Oct 08 2009
Sep 30 2009
Testing Your Career Aptitude
When I was in my junior and senior years of high school, the guidance counselors started coming around to all of our classrooms and giving us career aptitude tests. The idea was to help us prepare for college by giving us a better idea of what we might like to go to college for in the first place.
If you are considering going to college, or perhaps going back to school, but don’t know yet what you want to study, you can take these tests even if you aren’t in high school or (if you are) don’t have conscientious guidance counselors. There are plenty of career aptitutde tests online that you can take for free.
Basically, the idea of a career aptitude test is to highlight in which industries you might be most interested in working. They don’t tell you a specific career you should pursue, but they identify the areas that you are most interested in.
For instance, if you enjoy working with your hands, a career aptitude test will note this, and provide you with a list of careers that should interest you: auto mechanics, woodworking, HVAC, etc. On the other hand, if you are interested in math, the test might suggest careers in the financial sector, such as banking or investing.
Once you get the results and identify a general direction for your career, it is up to you to find out what education will set you on that path. Usually college admissions counselors can help you with this. For instance, if you want to be a mortgage broker, they can tell you what mortgage training is necessary for SAFE mortgage licensing.
However, it is important not to expect miracles from a career aptitude test. Because the test is self-reporting — that is, it is based on the answers YOU give — it can only make sense of what you already know (even if you don’t realize you know it) by making generalizations about what jobs you might enjoy or be good at.
Sep 24 2009
Hiring Someone To Help with The Mess
My office is a complete mess. It doesn’t necessarily look like a mess to the clients that come into it. I keep the clutter under control. But underneath the calm exterior is a pile of chaos. My files are in disarray. I have ten thousand things on my To Do list. And I feel like I’m never going to get out from under this mess.
I’m thinking seriously about hiring someone to help me get organized. I think that this would do two things:
- Motivate me to make a thorough To Do list. The list is long but it is only a mental list. I need to put down everything on paper from updating my computer software to sending out my college diploma frame for updated diploma framing. Then I can see what really needs to be done.
- Get assistance in actually doing these things. I just can’t do it all myself. It’s never going to get taken care of unless I neglect my clients in the process. I need to delegate these tasks to someone else.
I don’t know if I can justify the expense of hiring someone for this job. However, I don’t know if I can justify not doing it either!
Jul 20 2009
Be Thinking About Your Future
With the current economy, a lot of people are thinking about what they want to be when they grow up — or at least after the recession abates a little bit. A lot of people have decided to go back to school now, so that by that time they’ll be ready for a new job.
In particular, enrollment in vocational programs is really picking up right now, since students get through them fairly quickly and will hopefully be ready to enter the job market when the economy starts to pick up. For instance, culinary arts degrees teach people how to work as chefs in commercial kitchens, automotive service degrees teach people how to work on and repair cars, and carpentry degrees teach people how to build things.
A lot of people are also returning to school to get their master’s degrees. I have two good friends who are doing this, and I’ve been thinking of getting my master’s degree as well.
Learn from all of these returning students’ examples, and start thinking about your future: what career you might like to pursue as the economy improves, and what you will need in order to pursue it. Right now, while the job pickings are rather slim anyway, is a perfect time to go back to school to get any education you might need to pursue that career.
Jun 22 2009
Is Your Diploma Worth the Cost?
People who are just now graduating from college are expressing some serious doubts about whether or not their diplomas were worth the cost of their education. This is due to the fact that the recession is making it difficult for new graduates to find lucrative jobs. These students are being forced to settle for jobs that they could have gotten without receiving a diploma. Many of them are doing customer service, retail and food service jobs. It frustrates them to have spent four or five years in college only to be doing this type of work.
This period of time may be frustrating but you have to remember that it won’t always be this way. The economy is eventually going to bounce back again. New jobs will be made available. Recent graduates will once again be able to find professional (and well-paying) work in the fields that they studied. So it may feel like your university diploma wasn’t worth the time and energy that it cost to get it but that’s really not the case. You just have to hang in there through the tough times in order to make use of the diploma in the future. When that day comes around, you’ll be glad that you got the diploma.