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Archive for the ‘Career And Jobs’ Category

Article by Keith Ten Brook

Making the decision to pursue a new career can be one of the most challenging and exciting times in a person’s life. You look forward to the possibility of doing something you have always wanted to do, fulfilling your personal vision, benefiting others, increasing your income, or any combination of these or other benefits. You may be looking to start your own business, move into a new field that has always interested you, or go back to school to get the training needed to allow you to leverage your expertise to teach.

Is making the new career decision enough?

By the time you have made the decision to pursue a new career you likely have done the hard work to carefully think through your decision (If not or to confirm your choice, see the link below). You have spent weeks, months, or maybe years, dealing with the up and down emotions associated with making this type of life change. You have sought career guidance from friends and family, and possibly paid for professional advice. The plan is ready. Time to execute. You are ready to go.

Have you addressed the most important new career risk?

The most likely source of failure in realizing your new career is having insufficient resources to survive until your new career can pay the bills. Let’s face it, as a minimum we all need food, shelter, and clothing to sustain our physical needs. How long do you expect your transition take? Even if you planned to go a year without income, what happens if you get sick and cannot work for 3 weeks, or worse? Will you have the resources to bridge the additional gap? Do you need health insurance to cover unplanned medical expenses?

Are you starting a new business? When does your business plan show you breaking even? If it takes two years to be profitable instead of one, do you have access to funding to stay in business while addressing the shortfall in revenue? Like a business that runs out of cash, failing to mitigate this risk opens you up to personal bankruptcy, or worse.

Are there better times to take on the new career risk?

During college, I learned to stretch the income I made over the summer to address my needs for the entire year. I look back and am amazed at how little I managed to live on. This certainly suggests that it should be easier to change your career when you have few obligations and have not gotten used to a more expensive lifestyle.

If you want to mitigate the risk of insufficient resources in transitioning to your new career, make changes in your lifestyle before you execute on your decision. Determine your minimum needs and try living on your minimum budget before starting your transition. This will enable you to establish how long you can likely stretch your available resources.

Have you just lost your job or experienced a major reorganization at work? Believe it or not, this may also be an ideal time to start working a new career transition. Severance benefits from a job loss can provide the additional financial resources necessary to provide the time needed to move into a new career or launch that new business. In addition, it is not uncommon for training and education resources to be provided that could reduce what you need to spend on required education for your new occupation.

Are you able to retire?

If you have established that you can afford to retire, you have already determined that you have the resources to survive, and hopefully more. This puts you in the position to have already mitigated this risk, as long as any new career investment does not substantially change your resource situation. It comes as no surprise that this is a great time to transition to a new career as your resources will allow you work on your new career until you succeed or ascertain that the new career was not what you hoped it would be.

Mitigate this risk to free yourself to focus on your new career

If you are midway through your working career and have responsibilities for other family members, this risk certainly will be a major factor that you should address prior to executing your career transition. With a well thought mitigation plan, you can be confident that you will have the resources needed to address the needs of you and those that depend on you, allowing you to focus on building your new career. Do not let this risk be the item that causes you to prematurely quit on the career of your dreams.

If you need to make or confirm your new career decision, follow this link: http://www.decision-making-solutions.com/Choosing_a_new_career_GO

More Career Articles

Article by Nathan Jones

All parents want the best for the children, and finding the ideal career is no exception. Providing career advice however is a challenging task for many parents. Many parents may have an understanding of their childs personality however, also needed, and what may be more difficult to provide, are things such as current job and labour market information. For parents to provide such information can be difficult given the landscape of our job market has changed so significantly over the years and from previous generations. For example, many “baby boomer” parents have tended to stick with one or perhaps two employers through their career. Nowadays, however those entering the workforce can expect to work in many different roles through the course of their career.

This tendency of the older generations to focus on experience in one area can become a potential problem though when trying to provide career advice to their children. Not only that, even if we do know what we are talking about, all parents also know that sometimes our children do no listen to us just because we are their parents!! I have known a lot of parents who are well placed to provide good career advice but find themselves talking to a brick wall.

Less than ideal situations also arise when children chose to, or chose not to, select the same career as their parents, for no other reason than it’s what they have learn through their parent. This is obviously not necessarily the best career option for a child and it would be preferable to make such an important decision based on sound career advice and information, rather than just following, or not following their parents.

So these are just some of the problems, but what is the answers or solutions? The answer I’m going to give you is to take a quality career test. Quality, being the important word there! You definitely don’t want your child to base an important career decision on the outcome of a quick career quiz on the internet. However, those in the know are also aware there are some quality career tests that are based on research to make them valid and reliable. One such instrument is the Strong Interest Inventory (SII). The SII is probably the most popular career tool used by career counselors all around the world. It will give you a thorough assessment of the test takers personality and job preferences. Nowadays the test can also be taken online in the comfort of your own home. You can take the SII career test at CareerSense.com.au and once you complete the assessment the results will be reviewed by a qualified career counselor and psychologist, before a detailed and individualized report is sent to you via email or post if preferred. You also have the option of a follow up one on one phone call or meeting to have your results discussed with you by a qualified counselor and psychologist.

So take a career test or buy a gift certificate at CareerSense.com.au today and have the piece of mind that you are not leaving your child’s future career and happiness to chance.

More Career Articles

Article by Faishal Khan

Article by Diarmuid Haughian

Career Advice – Makes it Easier to Reach Dream Job

Whenever we hear about the stories of business tycoons who have started from scratch and grew to become one of the legends in corporate world, we too dream of achieving the same. But it is also a fact that not everyone can become Bill Gates. It is therefore important to become more realistic in choosing a career path that can reflect your strengths.

Career advice can greatly help in choosing the best career path for you. There are many expert counselors and career guidance experts, who have given new directions to the career of many professionals and fresh graduates helping them reach new heights of success. However, in order to successfully reap the benefits of career guidance you need to have a dynamic and open view to understand and accept what your counselor has to say. It is a truth that you cannot blindly believe everything your counselor is saying, but listening to him/her with patience and understanding the logic behind what he is saying will make your thought process clearer.

A career advisor may suggest you to opt for a totally different career path than what you have thought for yourself. Basically these experts will evaluate your strengths, and interest through your personality analysis and will help you select the right career path for yourself. You may think that you understand your interests better than anyone else, but that might not be always true. Proper career advice can actually help you in reaching new heights of success that you have always dreamt of.

Things have changed from the times when your parents were in college and they alone cannot help you decide the best career options for you. The career guidance experts are professionals and they always keep themselves updated with all the latest happenings in the career world. You will come to know about so many career opportunities that you may have never thought of. It can open windows of new opportunities for your career’s successRemember, a right career move can help you turn your dreams into reality whereas a wrong one can leave you in a job that you hate. It is not possible for any individual to make career choices everyday and therefore it is important to make the first choice right. With so many expert career counselors ready to help you finding answers to career related queries is now very easy.