How to Chose A Successful Career Choice in the 21st Century

Career Parts is about the whole system and process of building, maintaining and supporting an individual career. Nowadays, everyone is concerned about their career, especially they want to know how to get a job, how to start a business, what one should do for higher study and how to build a successful career. Building a career is not an easy and straightforward task. The career choice process starts from early education, keep going with higher studies, building skills, getting a job, developing it and finally one can see his/her successful career.

Chose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life.
-Confucious

Table of Contents

There are some types of career choices you can wish:

To get a government job.
To get a multinational company/professional job.
To become an entrepreneur/businessman.
To be a freelancer.
To build an independent profession like doctor, engineer, actor, lawyer, CA and so on.
To become an influencer.
To serve others, work for charity or NGOs.
To be a scientist, scholar, higher study and teacher.

and so many more which all are considered as individual choices for their professional career aligning with their wishes, norms, values, cultures, skills and conditions.

If you have made up your career choice, you need to consider :

Education & higher study.
Different kinds of Skills and abilities.
Personality, problem-solving and decision-making ability with smart tricks.
Job-related knowledge and information.
Business-related knowledge and information.
Information about a particular professional career.

These things are very common all over the world in the modern age and all of them are needed for different career choices. Those are the topic which Career Parts focuses on and works on for the betterment of career and solving career-related problems. In the modern situation where information is crucial and the unemployment problem is rising continuously, everyone needs a smart career plan and goal to fight in this modern competition of career war.

The Recent Career Condition

Previously people wanted a safe and sound job in government or corporate organizations to make a living. But in this complex era, career choice is not only a method of earning money, it has become a method of earning status, respect, value, personality, power and almost everything.

Now people judge others by their career choice, which has been a great measurement of status and value in society. For this reason, career choice building and preparation begins from the very school study and it keeps going till retirement. Mainly government and business create all the job and career opportunities except the individual service and professional sectors.

A lot of businesses are creating every day and more people are searching for employability which is creating a gap between career availability and career runners. In this era, it’s more competitive than ever, where getting a job becomes a high-valued achievement and success.

Whether a job or business or any profession, people only see success and ignore the failing people. The very school teaches us not to make any mistakes though it’s an important part of success, it teaches us in this way for the competitive environment, where 1 mistake can take us 100 steps away backwards.

Everyone now sees career options restricted by the value and norms of society and very hard as well as complex decisions to make. They simply forget what they like to do and do what society wants, what others value and what is more profitable rather than enjoyable as a career choice. That’s why most of us fail when we all go for 1 job which is limited and is not increasing with the growing job demand.

Most of the time people suffer from some career disorders like:

Lack of proper educational system.
Lack of skill-based education.
Lack of career-education collaboration in educational institutes.
Backward social norms, values, culture and career thoughts.
Lack of proper guidance and information
Lack of wise influencers and scholars in the country.
More job-minded than an independent profession or business-minded people.
Misconceptions about career choice and thoughts.

What People Want As A Career

If we talk according to research,

people normally want a career which can:

Fulfil their physiological needs and make a living by earning money and having a standard life.
Safety and security in their job, so that they don’t have any career risks.
Love and belonging among the people of the workplace and the society by status.
Self-esteem and feeling of success as an achievement of life by their career.
Finally, self-actualisation is by which a person can apply his knowledge and skills for the betterment of the world.

These are explained by Maslow’s hierarchy of needs which is a popular theory of motivational factors. Generally, people want these things while doing a job. People also want financial independence and make brand influencing enough to make an empire of businesses as a businessman and investors. People also want independent service professions, the career of their special skill casts like players, actors, singers, dancers and so on.

We can see in society that, people want power, money and status. People who are struggling for survival, only want something that can buy their bread for a living. Middle-class people struggle with their expectations of life by balancing their dreams and costs. Rich people keep getting rich and they create money and job for others. Many good students want to be a scholar and want to go to foreign world-class universities for higher study.

Some dream about a profession and work from their childhood to achieve that dream. Some get special skills in acting, singing, writing, and drawing and others, practice those and make a living out of those.

So the main concept is deciding to choose and aim for a career is the most important thing in the world. Not choosing any or going with the tide of the social trend and educational system is far worse than having a particular choice of career. In this way, you should choose your dream career and follow that career structure, work daily on that life to become successful. Because towards the career, the struggling journey is the main building block for your career success rather than achieving it.

After achieving it, it will be easier to maintain that successful career position if it is built on a strong foundation of career understanding, will and skills.

It's not what you achieve, it's what you overcome. That's what defines your career.

-Carlton Fisk

Career Choosing Strategy Step by Step

So we now know how people chose their careers, what they want and why it’s so important to strategically choose and build a career for any individual. Now it’s time for applying the specific proven strategy to successfully plan out and make up your dream career. You can follow a simple yet powerful proven strategy to find your dream career which can work as both passion and profession. Here are the steps for building your career successfully.

Step-1: Find out what you like, what is your passion

It’s the main thing which can decide your work-life balance and happiness. You should first find out what are your passions. What is your hobby and what do you like the most? Every person is different by nature and they have different preferences and likes, that’s why there are so many professions in the world.

A career is not something you do as a project and finish up, but it’s a lifestyle which you chose and do most of your time and live by it. So turning your passion into a profession is the smartest career move you can make which can give you happiness, not only money. If you go after money, it won’t come to you. Chasing your dream can make it happen for you. If you follow your passion, happiness will follow you including a lot of money.

That’s why you have to find a career, not a profession which will only give you money.

So, first make a list of your passion, hobby, liking things and anything you feel good about, then write it down in your note using a colour pen or design. What is better than doing what you want and like to do and getting money for that? You can add every passion and find out which of them can turn out as a profession. On the next page, write down all the reasons behind why you like to do so, and why it has become your profession.

Add the why reasons, value and norm, your thought and benefits of that passion so that you can prioritize one over another in the further steps.

Follow your passion; it will lead you to your purpose. -Oprah

Step 2: Find out what you are good at, self analyze and find your special skills

When your passions are set, take another page to write down your skills. It’s time for SWOT analysis for yourself. First, find out your strengths and then weaknesses, opportunities and threats respectively. Figure out everything about yourself, your past experiences, struggles, success and professions. What do you do most of the time? What you are good at and what are your special unique skills which no one else can do better than you?

There are many talented people all over the world. There are now a lot of career opportunities available for those special talents and many rich people got rich from their talent. There are some by birth talent and some learnt talent or skills. Whichever you have, write that down. If you consider yourself having no talent, then consider what talent you wish to have and immediately start working on that on a daily basis.

Once you have identified your skilled areas, then you can align those skills with your previously listed profession and keep 3 categories of career options that hold passion, skills and passion+skills. Now whatever skills and passion you possess, you can choose either of these categories or multiple categories to have multi-career opportunities.

Step 3: Find the support and environment for your desired passion to turn into a career

Now you can select or build up another category of choice by researching your surroundings, which features and advantages your environment, system, society and community support and eager to help you build up your career. In Bangladesh, especially you can get easy access to becoming a government employer, BCS cader, teacher, doctor, engineer, lawyer, part-time worker and freelancer more easily than other dynamic career choices.

However, in China, you can get government and other support for establishing your own business, industry and brand.

In the USA, you can get support for becoming a corporate officer, building a career in a multi-national job sector, sole proprietorship business or tech startup.

In the UK, you can easily establish an SME industry.

These are the support and career opportunities you can get from universities, government and private institutes, society and the community. This help is a big factor in choosing a career and its difficulties of achieving as well as failure rate. This step will largely help in the preparation and understanding of the degree of effort the particular career choice requires. If the environment of supportiveness is positive with the career choices on your list, it will be much easier to ride the career journey of your choice.

If it is not supportive enough, then you have to be ready to face obstacles, lack of information, ill talks of the society, struggles and so on. The positive side of the negative impact is, that there are very few competitors in these career sectors where support is less and once success is seen, it’s easier to keep up with the pace of success and go even higher.

So, list out the advantages and obstacles for a particular career choice which can help you to decide whether stay with the tide or go against it in an adventurous way!

Step 4: Explore all the listed passions and see the opportunities

Now, you have to understand that every career success path is difficult and has its own pros and cons. There is no shortcut to success. There will be many obstacles and downfalls, mistakes and struggles no matter which career you chose. You must evaluate every possibility and opportunity of the career which represents both your passion and profession.

In this step, you will know about all of your listed career choices in detail whether these are your final choices or not. When we think about a career choice, we often don’t know everything about that career choice. That’s why it takes more failures and efforts to achieve success in any career.

The main concept of success is there is no shortcut. We have to live the career we chose every day to gain something. Most of us don’t know actually what it takes or what to do to achieve a particular goal. Either we take advice from some people who are not walking through that career path you seek, or we consider following someone successful as our idol. But most of that story we know is success and a good time, not the horrified and terrible unseen part of the failure. That’s why when we start failing and can not see the success part early, we give up.

That is why we need to know every benefit and struggle we might face during the career journey. So start researching and figure out every small detail along with the positive and negative sides of the careers to consider the real opportunity you might get from choosing a particular career choice.

Step 5: Now evaluate and narrow down your lists further

Now it’s time to evaluate or analyze your list of career choices according to your wish, will, benefit and heart. After knowing about all of your passions and skills, now you know which of them you can afford to do according to your skill, condition and wishes. Some works are better to stay as a passion. Some might work well as a profession.

You might like some work which by doing, you enjoy and do not get tired at all. There might be some factors for which you would prefer one career more than another based on your own judgement. Compared with one another based on your skills, wishes, support, available information and other analysis.

By choosing the highest preferred careers, you should now narrow down your career list and keep the 3 or highest 5 final careers which you want to lead in your life. These must be the dream career you want in your life with all of your fantasies and thoughts. We selected these using both sides of the brain as well as all the other situations. Now, these are the dream careers waiting for you and you are supposed to be one of these.

With this step, the choosing and deciding foggy part are clear and you can see either of these dream careers blooming in your life.

Step 6: Chose the best option, your dream career opportunity

From this step, you need to work out your dream career. Pick the best one you think of or any of the chosen dreams you like or feel like. As it is important to focus on your chosen dream, you need to put the other career goals into another list of not doing at all. It follows the Warren Buffet theory of aim, which indicates picking one to work on and putting all the other works on not to do list.

This will help you to focus on primarily your dream career plan and put the distractions of other likings away. It is the sacrifice you have to make unless they are similar by nature. If 2 or 3 of your career are similar by type, these can work as multi-career opportunities and you can plan to work on all of them. But if they need different attention and differ by nature, they will cause just distractions for you.

So choose the best option and note the opportunity cost for it. It will seem worth working hard for. So it’s the first step to set your aim into action and leading your dream career. Here are the things you can do now:

If the options are similar, plan for similar careers to have a multi-career opportunity.
If the options are identical but different by nature, put them into the sacrifice list and avoid them.
Calculate or measure and write down the opportunity cost for them and manage your attention.
Make your aim clear, and set up your personal affirmations for that career, mission and vision with SMART goals.
Finally, get ready to jump into your career parts.

Step 7: Become a career runner and start living on that dream

It’s the planning step for your the chosen dream career opportunity. Prepare with your heart and soul for becoming the person you want to be. Here are the things you can do respectively:

Write down your aim, why you want it, why it is attached to your life, your emotion, your future and your dream.
Add your vow and promises about the things you want to do and avoid the things you don’t want to do for achieving your success.
Start by becoming the person leading the career and become by continuously developing yourself and live that career life daily.
Make a routine of good habits, discipline, skill practices and to-do tasks for achieving the aim.
Make a SMART plan which refers to specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound. Make a 10-year, 5-year, yearly, monthly and daily goal. Keep track of your goal.
After the appropriate plan, start immediately without wasting any time and always train yourself to stay focused, dedicated, hard-working, active and positive for your dream career.

Step 8: Upgrade yourself with education, skills, knowledge and experience (keep growing)

The apparent takeaway is that a rise in wage or income is a common result of acquiring and using new abilities. Attempts to learn may also provide intangible yet significant benefits. Accomplishments in the realm of education may contribute to elevated feelings of pride and competence.

It may also help you get respect from others by highlighting your initiative, independence, and flexibility, for example. Investments in one’s own or another’s knowledge may pay off in more ways than one, and sometimes for a very long time.

Being a lifelong learner not only allows you to expand your existing knowledge and abilities but also speeds up your ability to acquire new ones. Learning is like any other muscle; the more we use it, the stronger it becomes.

One of the traits shared by highly successful individuals is the capacity to absorb and use vast amounts of data quickly and effectively. You can’t understate how much it will help you make the most of your time and efforts.
Many individuals look for the most promising chances, while others rely on their own internal compasses. One need not see education as a means to an end, a means to a higher salary. If you want to know about a business or dive into it without experience, you must learn from business subjects and books which can help you out.

Source: Self-development plan

The world is large, and inside it is many fascinating topics to explore, even if they have little practical use (in terms of increasing your salary or gaining more social status). Education is its own reward if you commit to ongoing study. You may be certain that your time and money spent on furthering your education will pay off when you do it because you like studying for its own reason. In this modern age, you can even boost your productivity with mobile apps and computer software easily, even on many creative websites.

Making the decision to study is the first step in developing a strategy for self-education. Without our own motivation and self-control, we will never achieve our full potential. Another essential mental check is accepting responsibility for the results. To rephrase, we are each entirely responsible for our own maturation and improvement.
The process of determining and establishing educational objectives consists of just a few basic steps:

Verify your dedication (and be realistic about time and money constraints)
Consider your educational alternatives (and what you can achieve with the platform or method)
Explain your drive (the knowledge gained should enable the actual benefit you seek)
The first step in learning is to establish your objectives (challenging yet achievable short to medium-term targets)
Go on and do something, and keep evaluating your progress (self-assess your goals and not just your execution)
Recognize and take responsibility for the results of your work.

Constantly expanding one’s knowledge is not only a pleasurable and intrinsic aspect of living but also a proven path to financial success and career advancement, as we’ve shown above. Knowledge assets are the projects, outcomes, and accomplishments we produce as a consequence of our education and training; these assets serve as repositories of value and may generate returns in the same way that other types of investable assets do.

Step 9: Be ready for the opportunity and grab the success

You never know when the chance will present itself, so you should constantly be ready. Sometimes, all that’s needed is for us to do anything. You can make changes in your life no matter what you do. The pain of missing an opportunity to seize a positive situation is beyond your comprehension.

Here are the things you can do to be always ready for grabbing the opportunity for success of your dream career:

You need to be available at all times because you never know when the right circumstances may provide you with a chance to shine. Never let go of what you consider important because you never know when you may have another chance. Having a high number of contacts ensures that you are always up to date on information of interest. Keep in mind that you may choose to either invest in yourself or spend time with those you care about most.
You’re never equipped with enough information to handle a situation on your own. It is crucial to keep learning new things since time, our needs, and our ideas are continually changing. When working toward a goal, it’s not wise to throw away any information gained along the way. The ability to learn new things is one of the keys to success. As you expand your horizons of understanding, you’ll naturally broaden your network of contacts and acquaintances.
Feeling down about yourself closes off opportunities, whereas a positive outlook opens up a world of possibilities. Each challenge you overcome may make you a stronger person in the long run. Millions of people spend their whole lives waiting for the right opportunity; you should take the one you have, no matter how challenging it may be. Those who are able to maintain their strength in the face of hardship will ultimately be the ones who benefit.
There is nothing more discouraging than getting turned down for a job or an interview despite your impressive qualifications. Avoid the disaster by honestly assessing and fixing your many flaws. Experts in the same field may also be consulted for feedback.
If you want to excel in your field, you need to put in the time and effort to learn as much as possible about it. Your schedule has to be set up in a manner that makes it easy to fit in prep time.
Most people eventually lose command of their timetables, making it impossible for them to seize the right opportunity. You can’t go to every family reunion and watch every new movie and expect to get anything done in life. Winners are always efficient with their time and have well-defined goals.
You’ll need to put in a lot of time and effort to ensure you’re ready for the best possible opportunity. It may be detrimental to our cause if you lost hope and patience. But you can’t expect a miracle to happen right away; you have to wait for the right time and be ready.
You’ll need to put in some serious time and effort to achieve your goals, but if you approach your job with the right attitude, you’ll be rewarded with a happy ending in no time. Life is never easy. The harder you work, the more satisfying your reward will be.
When the right moment comes for you to act, you don’t want to be a stuttering idiot who keeps looking at their watch. You must have an optimistic outlook and come into the game fully ready to win.

Step 10: Live the dream and maintain the career choice you made

You can’t finish what you’re doing because it would be a failure. You need to do all in your power to keep your success. Great people like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Bill Gates don’t get to the top because of a single feat, but rather because they work tirelessly to better themselves and their fields. Keep in mind that a single triumph does not guarantee continued success.

Think about this: you’ve just been named the world’s best dancer. You are the centre of attention as you stand there accepting the award. What if you keep standing there, certain that your accomplishment entitles you to a permanent spot in the spotlight? Is there any logic to this? Eventually, someone must try this, but will they? No. Success in the past is no guarantee of future accomplishment.

If you can’t maintain your success, you’ll end up as just another rags-to-riches story. Getting an Olympic gold medal isn’t the end goal; after you’ve accomplished that, you can’t simply sit back and celebrate. You should aim to win as many medals as possible throughout your career. Many people who win reality shows end up unable to maintain their popularity. Therefore, only a small percentage of industry leaders really succeed.

Just like you may establish a huge corporate empire equivalent to Microsoft, Amazon, or Apple, but if you can’t keep up the momentum, your business will collapse and you’ll end up as another “rags to riches” success story.
Therefore, here are some easy things you may do to keep your career going strong:

Do not waver from your stance. In fact, you’ll need to put in even more effort than necessary on top of what you did to first achieve success. It’s not because he transformed Amazon from a bookstore into the most successful online retailer in the world that Jeff Bezos has amassed his fortune. Michael Phelps’ meteoric rise to fame as a world-class swimmer may be attributed to his refusal to settle for second best. The same holds true for you: you need to maintain uniformity in your actions.
Be modest. Rather than worrying about your own importance, work on strengthening your base. Where will most of the work be concentrated in a building with a hundred stories? In other words, here is where everything starts. As such, if you want to achieve and maintain success, you need to lay a solid groundwork. Your success structure will stay unbowed even if hurricane-force gusts try to blow it down.
Take the mindset of progress. Jeff Bezos did not say to himself after Amazon started making money, “My labour is done, and I can now do nothing.” Instead, Bezos put all of his energy into making Amazon even bigger, which has led to his and the company’s continued success. It doesn’t matter whether your job is in retail, fast food, or something completely else. Increased growth and scale should be a top priority. This is the secret to producing results time and time again.
Think with a level head. The majority of people set goals such, as “I will be successful if I find a job earning $10,000 per month.” Achieving my goal of building a $100 million company is what I consider to be the pinnacle of achievement. Have you ever thought about the steps you’ll take after this and how your life will change as a result? Negative reactions from the public at large are troublesome. Having a well-defined goal and plan for the future is the single most important factor in maintaining your success and motivation to act.

Finally, your successful career choice-making should go how the famous Steve Jobs directed:

Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow know what you 
truly want to become.
-Steve Jobs