Choosing Career

• Meaning of Work
  
• Choosing with Prudence
  
• Analysing Forces from Environment
  
• Making the Right Decision
  

Meaning of Work

What can you gain from your job？

For most people, career plays an important part in their lives. Apart from material rewards, a job can give you sense of satisfaction and accomplishment. Your confidence can grow through exercising your knowledge and skills as well as working with other people.

Meaning and Values

The meaning of a job varies from person to person, owing to difference in values, life goals, family needs, and socio-cultural conditions. However, there is one thing definitely true: there exist some forces other than “money” that motivate us to work hard. Before you start the process of job search, roll up your sleeves and make a thorough evaluation of the following factors. It will take you some efforts but will be proved useful.

• Wages and other Material Rewards
  • They support your life and improve living standard.
• Sense of Satisfaction and Challenge
  • Your job can offer you a real challenge and stretch you to the fullest. You can gain a sense of satisfaction after completing a special task or overcoming difficulties you encounter in your job.
• Recognition and Appreciation from Other People
  • A job gives you an opportunity to show your ability to persevere despite obstacles and prove your competencies. Such recognition leads to appreciation and material reward, e.g., promotion.
• Personal Growth & Development
  • New knowledge can be acquired and skills be polished through formal training as well as lessons you learn from trials and failures in the work.
• Friendship & Networking
  • A job can broaden your social circle. It enables you to meet people from all walks of life.
• Mission & Aspirations in Life
  • Your career can inspire and assist you in the life-long search for meaning in life. Achievements in career may be one of your life goals.
• Serving the Community
  • Some jobs, with the objective to serve the community, can offer you an opportunity to help those in need.

Choosing with Prudence

Why should I choose my job with prudence?

The influence of your job on you is not confined to the time while you are actually working in your office. Your career, in fact, has crucial impact on your personal development and daily life as a whole. Choosing career is a critical issue. Do spare a few time to think thoroughly before you embark on the process of job search.

How to find jobs that suit you most?

You must know yourself

Seeking to know yourself is the first step in career planning. There are a great number of assessment methods to help you know yourself more, in particular your interests, abilities, character, qualifications and expectations. At the same time, you have to understand your aptitudes and expectations. They are the basis on which you make decisions for your career.

When you encounter any difficulties in choosing your career, you can consult your family, school teachers, friends or career counsellors.

In addition, you are always welcome to visit Youth Employment Start (Y.E.S.) and to make use of a comprehensive set of career assessment kit that developed by Professor WONG Chi-sum of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. The assessment helps gauge your career interest, personality, emotional intelligence, career maturity and entrepreneurship potential in order to facilitate your consideration of possible employment options appropriate to your circumstances and attributes.

Career Consultants of Y.E.S. would provide you with personalised guidance on available job and training opportunities with the support of the results of the career assessment.

You must take into account forces from the environment, including

• Influence from Family; and
• Employment Market

You must have a comprehensive understanding of the world of work

Staff of Y.E.S.are ready to help you if you have any questions or need careers guidance. To facilitate you in finding one or some careers that match your interests and capabilities, Y.E.S. holds careers talks regularly and offers different kinds of employment support services.

Analysing Forces from Environment

Besides understanding about yourself in the aspects of interests, abilities, personality and values, there are still some more factors other than your personal characteristics and preferences that you must consider before you can make your career choice.

Forces from the environment may facilitate your career development. However, they can also cause hindrance to your choice of occupations. Expectations from family and employment market situation are two of the most prominent influences that you have to take into account.

Influence from Family

You should give consideration to the parental attitudes and financial situation of your family

Example 1: Before accepting a job that requires you to receive overseas training for a long period of time, consider the following questions:

• Will your family agree with such arrangement?
• Is there any family member who needs you to look after?
• Will such arrangement cause financial hardship to your family?

Example 2: Your ideal occupation is working as a teacher. Your parents, however, would prefer you take up the family business. How would you choose?

• Before concluding on your career decision, have you discussed with your family?
• When the family factor and your career goal are in conflict, what will be your choice?

When making a career decision, you can make reference to your family’s or other people's work experience and evaluate the applicability of the experience to yourself. It will help you learn from such experience and develop your career attitude. You should note that you have to make your final decision by yourself after taking into account others views.

Employment Market Situation

• The kind of training and qualifications required, job nature, terms and conditions of employment and work environment of the field you are interested in.
• Prospects of these occupations in the long run.
• Discuss with Career Consultant of Y.E.S. and participate in careers talks of Y.E.S.

Making the Choice

Before making the decision, evaluate your situation and consider all factors that may fall within or outside your control:

• What factors are favourable to me?
• What will be the hurdles in my career path?

Making the Right Decision

After understanding yourself, the environment and the employment market situation, you can now make your career decision on a more solid basis.

In “Choosing with Prudence”, we have introduced the Career Assessment of Y.E.S. The assessment helps gauge your career interest, personality, emotional intelligence, career maturity and entrepreneurship potential in order to facilitate your consideration of possible employment options appropriate to your circumstances and attributes.

In any circumstances, there is no golden rule for making career decisions. The brief analysis serves to give you some inspirations in your pursuit for ideal careers. You must not confine your thought on them. When you actually start to plan your career, you have to carefully examine a great number of aspects in relation to your personal characteristics, your commitments and the surrounding environment.

The following flow chart outlines the steps in making vocational decision:

Know yourself – discover your career inclination
↓
Who am I?
| personality | interests | expectations |
↓
What am I able to do?
| competencies | qualifications |
↓
Consider forces from the environment
↓
Understand the world of work
↓
List out career choices, taking into account the above factors
↓
Make the right decision