Emotion

Choosing a Career: What to Base the Decision On

To choose a career, you first need to decide what to base the choice on. No matter how many aptitude tests you take, without a basis you will not know what to do with the results. In most cases, what is missing is not information but a standard.

What should you base a career choice on?

There are three main standards: what you are good at, what you can do without getting exhausted, and what conditions you want to work under. If you choose based only on what you love, you will not last when the other two do not fit.

Which of the three comes first differs from person to person. When you need income right away, conditions come first. When you are choosing a field to work in for a long time, the one that tires you less comes first. Setting your priorities naturally narrows your options.

Should you choose what you love or what you are good at?

Treating it as a choice between the two gives no answer. You find out what you love only by doing it, and what you are good at shows only over time.

There is a more useful standard: whether you can keep going when things are not working. Love for something fades when things get hard, and the sense of being good at it weakens too, but a field you can keep working in stays that way even then.

How much can you trust aptitude test results?

They are useful for narrowing the direction, but they cannot name a specific job. It is common for people with the same results to do completely different work and do well.

What these tests tell you is how you are most comfortable working: whether you prefer focusing alone for long periods or working with others, and whether you prefer set procedures or something new each time. Using this information to choose a way of working, not a job title, makes it far more accurate.

How can you know a career suits you without trying it?

The only way is to try it on a small scale. Talking once with someone who works in the field, doing one short project, or attending one related meetup is enough to see how different your expectations are from reality.

Collecting information while putting off the decision usually does not help. The more you look into it, the more options you have, while you still have no direct experience of any of them.

Once you choose a career, can you change it?

You can. And changing does not mean starting over completely each time. Much of how you work, how you deal with people, and what you know about a field can be used in the next job.

So there is no need to think your first choice decides everything. Choosing the best option under your current conditions, doing it for a few years, and then deciding again is better than doing nothing while waiting for the perfect answer.

How can you see which traits matter for your career?

What you are good at and what environment tires you less need to be looked at separately. Even work you are good at is hard to keep doing in the wrong environment, and even the right environment is hard to stay in if the work is not a strength.

The Beyond Persona assessment reports Meaning, which shows how much you look for purpose in your work, Growth, which shows how much you want to keep learning and improving, and Decisiveness, which shows how quickly you make decisions, as separate results. They can help you judge whether to change fields or change how you work within the same field.

Frequently asked

What if there is nothing I want to do?
Start by eliminating what you do not want. Writing down the ways of working and conditions you never want again leaves a range of options. When you do not know what you want, what you do not want is clearer.
Is it all right to follow what others say is a good choice?
Information about good conditions is worth considering. But whether conditions that suit others also suit you is another question, so it helps to hear about a typical day from someone who actually does the work.
Is it too late to change careers?
In most cases, the time you have left to work is longer than the time you have already worked. The question is not whether it is too late but whether you would be fine doing this work for ten more years.
What if my aptitude and my interests do not match?
One option is to make work out of your aptitude and keep your interests separate. There is no need to merge the two, and keeping them apart often lets both last longer.

Read next

Imposter Syndrome: Why Recognition Makes You More Anxious
Social Anxiety: Why You Tense Up in Front of People
Preferring to Be Alone: A Problem or Just Personality?
Loneliness: Why You Can Feel It Even Around People
Trouble Falling Asleep: Nights When Your Mind Will Not Stop
Why Compliments Make You Uncomfortable, and Why It Is Not Modesty

How should you read this page?

This page describes behavior patterns for self-understanding. It is not a medical or psychological diagnosis, and it does not replace professional care. If difficulties persist and disrupt daily life, please seek professional help.

This page covers the type in general. How it actually shows up in your own combination is what the measurement tells you.

Take the free test
Back to the list