Are you a university student? If you’re a university student, August exam results are out and you’re considering your area of study and work. Indeed career choices made several months ago may now not seem quite so great. So much is said about “career pathing” or “career matching” but how many of such advice received is helpful, and how many of those giving advice are qualified to do so?
If you’re a student, perhaps has trepidation set in? Your decision making process may have been influenced by any the following factors…
- Parents
- Peer group
- School
- Trendy subjects
Often those who offer career advice in schools and even colleges may not be adequately qualified. Counselling may not be their preferred behaviour and many fall into this role only because there’s no one else to do the job.
There are a variety of psychological profiling tools on the market that are powerful tools for career matching. The two that I am most familiar with and have used are Mindmill Careermaps and PRISM Brain Mapping Career Match.
Mindmill Careermaps helps to determine employability skills and to enhance personal development plans, while PRISM BRAIN MAPPING ‘Career Match’ is designed to help you find the right job. PRISM helps you find a job that is suitable for you by identifying the way you like to do things. It lets you use your natural strengths in ways that are comfortable for you.
The job you take should not require you to spend most of your time doing things you don’t enjoy or do well. Often a person can be highly eligible for a job in terms of skill, education and experience, but still fail to find that job fulfilling. Both Mindmill Careermaps and PRISM BRAIN MAPPING Career Match are great online profiling tools which help define and measure natural aptitudes, abilities, interests and motivations. And the user can go back into the system, again and again to dig down and check things out until they find what inspires them. The final choice should be a career for which the person is both eligible and suitable.
Why is it important to use a career mapping software? It is because we spend so much of our time at work and yet not many of us enjoy what we do.
Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid has declared this as the year of ‘innovation.’ To be ‘disruptively innovative’ like him, and like Richard Branson and the late Steve Jobs we need to use our ‘talent’ to make a difference, and that starts by making the right career choices. ‘’People with passion change the world,’’ according to Steve Jobs.
By Nicola Jane Ablett
