Beginning your career journey is one of the most exciting and transformative experiences of college life. However, when there are so many paths and options to follow and you don’t know what you want to do, it can be a daunting process. Don’t worry, you’re not alone! Many students feel the same way. In this six-week article, we’ll touch on a few important points about how you can examine your interests, values, and strengths to discover your own potential. By the end of the series, you’ll be ready to take the first step toward starting your career journey, as well as being prepared for long-term success and job satisfaction. Remember, even the longest journeys begin with a single step.
End of Part 1
Step 1: Identify Your Strengths, Interests, and Values
Identifying your strengths, interests, and values is the first step to take when making a career decision. This step requires intense thought, consulting with those who know you well, and organizing your findings efficiently. Let’s examine this process in a little more detail.
1- What Do You Like?
Knowing what you really love to do will motivate you to shape your career and will ensure that you are happy and productive throughout your career. For this; you can think of your past experiences. These can be projects in school, outside of school or in your personal life. What was the activity that interested you the most in these projects? What makes you happy in your spare time? As you answer these and similar questions, try to find a common feature about what you like to do. For example, one of the qualities that make you happy may be assignments that require creativity, solving complex problems or helping others. This common feature can help you determine which sector or position you will be happy and productive in.
2- What Areas Are You Good At?
Knowing your strengths is very important to determine a career where you will be successful and create value. You can use a few resources for this. The first is to make a list of the skills you have developed in your school life, part-time jobs, volunteer activities, internships or other experiences. These can be technical (such as writing, coding) or social (such as communication, teamwork). Secondly, you can ask people whose opinions you value, such as your friends or family, about your skills. Maybe you have a skill that you don't see as a skill!
3. What is Important to You in Life?
Your values will help you a lot in finding a job that will satisfy you. You can clarify them in the following ways. In the first step, you should determine your priorities. What do you value most in your life? Creativity, independence, helping others, financial comfort or work-life balance; which of these is indispensable to you? In the second step, you should think about the work environment that suits you best. Do you prefer collaboration and cooperation or independent and autonomous work? Your preferred work environment is a reflection of your values. Finally, you should think about the things that connect you to the work you do. This could be; being respected, the opportunity to change things, or having the opportunity to constantly improve yourself. The things that motivate you are closely related to your values.
4. Put What You Find in a Table
Putting what you found out about yourself in the previous steps into a table is a good way to organize and analyze your thoughts. You can do this in the following way. First, create columns for your main points: strengths, interests, and values. You can also add rows to the table that include your friends’ opinions, examples, and notes. Second, write down examples of your strengths, values, and interests in each category. For example, you can use the skill of “public speaking” as an example of being relaxed while your friends get excited when you give a presentation at school. Third, determine if the skills in this table have anything in common. For example, your skills may focus on interpersonal skills. Finally, you should constantly update the table you create. If you update the table as you gain new skills throughout your university career, you will get to know yourself better over time and be able to determine a career path that suits you.
End of Part 2
Step 2: Brainstorm Career Ideas.
After determining your interests, values, and strengths, it is time to identify potential career paths that will suit you. This brainstorming includes steps such as reaching out to your acquaintances, researching the career paths of graduates, and researching appropriate resources.
1. Creating a Personal “Network”
To do this, you should contact your acquaintances, starting with your family and friends. First, create a list of people you can reach who work in professions that interest you. Then reach out to these people and ask them questions about their career paths. These could be their daily work in their careers or what they like or dislike about their careers. Be sure to use open-ended questions when asking questions. Instead of yes or no questions, ask questions that will elicit long and satisfying answers, such as “What motivated you to choose this career?” You can then ask these people about other career options at their workplaces or how they got promoted in their professions. You can ask the people you know if they have acquaintances who work in professions that interest you and request a meeting with them. Finally, you can ask these experienced people to give you advice about your career path.
2. Benefiting from External Resources In addition to your personal connections, you can also benefit from online resources.
On this site, you can find internship postings in the public and private sectors and develop your talents and skills by participating in various online trainings.
You can find various job postings and trainings on the İşkur website.
3. Document Your Findings
It is important to document the information you collect as it becomes more difficult to remember. To do this, you can place each profession in rows by determining columns such as job name, sector, position, desired skills, pros and cons of the job. In this way, the information you need is systematic and ready for you to use whenever you want. You should not forget to update the document as you obtain new information or as some information becomes obsolete.
End of Part 3
Step 3: Research Career Options
Researching career options requires knowing the important skills you want, taking a realistic look at exactly what the desired job is, and evaluating whether these jobs match your interests and strengths.
1. Identify Desired Skills
You can start identifying the required skills by looking at the skills requested in job postings that interest you on websites such as Kariyer Kapısı, Linkedin, Kariyer.net, İşkur. At this point, you should consider both technical and social skills. For example, knowing a certain computer program is a technical skill, while communicating well with people is a social skill. After defining the required skills in the sector you are interested in, you should compare the skills you have with the desired skills. If your skills are not sufficient, you can improve your skills with online and face-to-face training and certification programs.
2. Know What the Job Really Is
If possible, you can talk to someone working in that profession about jobs that interest you, that match your talents and skills, and ask what the job is, how it is done, and similar questions. If you have the opportunity, you can even visit the workplace and spend a day there to get to know the job up close. If these are not possible, you can really get to know the profession you are interested in through an internship you will do while continuing your university education through the National Internship Program or an internship you will find yourself. In addition to these, you can look at videos shared by employees of the profession you are interested in or related to that job on video platforms such as YouTube.
3. Match Your Interests and Skills with Job Postings
You should match the skills, values, and strengths you identified in the previous steps with job postings. If you do this on a document, you can systematically and easily see whether your skills are at the desired level.
End of part 4
Step 4: Select and Research Your Top 3 Career Ideas
1. Select the Career That Suits You the Most
You should select the career idea that suits you best to research it better. To do this, you need to think about how well the different careers you have researched so far fit your own goals and skills. You should rethink your values, strengths, and interests for each career option. You should also consider job satisfaction, work-life balance, and growth potential. After that, you should research and take into account the practical features of career options such as salary, job location, desired qualifications, and career development. After reducing the number of options to three, you can discuss the pros and cons of each option with experienced people you trust.
2. Evaluate Your Resume (CV) According to Desired Qualifications
Evaluate your resume from the perspective of the institution you are applying to. Do you have the desired qualifications? If not, is there anything you can do about it? For example, you can participate in trainings, internships or volunteer activities to have the desired qualifications. Another important point is to adjust your resume according to the job you are applying for. You can adjust your resume according to each position you apply for in a way that shows and emphasizes that you have the skills required for that job. Use active language in your resume and mention the contributions you have made to the institutions you have worked in before, if any. For example, “I increased sales by 15% thanks to the application I developed.” You can get feedback from the career center after you update your resume.
3. Plan the Next Steps
In the next steps, you can strengthen your career planning by creating an action plan. For example, you can apply to internships and trainings and arrange meetings with different people. You should make sure that these steps are within a certain period of time. For example, “I will update my resume in a week” or “I will complete my coding training in six months.” However, you should not forget to be flexible in your career journey. You can update your action plan in case of other jobs that require priority or unexpected events.
End of part 5
Step 5: Apply for Jobs!
If you have decided which field you want to work in, it is time to apply to job postings. This step includes creating a list of target employers, direct applications, and being ready to seek alternative career paths if necessary.
1. Finding and Researching Target Employers
You can start this step by reviewing job postings. For this, you can look at the postings on private websites such as Linkedin, Kariyer.net, or you can browse the websites of public institutions and organizations such as Kariyer Kapısı and İşkur. Once you have selected the ones that are suitable for you from the postings, you should do a short research on the internet. For example, you can evaluate whether the workplace culture suits you by reading the comments of employees on the internet or the vision and mission sections on the company's website. However, you should keep in mind that comments shared anonymously on the internet may not reflect the truth. After this, you can reach someone working at the workplace you are considering applying to using your personal connections. After these procedures, you should prepare a list in which you will list important information such as the application deadline and the documents required for the application. When preparing the list, you can sort it from the most suitable to the least suitable.
2. Applying to Job Ads
Before sending your resume to the employer, you can rearrange it to show that you have the desired characteristics according to the requirements of the advertisement you applied for. You can even write an explanatory letter in addition to your resume and explain how you meet the requirements of the position you applied for and what you can add to the workplace if you are hired. In addition to all this, you can share with your network that you are looking for a job. In this way, you will also be informed about the jobs that were not advertised.
3. Evaluating the Responses
You should update the list you prepared earlier as you receive responses to your applications. You can add important information such as interview dates and additional documents to your list. If your application is rejected, you can ask why you were not hired in an appropriate manner and use this feedback to adjust your subsequent applications. If none of your applications are successful, you should go back to the first step and re-evaluate yourself and prepare alternative career plans if necessary. Remember that the conditions and qualifications you have are constantly changing and be flexible enough to consider other options.
Finally, don't forget to celebrate your growth and success!
