Choosing the right career part can be influenced by a lot of personal, and societal factors, and interests.

Growing up, choosing a career path was always tailored to professional courses till the age of consciousness where you understand what the real deal is and how confusing discerning could be with the enormous number of opportunities online. 

Mapping out career opportunities is a key factor in being intentional about your life. 

Having trouble choosing which career path to follow? Tired of getting trapped in survival mode? 

This article is for you. Buy me your time and let me make it worthwhile.

 

What is a career opportunity?

Unlike a Job opportunity, a career opportunity is any opportunity that acts like a stepping stone to your career goals. It requires a conscious day-to-day involvement.

This could be in the form of a scholarship, internships, free or paid courses, upskilling programs, conferences, and the like.

7 quick ways to land yourself a career opportunity 

 

Getting a job can be sometimes frustrating in countries like Nigeria especially when you don’t have prior experience in job research. From rejected applications to failed interviews or not even finding a job at all can take you off the trail emotionally sometimes. 

Consider these steps to quickly take you off the job market.

1. Build your online network.

Getting familiar with professional social media platforms such as LinkedIn can increase your pace of landing a job.

It places you on a platform where you can reach out to personnel with any form of expertise ranging from hiring managers to CEOs and so on. 

Growing your professional network online allows you to get familiar with the job market and gives employers a form of confidence to reach out to you for collaborations or services.

Being conscious of your objective by training in a specific path and not confusing your audience by indulging in a different path that is contradictory to one another is a tip to be considered. It depicts specialization and professionalism.

As a job seeker, endeavor to build your network around hiring managers and people in your career path.

2. Consider applying for internships.

Interning for an organization gives you a step ahead of a fresh job seeker who has little or no knowledge about the company in occupying that dream role.

Hence, the company is already familiar with your services and trusts your competence. Therefore, choosing another person on a permanent employment scale won’t be an option. 

Internships allow you to learn, build valuable networks and gain experience that would give you an edge in the job market. This is a great tip for a fresh job seeker.

3. Reach out to your circle.

If talking to your friends and people you share close contact with is something you haven’t implemented, I urge you to put that into consideration. 

These are a set of people who will voluntarily give recommendations about you that your cv doesn’t speak of. Vouching for your competence at work, at social gatherings, and so on can get an appointment by mail to your inbox.

4. Invest in personal branding.

The impact of personal branding should not be underrated because it allows you to streamline your professional journey to what you want others to know. 

 

Your outlook on social platforms, conferences, and publications can be leveraged.

Build soft skills like confidence, trust, accountability, and personal skills which will subconsciously make you stand out and get reached out to.

Place yourself in the faces of recruiters and let them see how much of an impact your abilities will have on their organizational growth.

5. Try online job postings.

With the aid of the internet and a thousand articles on job posts every day, you tend to absorb the daily updates in specific regions on which you can do a feasibility study.

Follow Facebook pages, subscribe to newsletters and emails, and keep a tab on websites that provide information about career opportunities.

This will give you a chance to diverse options of opportunities in line with your career.

6. Do proper job research.

Expand your knowledge by getting familiar with opportunities in different sectors.

There are hundreds of job opportunities unfolding thanks to technology ranging from remote jobs to hybrid jobs, and onsite jobs which you might need to know about. 

Be a step ahead every time and get your application on the front line.

Some career opportunities in health, management, and entrepreneurship Don’t be reluctant to explore fields that might not necessarily need a degree or prior expertise.

 

7. Reach out to start-up companies.

These companies are trying to build their feet in the industry hence the hiring process might not be as rigorous as an already made organization.

Pitching your services to start-up organizations can get you a job as long as you can implement your skills.

 

In most cases, you get to have several shares and benefits while growing these companies.

This is a factor to consider as a freshman in the job-seeking space because it gives you a chance to learn on the job. 

4 popular strategies to choose the right career opportunity.

 

These are a few proven measures to choose the right opportunities to aid your career journey. 

 

Related article – A career successful man is a man who knows not how to quit.  

 

• Identify your personality traits.

Getting it all wrong starts with disregarding the importance of your personality as a person. There are no wrong careers except for crimes but not every career might fit into your personality and style.

Your temperament, hobbies, specialization, skill, interests, and proposed revenue should be considered before going for a career opportunity that would require a thousand and one alarm clock to get you out of bed.

Discover if that opportunity is what you want. This will give you a form of clarity for the decision-making process.

• Analyze what you want from your career.

It’s no news that a lot of people get into a career without making proper feasibility studies or self-analysis about a career. Drafting out your objective in a particular career path can help influence the right opportunity to shoot at.

 Take a scan through these questions and purposely draft answers to them to get simplicity.

1. Is this a talent, skill, or passion?
2. Does my worming environment encourage upskilling and professional growth? 
3. Do I gain value in the process of working or vice versa?
4. Can the revenue generated sort out my financial needs? 

 

• Research the job market.

Getting familiar with a couple of other opportunities to sort from can bring you a step further in picking the right one. It allows you to compare factors like salary, benefits, availability, interest, and core values to enhance your career.

It gives you the license to diversify and have to rethink your career part if need be. 

 

• Reach out to professionals in your career path.

Mentorship and counseling are great ways to never slip off track.

Discussing with a senior colleague or more experienced career specialist and understanding can give you a better insight into its relevancy and demand in the long run and avoid mistakes. 

 

5 tips to determine if you choose the right career opportunity.

1. It gets your hands on deck.

Getting an opportunity that keeps you engaged is a good sign that you got it right this time. When you find yourself getting engrossed and involved positively in getting the task done you would realize that with little or no supervision you can exercise your professionalism with ease.

2. It solves a solution.

For you to be relevant in the career world, you need to always position yourself as a solution to problems. Being able to impact or contribute your quota positively to the growth of a project or commission does seem like a good step in upskilling.

3. Competence

Competence and professionalism mean that your interests and traits align with your career path. That feeling where you always pay attention to every single tick of the clock throughout the day and can’t help a poor performance clearly states that the opportunity is not in tune with your career path.

4. Your work environment aligns with your goals.

The quality of your work environment is just as important as the work you do. Every corporation would gladly support an initiative to upskill through opportunities like programs, courses,s, etc. which will eventually have a positive impact on the workforce of the organization. 

If this isn’t the case at your end go back to the drawing board.

5. It caters to your financial needs.

Asides from passion, the main purpose of investing years and resources in bagging a degree and going through cut-throat measures to land a none are to be on a payroll that can take you off a survival state. 

Career opportunities such as non-paid internships, courses, boot camps, and scholarships might not necessarily generate income in the short run but be sure that it will on a long-term scale be enough to leverage you from financial instability and provide some comfort.