If you do not know what kind of studies or jobs you want, or maybe you have no idea what life will look like in a few months, we have put together a step-by-step action plan to help you gather all the key information to make well-informed decisions.
Only by getting to know yourself (your interests, values, strengths, and areas for improvement), will you be able to choose or create a future that will bring you the greatest satisfaction and help you to build a meaningful and fulfilling life. If you do not know who you are and what you want, it will be very difficult to choose your career path.
We recommend that you write down all the information. You can do this in your favorite notebook, on a piece of paper, or use career planning tools.
The first step is to identify and define your interests, values, and talents. The activities you are genuinely interested in will help you identify them. You can get to know these aspects in the following ways:
- Make a list of the things you like to do in your free time; what activities used to interest you;
- Reflect on the career choices you have already made (e.g. how you chose your profession, studies, volunteering, summer jobs, etc.) and the experiences you had with them. Evaluate what was important in choosing one or the other option, what you (dis)liked about these activities, whether you would like to pursue a career similar to these activities;
- Take career tests. We recommend using Euroguidance, Truity, or 16 Personalities. Critically review them and make a list of what suits you: professions, personality traits, etc.;
- See what choices others have made. IMPORTANT! Employment and salary trends reflect the current situation in the labor market, not what will happen in the future after you graduate: career monitoring tool (in Lithuanian); what you can do with your degree;
- Honestly answer to yourself - what would you do in life if you had unlimited possibilities;
- Take up new, untried activities (it will broaden your horizons and help you discover what you are interested in): look into job shadowing, internships, or volunteering in Lithuania, training, conferences, courses (on Coursera or Udemy), language learning opportunities;
- Get feedback from friends, professors, colleagues, supervisors, or experts in the field about your talents, competencies, and personality. Do not be afraid to ask for their opinion on how well you did on a task, what they see as your strengths and areas for improvement;
- Remember your successes and failures. Personality, talents, and competencies are best revealed through real experience. Evaluate which competencies, personal qualities, or abilities have led to success and which ones have led to failures. You can use this tool (currently only in Lithuanian) to analyse your experience.
Once you have collected all this information, review it. What tendencies do you see? Perhaps you can already see a career where you could make it all happen?
If you are still struggling to see yourself in the big picture, take the next step by creating your career vision. This will allow you to narrow down your career goal to a single sentence, and then it is just a matter of figuring out what job, studies, internships, and extra activities can help you achieve it.
Making decisions alone can be difficult and scary. Look around, most likely there are career counselors at your (higher) education institution. We recommend contacting them. They are professionals who can help you make a decision and share insights that you may not have seen when analysing information alone.
A career vision is an image of a future career that you want to pursue. A vision answers the question – what do I want to achieve?
A good vision inspires you to act. Therefore, it is very important that it is created according to your personality, sincere desires and dreams, and not just based on common sense and deduction.
How to create a good career vision
- Allow yourself to dream about what you want to do in life. Write down your dreams, for example, make a list of 100 dreams (this will be great material for your career vision).
- Review the information you wrote in the "Get to know yourself" step.
- Set your life priorities, identify what is most important to you – work, family, or maybe a pleasant pastime or spiritual development? It is important to merge this with a career vision.
- Look at your life from a future perspective – imagine how you would like to live, what aspirations you would like to achieve, and what would you like to create and leave behind. The following exercise might help you. Imagine that after 150 years someone is writing your biography. What would they write? Which achievements would be described? What challenges would you have faced? Who and what would have helped to overcome them? Write it down.
Examples of how visions can be formulated
- "By applying innovative farming methods, I will make my parents' farm prosperous and famous all over Lithuania. Others will follow its example and gain experience."
- "I will become a well-known mathematics teacher in Lithuania, whose students will win at the Republican and International Mathematical Olympiads."
- "I will be the head of a large construction company, working with great enthusiasm to achieve the highest quality for my clients. I will also always be a caring father to my children."
It is a certain sequence of actions that, after completing it, could give you the education you want and a job you enjoy. Learning how to plan is essential to achieve your goals in a focused and coherent way.
A career plan for someone who cares about a personal career is as necessary as a strategy for any organisation. If you do not have a plan – you cannot purposefully build a career. You could then become part of someone else's career plan, or haphazardly chase career opportunities.
Most important tips
- A career plan can be written down or can be kept in mind. The written plan is always more convenient and effective – it is clear, precise, and comprehensive. In addition, you will be able to keep such a plan for a long time and not forget important details, and you can share it with a career counselor or other people at any time.
- Any career plan is useful as long as it allows you to move toward your desired career. It is therefore important to choose a form and structure that is comfortable and acceptable to you. Usually, the following parts are included in career plans: key information about yourself and your career prospects; career vision; long-term and short-term career goals; the sequence of actions that need to be taken over a certain time to achieve the set career goals.
- You should also include the resources required to carry out the action in the career plan. As nowadays a career is inseparable from learning, it is important to include learning and development goals in your career plan, too.
- In today's world, things change fast, so your plan needs to be flexible. You will need to review and adjust it from time to time in light of ongoing changes in the economy, societal needs, and career opportunities. It is also very important how your interests, values, talents, qualities and competencies change as you change. Maybe you discovered a new talent and acquired qualities you would like to realize? Go ahead!
Benefits of a career plan
- Gives career a direction. A successful career is usually not achieved in a day, a week, or a month. It takes time (studies alone take several years), effort, and financial investment. A career plan will allow you to pursue your goals in a purposeful way, to approach them step by step, without being distracted by small things and without suffering from constant doubts. If you have a plan, it is likely that even if you move slowly, you will reach the goal much faster than those who have no plan and get stuck without getting close to a career of their dreams.
- Helps to focus effort and resources. The career goals will become the guideline, that you will use to make day-to-day decisions. You will not waste your energy, money and time on those activities that do not help you achieve your goals.
- Helps to learn purposefully. By knowing what you want to achieve, you will be able to systematically accumulate the competencies needed for a career, and pay less attention to secondary subjects.
The SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, time-bound) methodology is particularly suitable for this:
- Tasks must logically lead to the set goals. For example, if you want to find a job, the tasks can be: creating a job search strategy, preparing a resume (CV) and a cover letter, sending documents to potential employers, and so on.
- The task must be formulated clearly so that you can implement it and easily answer whether the task has already been completed, and the goal has been achieved (e.g., a CV has been prepared, a job offer has been received).
- Plan realistic tasks and deadlines, assess available resources, time, situation in the job market.
- Avoid both too easy and too difficult tasks – they reduce motivation.
- And most importantly, not only plan, but act. Do it proactively and boldly without fear of making mistakes!