Once you have decided which path you want to pursue, such as, school and then a new career, manual training or just a lateral move within the same field to a new company, you need to make your new career choice work for you.
I have been in school for almost a year now, and I am more nervous than ever about deciding what I want to do next. For people in the same position that I am, still have a job and working to change, it is a hard leap of faith to jump to another career. You begin to feel safe in the job that you have, no matter how terrible, because it is familiar. You may also be unsure what skills that you may actually still possess, especially if you work in a job that you do not like or do not have any chances to still use them. I believe that I feel like a lot of people today, just tired of working in a “job” and are ready to start a “career” before it’s too late.
The word “ career” has a broad meaning to many people (Dubois, 2000). In the most universal sense, career can be defined as a person’s chosen career path or journey through life (Dubois, 2000). Completing career work successfully, requires that people have and use, in appropriate ways, certain competencies (Dubois, 2000). A competency is any personal characteristic that underlies successful performance (Dubois, 2000).
Some key competencies are: Awareness, being conscious of key information; Computer Literacy, being able to use a personal computer and hardware or software applications; Decision making, being able to identify and apply decision making models or process; Interpersonal skills, a desire to understand other people or groups to show an understanding of others communicated or partially communicated feelings; Conflict Resolution, the ability to use conflict resolution techniques (Dubois, 2000).
These are only a few of the key competencies that it will take to make a career successful. What it all mostly comes down to is whether you want to make it work and be happy in the career path that you have chosen. To be happy and successful relies on you and your individual skillsets that you bring into your new career.
Some of the key competencies are just natural skills that you may already possess, and some are skills that you can learn over time. As I stated in the beginning of this section, you may not realize just how many of these key competencies that you already possess. Sometimes the only way you will know is to try them out. I know that it is hard for to believe that when I first started in my current position that I seemed more capable of creating and being creative with a multitude of things. I can only hope that these same feelings of accomplishment will return with the start of a new career, and tap into some of the key competencies that I am sure that I already possess.
Dubois, D. (2000, December). The 7 stages of one’s career. Training and Development [serial online] 54(12):45, Retrieved April 1, 2012, from the Associates Program Source database.
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