CAO HANDBOOK ENTRY 2017
162
Certain types of people match certain types of careers. Sometimes
parents, friends or your community may try to push you towards a
career that you know you're not right for. Sometimes your friends are all
studying something – so you feel you should too. Other times you hear
that you might get a bursary for a certain course and this makes you want
to choose it. Be careful, as you will spend a large amount of your life
working… and working in the wrong job can be stressful and unfulfilling.
Knowing what careers you really wouldn't like to do is VERY important
too... Write down five careers you wouldn't like to do. Knowing what
you don't want to do is just as important as knowing what you want
to do. Perhaps you don't really like the idea of working with and caring
for people, so a job in teaching, nursing or social work puts you off.
Maybe you don't enjoy working with numbers, so careers in engineering
or accounting seem unexciting.
Write down two careers you feel someone else would like you to do that
you don't think are really right for you...
Think of the three school subjects you did well in or enjoyed. Write these
down. These are strong areas for you and could be used in your future
career. Was there a subject you wished you could have taken that was
not offered by your school?
Which subjects were your least favourite?
When choosing your career, make sure your career does not need you
to be good at the things you are not good at! After these seven steps,
you've probably put in quite a lot of thought about the kind of person you
are. It's so important to ‘match' who you naturally are to a career that is
right for you. Continue to fill in the following quiz, which describes four
different working personality types. Which one are you?
This next section of Self-Help Steps is about jobs that are out there. This
is very important because if you don't know about different careers, you
can't make a well informed choice!
Knowing about careers
On a scale of 1 to 10, rate how much you know about what jobs are out
there in the world of work. 1 means you feel you have little knowledge
of what jobs exist and 10 means you feel you know quite a bit about the
variety of careers there are to choose from.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
If you rated your knowledge as less than a 10, read on to build up your
knowledge of careers and improve your score.
First things first:
to get into a career, you usually need to study. Do you
know the difference between NC (V), certificate, diploma and degree
study? Do you know about distance learning, and part-time and full-time
study options? If not, have a look at page 12.
Okay, let's think about what jobs are out there. Have a look
at the 'programme choice list' in this Handbook and read
through the career directions. Are there any career directions there
that you don't know about? Write these down. Then have a look
through the relevant pages in the booklet itself, for example
Computer Applications on page 84. You will see that you can study
towards different degrees or diplomas in this career direction.
1. Find Out what You're Good at
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