forties, will make up for the establishment stage, where you establish yourself in your chosen field, and advance in your organization. The post-25 age mark is the time during which an individual stabilizes, consolidates and advances in a congruent occupational position. Hopefully you will have found your calling till then!

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