In recent years, there has been a contradictory phenomenon in the job market that deserves attention: On one hand, millions of college students cannot find their ideal jobs after graduation; on the other hand, more and more employers cannot find the talent they need. On one hand, graduates from many majors such as MBA, business management, finance, and computer science feel that society does not need them; on the other hand, Microsoft could not select the required hundred people from over 120,000 resumes, and Shenzhen could not hire suitable fitters with an annual salary of 160,000 yuan... The emergence of this awkward situation, apart from the reasons related to society, schools, and employers, one extremely important reason is that many students make errors and mistakes when choosing their life paths and career directions.
A career is the continuous process of all actions and activities related to one's occupation throughout their life, as well as their related attitudes, values, desires, etc. It is also the process of occupational and position changes and the realization of work ideals throughout one's life. Career planning involves analyzing and measuring subjective and objective factors influencing personal career choices, determining personal goals, and selecting the career to achieve these goals. Career planning requires you to position yourself in a place where you can best leverage your strengths based on your interests and characteristics, and choose a career that suits your abilities. In this sense, the initial major choice and the first career choice are the most critical.
Step One: Start with Major Choice
This stage is when an individual completes basic high school or junior high school studies, prepares to enter university or vocational school, chooses a specific major for study to prepare for future careers. Therefore, this stage can also be called the career preparation stage. This is the starting point of an individual's career, the key stage to determine whether one wins at the starting line, and the first turning point in life. Although an individual's initially chosen major does not necessarily represent their future career, targeted selection based on career planning lays the foundation for a lifetime of career development. If your future career aligns with your major, your career will be more stable and have a brighter future, and your career will be more brilliant. Therefore, students in the junior high school stage must begin planning their career, the core of which is to determine, based on their current situation, whether to pursue higher vocational skills or attend university. For individuals, an ideal major choice should meet both their ability characteristics and interests and be needed by society. During the selection process, the following questions should be clarified:
What do I want to do? What do I hope to do in the future?
There is a Western proverb that says: "If you don't know where you're going, often you'll end up nowhere." Similarly, a person who doesn't know what they want to do usually can't do anything well. Therefore, establishing a specific career goal and professional direction, clearly knowing what you want to do in the future, is a prerequisite for choosing a major. The key to achieving this is recognizing oneself and finding one's happiness and interest points. As the saying goes, interest is the initial power, the best teacher, and the mother of success. Engaging in an interesting job itself gives a sense of satisfaction, making one's career life fascinating. The legendary football king Pele became a world-renowned star due to his unwavering dedication to football as his life. Zhang Yufeng, president of the Beijing Fangzheng Group, with his strong interest in business, also illustrates that a strong professional interest is the engine for one's career takeoff, and the relentless pursuit of interest is a powerful driving force for career success. For junior high school and senior high school graduates in the career preparation stage, although their interests become clearer with age, the instability of interests still exists. Therefore, middle school students in this stage should, with the help of parents, teachers, or even psychological experts, find their true interests and choose a major direction accordingly.
What can I do? What am I suited for?
Choosing solely based on interest is not comprehensive because being interested in something does not mean one has the ability to do it. The professions of astronauts like Yang Liwei, directors like Zhang Yimou, CCTV hosts Bai Yansong and Water Junyi, and basketball stars like Yao Ming may be the interests and dreams of many young people, but the essential personality and ability characteristics required for these professions determine that interest alone is not enough to succeed. Therefore, understanding what you can do and what you are suited for is a necessary condition for choosing a major. Different ability advantages suit different majors and future careers. For example, people with strong spatial abilities are suited for mechanical manufacturing, engineering design, construction-related science and technology majors, and art-related majors, as well as corresponding careers. People with strong language abilities are suited for studying linguistics, literary editing, translation, artistic creation, and engaging in relevant careers. Einstein chose theoretical physics over mathematics because his thinking method leaned toward intuition. Famous program host Li Xiang from Hunan Satellite TV was criticized by her parents for talking too much when she was young, but precisely this characteristic, combined with persistent pursuit, made her an excellent entertainment program host. In this regard, everyone has their own ability advantages and personality traits, their own strengths and weaknesses. Only under full self-awareness can one appropriately choose suitable academic and professional directions.
What does society need?
While clarifying the professional fields and career directions one wants to engage in and can handle, external factors such as social needs and future growth prospects should also be considered comprehensively. This is the fundamental guarantee for successful major selection. If the chosen major is both interesting and matches one’s abilities, but society does not need it or has very limited demand, and future employment opportunities are unclear, such career planning is doomed to fail from the start. Due to the uncertainty of social talent demand and labor market changes, evaluating social needs and growth prospects is not a simple matter. Therefore, when choosing a major, comprehensive consideration and overall evaluation should be done, correctly analyzing and handling contradictions such as the cold and hot majors, current large and small employment market demands, prestigious schools offering unsuitable majors versus non-prestigious schools offering suitable majors, striving to achieve the balance between choosing what one loves, what one excels at, and what society needs, rationally taking the first step in career planning.
Three Points of Career Choice
This stage is when an individual completes university or vocational school studies and is ready to choose a career, so this stage can also be called the career selection period. The main characteristic of this stage is transitioning from school to a work position, marking the starting point of one's career development. How one starts directly affects future success or failure. There is a saying: "Women fear marrying the wrong man, men fear entering the wrong industry," referring to the latter part—career positioning. Only by understanding what the market needs, what one wants to do, and what one can do, can one position their career direction and thus find a job they love. Being overly ambitious leads to nothing accomplished; being arrogant results in lifelong regret. The core content of life planning at this stage is, based on sufficient self-assessment and internal/external environment analysis, choosing a career suitable for oneself—one that matches one’s interests and abilities, aligns with the professional field objectives, and fits one’s career growth direction. To reach this ideal goal, the following points should be noted:
Re-examine
Re-examine and evaluate one’s career plan and set a phased career growth goal. Due to factors such as age, qualifications, and social change, the career goals set during the initial major selection might have various outcomes ranging from relatively fitting to somewhat vague or even erroneous. After several years of professional study, re-positioning oneself and setting phased career growth goals is necessary. Three Weights
Properly handle the contradictions between ideal careers and realistic needs, as well as between personal career goals and high-paying, high-benefit careers, focusing on exercising oneself, fully utilizing one’s potential, and promoting personal career growth. Generally speaking, the career direction chosen after careful and rational planning based on successful career planning should be basically consistent or not significantly different from the career goals re-examined and evaluated after several years. Therefore, when first entering the workplace, one should choose a job that aligns with one’s career direction and helps achieve short-term or long-term career goals. If the career one engages in does not match one’s career direction, overall work efficiency will greatly decrease. Choosing purely for higher positions and more salaries can only be a short-term goal, easily leading to short-term actions and ultimately failure. Therefore, trust that engaging in a career where one has relatively the strongest abilities, greatest interest, and societal need is the one most likely to promote growth and success.
Small Matters, Big Goals
Be good at starting from small things and the most specific job positions. As long as these small and specific matters align with one’s ultimate career goal and contribute to achieving personal career goals, they can be chosen and determined as one’s initial career position. A big event is composed of a thousand small events. Specifically, anyone doing tasks does not differentiate between big and small matters. The final results differ entirely because those doing big things ensure each small task is closely related to the set goal, and completing a thousand small tasks means achieving the goal. Those unable to accomplish big things do unrelated, disordered small tasks, and even after doing thousands of small tasks, they accomplish nothing (big). One’s career planning is such a big event composed of numerous small actions (behaviors), standing on small matters to achieve great ones. Two people graduating with the same management major, one choosing a high-salary office white-collar job, the other choosing a salesperson job with commission-based salary, might seem like the white-collar job is better than the salesperson's. But from the perspective of personal career growth, the outcome is not so simple. If one’s personality and ability characteristics suit an office white-collar job and one’s career growth goal is seeking stability and comfort, choosing an office white-collar job is ideal. However, for someone seeking challenging work, whose interest and career aspiration is to be a high-level corporate manager, choosing to sit in an office at the beginning would miss out on great training opportunities. Choosing to do market sales, starting from the most basic and hardest tasks, though temporarily difficult, provides long-term benefits by training skills and accumulating valuable experience, laying the necessary foundation for advancing to higher levels, and is the best start to achieving long-term career goals.
Your work will be relatively easy.