Last Updated on August 4, 2023 by Hotjobsng

How to Choose a Profession and Change Jobs

Changing professions is difficult, expensive, and time-consuming. Let’s find out how not to make a mistake with your choice: find an occupation you like and develop successfully in it.

Criteria for Choosing a Profession

Each person has their own criteria for choosing a profession. For some people, it’s important to earn a certain amount of money per month, for others, it’s important to work remotely or have enough free time to spend it on hobbies, like online betting or hiking. One person wants to solve tasks alone, while another feels more comfortable in a team. Many factors and reasons influence the decision, and they are different for everyone.

Let’s consider one of the possible factors – the age of searching for a new profession. Conventionally, we can distinguish two groups: under 30 and over 30. Here’s how career scenarios can differ at different ages.

Choosing a Profession Before 30

At this age, people are more flexible: there are fewer restrictions, such as financial obligations or being tied to a particular location. Therefore, they more easily decide to change if they like something about the job, such as interesting tasks, team, or salary. Young people under 30 react faster to changes in the labor market and aren’t afraid to learn new things.

Ease with change gives more opportunities. Recent university graduates are ready to quickly learn a new and unknown profession. If they like it, they will continue to develop and become experienced professionals by the time the demand for them grows. And if they don’t, they will learn another one just as quickly.

Choosing a Profession After 30

Older people are more likely to already have experience in a certain profession, so it can be more difficult to decide to change. The choice can also be influenced by how quickly you can reach the same level of income in the new field. Even after 30, it’s important for many people that work doesn’t affect their personal life: a schedule that allows them to spend time with their loved ones in the evenings, on weekends and during vacations.  

Older people seek more information about professions and scrutinize options more thoroughly before making a choice. Therefore, they are often cautious about new specialties if their prospects are not yet clear. With this approach, they don’t waste time and money on mastering a profession, the demand for which will quickly decline. But they risk moving into a declining field.

How to Choose a Profession You Enjoy 

Choosing an occupation that will be interesting is difficult at any age. If it’s already clear in which areas you want to try your hand, follow the algorithm:

Study the Information in Detail

When choosing a new profession, you need to be demanding and meticulous: watch webinars, read reviews, communicate with those who are already working in this field, and try the free parts of professional courses. You need to understand what the market consists of. Assess what the demand for the profession is now and in the future. Figure out what tasks you will have to solve. It’s better to spend a month on research than to spend a year learning a profession that isn’t suitable.

Build an Image of Yourself in the Profession

To compare several professions, you can visualize the career path in them for the next 3-5 years. What position you can take in the long run and what you will have to do every day at work. If the image seems attractive, you can move on. If not, you should look for other directions.

Evaluate the Strengths and Weaknesses of Your Experience

Any work experience provides skills. It’s necessary to look at yours from the position of a future employer in a new profession: how they will be useful to his company. If you cannot objectively assess yourself and see your strengths, it will be difficult for the employer to do the same.

Evaluate Your Readiness to Make Efforts

To develop in a profession, you need to invest a lot of resources: money and time for training. You need to realize that it will be difficult to pass this way and, most likely, something will have to be sacrificed. For example, while studying, you may not have enough time to meet with friends, watch TV series and other usual activities.

Tests for Choosing a Profession

A career guidance test is a set of algorithms that is maximally unified for a large number of people. The results will not say anything about the person himself. But they will show in which profession people with a set of the same qualities feel better. Tests will help to identify to which direction there are aptitudes and where it will be easier to succeed. But this doesn’t mean that you should blindly follow the results.

The tests will highlight those areas where a person is more likely to find themselves and enjoy working. The main objective of career guidance tests is to facilitate the professional path and make a person happier.