What Factors Go Into Choosing A Career (11 Factors Explained)

I’ll be discussing what factors go into choosing a career.

Some of these examples come from personal experiences and what can be observed from the outside looking in.

What Factors Go Into Choosing A Career?

There’s several factors that go into choosing a career:

• Character
• Values
• Convenience
• Company Failures
• Passion & Skills
• Personality
• Goals
• Choosing to Lead or Follow
• Working alone or in a group
• Determine how much of the “bigger picture” comes into play with your choice
• Job Market Research

Character

Your character is one of the factors that go into choosing a career because it functions as a reflection of who you are to the core. You don’t have SpongeBob doing anything other than making Krabby Patties because it’s the most fitting position for his type of work. There has to be this that’s taken into account in order to save yourself the effort of even getting started with whatever company you’re considering. It’s just having a sense of awareness and leveraging it among the company to be at your absolute best. Character could actually be synonymous with understanding and being aware of your values as well.

Values

Values are factors that go into choosing a career because they represent the drive and motivation behind why you get up every day. Your values have to be aligned with the company you’re going to be working with or industry you work in because they are representative of your goals. Whether it’s a car, house, family or anything that your work will take you to, it motivates you. Analyzing this and really getting a chance to dissect what’s valued in the industry you’re operating in will reveal if that’s gonna be the best fit. That’s gonna be important if you care about taking pride in the work you do.

Outsourcing

Outsourcing is a factor that goes into choosing a career because it tackles the possibility of getting replaced. Technology is actually a popular culprit for how this happens in today’s modern world.

• Smartphones
• Self-Checkout
• ChatGPT

Those are just a few of the things that reflect how people, even places and things themselves get outsourced. It can’t be something that invokes fear in anybody though. We’re not far enough in science to the point where a robot can do absolutely everything that a human can. There’s still a human element for how outsourcing can work though: there’s somebody somewhere that very well could do what you’re doing even better physically or financially.

Convenience

Convenience is a factor that goes into choosing a career because it makes a difference in if the work is attractive. Most people want to do work that seems to fit around their schedule. That’s convenience at a popular scope. Scheduling, labor, commute (even more). There’s unique cases in where someone takes up a job because it had something as small as the right hours of operation to where they’re not working for long plays into their favor. I personally don’t recommend you lead with that because adversity builds character, and if you can persevere despite having less than favorable conditions, it builds a much better person in the back half of life.

The difference between enjoying using a skill and just being good at it

Passion & Skills play factors with choosing a career because it functions as a strategic balance between emotional happiness and ability to exercise logic.

Passion is rewarding in a way to where money doesn’t have much of an influence in whether you partake in the action being done.

The ideal way is to be doing something you love.

Skills is getting able to demonstrate the intellect you’ve acquired in life.

It can be fun to show these areas of your life because of what it attracts as well.

If you’re operating from this space a majority of the time, you’re going to continue attracting the best people in your life that genuinely admire you for being in your zen.

Personality

Your personality is a factor that goes into choosing a career because it could be the single thing that differentiates you from competition. Personality is what makes you unique in many ways. There’s other ways to show that off and could even be duplicated only up to a surface level though. This is actually where being in tune with your personal preferences makes your journey more enjoyable. Honesty is critical in this case because faking a personality that’s anything less than what you really are only hurts you in the long run. You have to be honest with yourself when understanding if you’re an introvert or extrovert. Likely to help people on your own or need to be assisted with that effort. Taking a HEXACO test could be one of the best decisions you make moving forward and leading off that; or even a Meyers-Briggs test.

Goals

Your goals play a factor in choosing a career because they’re the end mark for where you’re trying to land. A career plays a huge role in making the possible.

 

The goal puts an end to your beginning. It lets you know where you’re heading. It doesn’t always have to be material things either. It could be helping a specific company reach their own. Maybe an individual wants to do something and you make it your mission to help them see it through. Communicating this interest with the network you accumulated in your chosen industry makes navigating much simpler: everybody’s gonna know what you want and from there it’s up to you to be a willing person to collaborate with them.

Choosing to lead or follow

Choosing to lead or follow plays a role in picking a career because it functions as alignment with who you are. This internal lesson checks your box with understanding expectations. The roles of a leader and follower are wildly different.

 

Leaders do more work than the two, but that shouldn’t scare anybody off from choosing to be one. They manage whatever group they’re part of make it their business to help them all succeed.

 

Followers are something everybody that becomes a pro at anything has had to become. They have different expectations that include the likes of being coachable and meeting whatever the required minimum is to continue following whoever.

Working alone or in a group

Working alone or in a group is another factor because it plays a bigger role in the majority of the career than it’s given credit for. You’re choosing to be productive one way or another, and from there on it’s up to you to figure out the way you work best. Again, there’s a divide between people that prefer to work alone and others who like to be confided into a team.

 

There’s an emerging state of market (I’d like to call it) in where every industry you could think of is making adjustments to their procedure of operation by allowing employees to make the choice in doing one or the other.

Determine how much of the “bigger picture” comes into play with your choice

This is acknowledging and taking into consideration what the overall package is when choosing the best career possible. That includes the likes of compensation, non-monetary benefits, and anything else that could be leveraged in gaining your interest to be apart of that career’s community. There’s plenty of attractive companies that have a lot of value that they lead with when getting more employees to join; I’ve actually passed on several as I grew to get in a deeper relationship with the heart of my career. It’s a huge factor for most, but that doesn’t mean it’s the only thing that should catch your attention. Take it as a warning in suggesting you adopt the mind frame of “you’re willing to offer me all of that, and that’s ‘missing’ from my checklist but I’ll accept anyway” and challenge it. It’ll be best to see what all the opportunities are and making the absolute best decision for yourself moving forward.

Job Market Research

Job Market Research is another factor because it tells you what the pros and cons are in choosing one career over another. This is actually something that most people don’t do enough. They’re not taking the time to learn more about their career’s state of being. There’s several careers that fit this mold in where most people can’t tell you how to succeed exactly, but they all seem to know the one piece of advice being: look at the market conditions before you even try. Real Estate is one of the lines of work that stick out initially. It’s not exclusive to just that though, there’s plenty of instances where you can do your homework with something before deciding to go “all in” on it. If you check out a few episodes of Shark Tank you’re gonna get a better idea of what this means.

Final thoughts

These are the factors that go into choosing a career again:

 

• Character
• Values
• Convenience
• Company Failures
• Passion & Skills
• Personality
• Goals
• Choosing to Lead or Follow
• Working alone or in a group
• Determine how much of the “bigger picture” comes into play with your choice
• Job Market Research

 

They all are worth learning about at high levels and can raise your value tremendously.