Best Way to Find out which type of Jobs are Best for you

Who Am I?

Before you go into your practice interview, ask yourself, “What am I looking for?” But before you do that, ask yourself an even more basic question, namely, “Who am I?” Of course, many people spend a lifetime asking themselves that question. I do not believe that going through a four-year psychoanalysis is a necessary prerequisite for a job interview. But it doesn’t hurt. What I am suggesting here, though, is a somewhat less ambitious inquiry into who you are, insofar as that question affects your job choice.

There are a number of ways of approaching this inquiry. Ask yourself questions such as:

What do I enjoy doing?

What gives me the greatest satisfaction?

What do I not enjoy doing?

What are my strengths?

What are my weaknesses?

What is my self-image; how do I envision myself? What motivates me?

Of all the things I’ve done, what am I proudest of?

What are my goals, both short-term and long-term?

What type of job would allow me to achieve those goals?

Take the time to actually sit down and write out your answers to these questions. Unless you do, you are unlikely to reach more than rather superficial, incomplete answers. Nor will you be able to detect patterns or inconsistencies between your answers.

Once you’ve written them out, discuss your answers with any friends, family members, or advisers who could provide guidance. This process should help you to define the characteristics of positions for which you are best suited, positions that would be most likely to provide you the greatest long-term satisfaction. Since people generally perform best when they like what they are doing, this process should also help identify positions in which you would perform well.

Make sure that your goals are realistic, though. I recall a Wall Street Journal cartoon in which an interviewer, looking down at a resume, remarks, “I notice that one of your long-term goals is world conquest.”

Identify Types of Jobs

Once you’ve answered the who-am-I questions, your next step is to gather information about what types of jobs require or encourage your strengths, what you enjoy doing, what gives you satisfaction. Use whatever sources are available to you—friends, relatives, placement directors, career counselors, libraries, job fairs—to compile as complete a list as possible. Start out with a broad range of choices; you can always narrow the list later. Armed with that list, you can begin to match your strengths and desires with what’s available in the job market to assess which positions best fit your needs an