How to do a self evaluation?
When it comes to choosing the right career for yourself, listen to all the good advice of the experienced people around you, but take your own decision. Because, a gross error in your judgement can lead to disastrous consequences in your future career path in terms of both losing time and money and having to compromise with a less than satisfactory lifestyle.
Therefore, it is important to figure out your own personal strengths and weaknesses and accordingly work out how can you leverage your strengths to maximize your value addition to your intended job and thus can create the greatest impact within the organization and outside of it.
Before you look out for a job, please do some introspection to find out what kind of work environment where you would be happy, what type of work you will love to do and what kind of organization you will be happy to work for.
You may be wondering as to how to do self evaluation?
Simplest thing to do is to figure out what are the things that you loved doing when you were in school.
If you were good in chemistry, you may like to pursue a career in the pharmaceutical field. If you were good in math, you may like to get into IT, if you were good in communication and influencing your friends, you may take up a job in sales and marketing, if you were good in sports, you may take up training to become a sports coach etc.
If you are not sure how to go about figuring out such answers, please do some sort of self assessment on the following lines:
- What are your core values in life?
Are you very ambitious and achievement oriented?
Are you looking for financial freedom?
Are you keen on helping others reaching their life goals?
Are you more concerned about having financial stability rather than earning more money?
Are you averse to taking unnecessary risks in life?
Etc.
- What are your natural talents?
Are you good at selling, influencing others, at organizing events, good at sports, a good artist or are you always willing to learn new things? Etc - What are your soft skills?
Do you communicate well?
Do you easily empathize with people?
Do you understand people well?
Etc. - What are your technical skills / hard skills?
Are you good at data processing?
Are you good at planning and doing research?
Are you good at video editing?
Are you good at website design and development?
Etc. - What is your personality type?
Find out your personality type and discover the careers that will shut you most, here: https://bit.ly/3fGklbU - What are you really interested in?
Are you keen for a sales and marketing job?
Are you keen to get into a tech job?
Are you interested in social media advertising?
Are you keen to explore space science?
Are you interested in banking or any financial management related services?
Do want a job that relates to your major field of study?
Etc. - First choose that you don’t like doing.
- Please think seriously about the things that you must have in your job or otherwise, must avoid in any job such as:
Are you willing to be located in any part of the country or outside your country?
Will you be ready for traveling frequently as part of your job?
Will you be ready to be transferred frequently as part of your job?
Will you accept a salary less than a certain desired amount, if you find lot of growth potential in your job offer?
Etc.
Lastly, ask yourself the following 3 questions:
What can I do better than others? – it will reveal your strengths.
What problems do I want to solve? – it will reveal your passions.
How do I want to be known? – it will help you taking up a job (job role) that conforms to your self identity you want to have for yourself.
How to find your Niche?
Now, try to find out your personal values, your natural talents, your competencies i.e, both soft and hard skills, and your overall personal characteristics that overlap each other or in other words, that gel with each other. You may have to consider various combinations to arrive at a common ground where most of such personal characteristics converge together.
Such common overlapping area should be your ideal working environment if you can find a job role that meets this criteria to a large extent.
These will be your niche areas where you should concentrate for finding a job. Your personality profile will also come quite handy for you to decide about the careers that will suit you temperamentally.
Simply put, if you are basically an introvert, value your privacy and are not too keen to travel much in your job and if you are good at data analysis or research, you should look for a job involving data analysis or research or teaching or even blogging or content marketing etc. that fulfills most of your personal preferences which will make you happy.
Therefore, if you are happy in your work environment, you will do well in your job!
Now, you should explore and learn more about such careers in your niche areas and gather information on the specific companies offering such opportunities, the job roles, job titles, their average salary structure, educational requirements and job experience required, the requirement for specific skills at such levels, overall career growth opportunities and industry outlook and finally the steps to follow to get into such companies.
Conclusion
Lastly, instead of finding out the specific companies who may require people with your background, you should first try to find out either from industry sources or even from targeted companies as to what specific job skills that they require their employees to have and how can you possess those skills to qualify for such jobs. Therefore, if you lack in your skills in any particular area, try to enroll yourself for some short term course, online or otherwise, that may further brighten your chances of getting into a job that you would love to join.
