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Know where to begin...

Guide to Career Decision Making

When trying to choose a career or make a decision about further study, you should...

know yourself know your options know how you usually make decisions know what influences, and perhaps blocks, your decision making

To see a diagram of this model of decision making click here.

You already know you need to make a decision so...

Step 1

is to clarify what you know about yourself. You might consider your skills, interests, values, and, if your decision involves more learning, your preferred learning style.

Do a psychometric test and get feedback from a professional at the Career Development Centre (students and recent graduates only).

Interests are what you enjoy doing; skills are what you do well; and values are what motivate you to work. Your learning style is how you prefer to learn.

In terms of your career journey, interests tell you what direction to pursue; skills tell you how long it will take to get there; and values tell you whether or not the journey is worth taking.

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Step 2

is to explore the options and see how what you know about yourself fits them, eliminating the options that don't. This helps you draw up a short list of ideas that you want to decide about. It may involve both expanding and contracting the list of ideas over a period of time as you get more information and experience to fill the gaps in your knowledge.

Find Options with my degree..

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Step 3

is to decide what you really want to go for from the short list. To make a good decision at this point and later on, you need to step back a bit and examine your own decision making style - how you typically make decisions - and the advantages and disadvantages of that. We can suggest different methods and tools, but only you can know if they will work for you. If you have a lot of difficulty at this stage you may need to go up a level to...

How do I make decisions? Find out more here.

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Step 4

- thinking about what influences your decision making, and sort it out - perhaps with the help of a careers adviser or student counsellor.

For more details see influencing choices section.

 

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