The Real You - 7 Tools to Help You Find Your Ideal Career

Whether you’re considering returning to work after a break, or just looking for a more rewarding working life, it’s worth taking time and effort to define exactly what type of career will be the ideal fit with your personality and your lifestyle needs. There are plenty of tools to help you, so we list a few of the most useful below.

1. Know what you want

The first step is to consider what will be important to you in your perfect career. Is it an opportunity to solve problems, and use your creativity? Will you want to be near home, and avoid commuting? Flexible hours? The chance to use your education and experience?

Make a list of everything you want, then divide them into two lists: ‘Essential’ and ‘Nice to have’. List each item in order of importance.

Next, make a list of deal-breakers. What aspects of a job would you not accept – low salary? Long hours? Working remotely?  

Now, armed with these initial insights, it’s time to look a bit deeper.

2. Gain insight into your working style

Although self-analysis is useful, it is also worthwhile to gather more data with an online personality test.  There are plenty of free resources you could try.  However, it’s probably better to go for one which has been validated by independent research, as you’re likely to get a more accurate result. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator has been used for over 70 years and has been extensively tested. It’s widely used across a range of organizations and defines 16 basic personality types, plus their optimum working environment.  For example, if you are an ‘INFP personality type', or an 'insightful visionary' as it's described, there are clearly careers that will allow you to play to your strengths and others which won't allow you to flourish.  As an ‘insightful visionary’ would you prefer to start your own business, perhaps?  Or work for a start-up’, with your eye on a clear path to a bright future? 

3. Match your profile with jobs

Armed with insights from your self-analysis and chosen online psychometric tool, it’s time to start matching your profile with the careers that may suit you.  The US government provides two amazing online tools using their vast employment database: the O*Net Interest Profiler and the O*Net Skills profiler. The first will help you research careers that match your list of features you want in your career, the second is more based on your skills and experience. The O*Net site also provides in-depth job descriptions, as well as salary ranges and other data which will help to prepare for your job search.

4. The perfect salary

You may be in the fortunate position of not having to consider remuneration as an important part of your reason for working.  More likely you’re like the rest of us and you'll need to be realistic about the salary you want and can expect.  You’ll find plenty of information on the major job boards, based on real-time data from thousands of recruiters and job seekers. 

Also, why not consult local employment agencies for a realistic assessment of the salary range you might expect in your chosen career.

5. Friends and family

Friends and family can be a great source of feedback and inspiration. They know you best.  Ask them what they think would be your ideal career.  They may surprise you with suggestions that highlight strengths you didn't realize you had.

6. Seek professional advice 

Before launching yourself onto a new career path, it pays off to discuss your choices with an experienced professional. Consult a career counselor or a life coach who specializes in helping people find their niche.  It’s true that his will most likely require a financial investment as expert advice rarely comes free. However, when you consider the long-term financial and emotional impact of your career choice, it can definitely prove worthwhile. 

7. Be supported as you search

Once your job search is underway, get as much support as you can. There are plenty of online support programs that provide practical advice and tools.  

Ensure your CV is updated and really reflects the career choice you’re making.  These days, recruiters often receive hundreds of applications for each vacancy. It’s essential that whatever you send is clear and focused. Why are you the right choice for the position, and why is the position the right choice for you?

Choosing the right career is a major life decision, which requires careful consideration and planning. We hope that some or all of these tools will assist in getting you the ideal career. Good luck!

Top Tips To Encourage Higher Education: Guiding Creative Minds

Raising a child with a mind bent on creativity can be challenging, although it can also enrich parents' experience. As a parent, there's absolutely no doubt that you want only the best for your child. Ensuring they can reach their full creative and intellectual capacity will have you on a slightly different journey than parents of right-brained kids. 

Before you start searching for educational institutions for your young adult, it is critical to understand that creativity is more of a unique skill than an inborn trait. The following tips will help you guide your creative child on a path that will ensure they can develop and strengthen their skills over time to reach success. 

Make Decisions Together

Attempting to box up a creative youngster is never a great approach, especially when making important decisions. Instead of keeping your child in a restricting box and making decisions for them, you should make an effort to make decisions together. Such choices to include your child in are decisions such as which best middle schools in Utah they will attend will instill excitement and motivation as they can feel apart of the decision. Unfortunately, making these critical decisions on your own means that you will be risking a potentially adverse reaction.

When selecting an educational institute together, you should focus on candidate options that encourage creative minds and help them grow. All schools are not created equal, so a school that will bring out the best for an intellectual mind will not be able to foster the same results for creative minds. Therefore, it is vital to discuss school offerings and evaluate school sites to make the best decision. 

Encourage Creativity As Education And Recreation

Countless parents of creatives make the fundamental mistake of encouraging creativity only as a recreational activity, which can discourage your teen. It is a great idea to instill a love for learning creatively early on. Limiting screen time and providing art and other creative supplies for your youngster is a suitable way to ensure they can reach their full potential. Your child should feel that creativity can be utilized to learn and grow rather than restricting such activities as a mere hobby they enjoy. 

Offer Suitable Career Path Options

Creative careers are not restricted to creating art, as there are near countless opportunities for creative minds. The best way to encourage and motivate your youngster towards a successful career path is to educate them regarding their options. Therefore, making an effort to evaluate your take on your child's potential career skills and interests and applying them to various career fields can help your youngster determine a suitable path. 

You may find that your child showcases strong writing skills, or perhaps they are interested in the world of marketing. You can find career paths by researching the highest paying careers for creative minds and evaluating the options alongside your child. As mentioned above, it is essential to make these decisions together. Various fields offer creatives opportunities, and some of the higher paying paths include the tech industry, which means software development, user design, and even site design are all options for your creative young adult. 

Stress The Importance Of Discipline

Intellectual youngsters are generally inclined to note the importance of discipline, structured routine, and ongoing educational development. However, creative minds are significantly different. You may find that your youngsters' creative inclinations seem to forge many character elements that initially appear to be challenging. Young creative often battles to find direction and stick to their planned path. General discipline and following of routine are other general challenges that creative minds face. 

Instead of shunning such challenges and discouraging your child as a direct result, it is best to instill and stress just how important discipline is. You should also make efforts to assist your youngster in forging a structured routine that will help them outline details of their daily schedule when they are pursuing their career. Helping your child develop and strengthen essential career skills is undeniably vital.

Help Your Child Understand Failure

Navigating the professional world as a creative can often be frustrating as creatives face ongoing failure and rejection for several reasons. Instead of building your child's enthusiasm in a way that makes them genuinely believe they will not fail, you should educate your child to understand failure. Your youngster must be prepared to face both failure and potential rejection in a way that will have them using their experience to their advantage instead of giving up. 

Understanding failure is critical to being prepared for a career as a creative mind. Ensuring your child grasps that failure can be beneficial and useful will serve as an exceedingly valuable life skill rather than just a career skill. You can educate your child on failure with the help of autobiographies and real-life stories of successful individuals who have faced and overcome failure and rejection in their earlier years.

Provide And Nurture Creative Freedom

Your creative youngster needs an environment that hosts no or little restricting boundaries. Encouraging higher education also means giving your child the tools they need to succeed. One of which is a creatively freeing environment that will help them develop their strengths and realize their capabilities.

You can make a few environmental changes include a space to be creative, relevant, and suitable supplies to help nurture their skills and room to create without limits or corrections. Instead of correcting your child immediately, you should give them time to evaluate their creations and identify their mistakes. Judging creativity is a reasonably challenging situation, which is why it can be demotivating for parents to offer critique instead of constructive criticism. Giving your child the tools to succeed is not restricted to physical tools, as you will need to foster a sense of self-critique, self-awareness, and other traits that will serve them well along their career path. Because every child learns and grows differently, you should also account for your youngsters' individual needs and preferences when creating a suitably freeing environment for them.

4 Career Paths in Criminal Justice

If you want to work in criminal justice and are not sure what kind of job you would like, you have a large list of options. You can be involved in the judicial process at any stage, from a person's arrest and conditional release with a cash bail bond to the end of their prison sentence and beyond. 

1. Law Enforcement

This is the most obvious path for someone with a criminal justice degree. You could serve your community by working as an officer for your local or state police department. Police officers have direct interactions with members of the community including those who have obtained Carver County bail bonds. If you would like to become a detective, you will usually have to start by spending a few years as a police officer first. 

If you gather some experience in local law enforcement, you may be able to move on to a job with a large government agency like the FBI, ATF or DEA. The FBI has a wide focus and investigates violations of federal law. The ATF's job is to solve cases having to do with guns, fire and explosives. DEA agents can break up large drug operations and save lives in the process. 

2. Forensics

If you would like to focus on science as well as criminal justice, a career in forensics may suit you. You may want to minor or double major in chemistry or biology if you would like to pursue this path. You have probably seen television programs with forensic scientists who analyze DNA or assist detectives at crime scenes. While jobs in forensics may not be as glamorous or easy as shown on TV, they are interesting and vital. You could specialize in analyzing specific types of evidence like DNA, blood spatter or ballistics. 

Not all forensic professionals have to handle biological materials. Some focus on evaluating evidence in computers, documents or financial records. 

3. Correctional System

Professionals who are employed in the correctional system watch over people convicted of crimes during and after their time in a correctional facility. There are usually many jobs available as corrections officers or counselors. You may only need an associate degree for those professions. Corrections officers are in charge making sure prisoners follow rules. They provide detailed documentation of prisoners' activities for their superiors. 

One advantage of working in corrections is the opportunity to help prisoners rebuild their lives. This can begin inside the prison as a correction counselor. They help inmates with mental health issues and can also provide training and education. You could also support people who were recently released from prison as a parole officer. You would keep in touch with former prisoners to prevent them from re-offending and aid them in finding homes and steady jobs. 

 

4. Legal System

If you would like to be a lawyer or judge, your criminal justice program will have to prepare you to pass the Uniform Bar Examination, commonly known as the bar exam. This would entail earning an undergraduate degree as well as attending law school. There are many other jobs in the legal system that require less education like paralegals, court clerks, bailiffs and court reporters. 

Four Reasons Teaching Can Be A Great Career Change For Moms

If you're a mom who has chosen to stay at home with the kids during the early years, it can be quite tempting to consider retraining so you can have a new and better career once you do return to work.

The availability of online degrees that can allow you to study from home, full or part time, has made it very easy for moms who want to find a new career path to get qualified while they're at home with the family, but what career should you choose? With anything from accounting or an MBA, nursing or hospitality management available from online colleges like the University of Cincinnati, you really do have a wealth of options.

Here, we take a look at why a really good choice can be getting an online masters in education and becoming a teacher:

Match Schedules with Your Kids

In most jobs, it can be hard to find a good time to do things like take vacations as a family, as getting time off work during school vacations can be something of a battle – everyone wants it!

However, as a teacher, your schedule both on a day to day basis and when it comes to vacations will be fairly similar to your school age kids, making arranging family time much easier.

Learn to Teach Your Own Kids in New and Interesting Ways

Not all learning happens in the school environment, and as a parent you are sure to want to be able to teach your children interesting things and get them excited about learning. As you study for a masters in education, you'll gain some great insight into how kids learn, and be able to use this at home as well as in the classroom.

Use Your Existing Knowledge

Depending on what age group you want to teach, there is demand for all kinds of specialisms. This means that whatever your existing background and first degree are in, you can use that knowledge combined with what you learn in doing your masters in education online to become a specialist teacher in your original field, for instance science, IT, language or even things like art and music.

This means that while you are retraining, you are not losing the benefits of your past studies or experience.

Make a Difference to Children

As moms, we tend to empathize a lot with children and want to help and nurture them – even the ones who aren't our own! As a good teacher, you can inspire and motivate children, help those with difficulties at school, and become an important role model for them. Not all kids have good people to look up to and teach them, and so this is something you can take on as a teacher.

If you are looking for a career change that is rewarding, interesting and also has some practical benefits now that you have started a family, then teaching can be the perfect choice, and getting qualified has never been easier!