Finding a future career you love is easier if you think about what you enjoy and what’s important to you. You can’t put a price on loving the work you do.
It’s great when you love what you do during your apprenticeship. There’s that feeling of real satisfaction in your work, when you wake up and feel eager to face the day. But if you don’t yet know what kind of future career you want, here are some ways to start thinking about directions you might want to head in.
Think About What You Already Enjoy Learning And Doing In Life
What subjects did you love at school? What was exciting and fascinating to you? Think about whether there’s a way to incorporate this in your current apprenticeship. If you loved Art, a career in graphic design or visual marketing might suit you perfectly. Liked English? Consider if any life and work skills (and even qualifications) you’re picking up in your apprenticeship could help you become a journalist or similar. If Maths was your thing, accountancy and finance might be up your street.
You can also think about what activities you enjoy in your free time. People who are great at sports might look at becoming a coach or personal trainer. If getting involved in social action and giving back light you up, then think about working for a charity (or volunteering in your free time, to add to your CV and get a taste of charity work). If you spend all your spare time exploring the digital world, you might make a brilliant IT technician or web developer.
The possibilities are endless. Look at your passions and build ideas from there.
What are you good at? What are your strengths?
You might be good at specific tasks you’re doing as part of your apprenticeship training because you find them easy, or because you enjoy them and feel motivated to get better at them over time. Perhaps you are great at communicating through body language and speech (drama) or love maths mainly because you find it easy so you get praise for it. You might enjoy a career that is either specifically related to what you enjoy doing, or involves the skills you use to be good at that activity
You can be good at more than one thing, which is great – we all have more than ONE ‘dream’ career inside us. The things you are good at might share skills in common. If you can pinpoint what life skills you are good at, you can use them in wide range of careers.
You can take a career personality test to assess your personal qualities and strengths.
You can also do your own SWOT analysis to figure out your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.
If you had to pick a favourite out of words, numbers, visuals and physical activities, which would it be? In your current apprenticeship, does your top choice form a big part of what you do every day? If not, can you picture a job that would?
Many careers use a combination of skills. But if you’re good at keeping a clear head to solve problems, you might enjoy working in IT or science. If you love written communication, any writing-related job might be good for you. If you have strong speaking, listening and persuasion skills, you might be great at caring careers or sales careers.
What Do You Care About? What’s Important To You?
What’s most important to you? This can give you a lot of clues about the kind of environment you’ll thrive in.
What are the things that you feel very strongly about? What are the causes or issues that fire you up and make you want to go out and change the world? What subject can you simply not get enough of learning about? Now think about if there are ways to translate these passions into your future career.
You should also realistically assess the kind of person you are. If you’re a people-person, you might be happiest in a customer service or people-centred environment, whereas very shy or introverted people might be happier with a desk job or work-from-home role where most of the work is done solo.
Finally, think about what is most important to you in your future career. If you want to earn big money, you probably shouldn’t look at the arts, education or non-profit sectors… but if you want to feel you’re making a difference in your work, these things might be exactly for you! And it’s fine to fall on either side of this line, too. Prioritising your earning potential is totally okay!
Do you want to work fixed hours or a flexible schedule? Would an office, a shop floor, or a natural environment feel right for you once you complete your apprenticeship? All these things will affect the kind of future career that will suit you.
Reach Out To the National Careers Service
Browse the National Careers Service or reach out to them by email or phone and you should be able to speak to a careers advisor. They will be sympathetic and understanding, and might offer you all kinds of ideas you hadn’t previously considered.
Browse Job Boards For Inspiration
Even if you’re not ready to apply yet, because you’re immersed in your apprenticeship, job boards can give you great ideas. Search by job name, by location, or just pick a random category that appeals to you and scroll through. Spend some time reading job descriptions to learn more about what’s out there and the kinds of skills and qualifications you’ll need to achieve the future jobs that interest you.
Activity: Ask Your Friends And Family How They See You
Our friends, family and loved ones have an amazing perspective on us that we don’t always have on ourselves. Ask your friends or family what they can see you doing. What do they think you’d be really good at? If they had to close their eyes and imagine you in your perfect job, what would it be?
Be brave and ask – the answers might surprise you and might even inspire something amazing! Based on their answers, you can head to the Youth Employment UK careers hub to find out a bit more about their career suggestions and what that career might involved, as well as how you’d start getting into that career after you complete or leave your apprenticeship.
Finding future careers you might enjoy is a journey, not a race.
Don’t feel you have to have all the answers straight away. There are some dream jobs for you out there, and there are no deadlines for finding them. Try things out, follow your gut instincts, think about clues to your dream careers based on what you enjoy most in your current apprenticeship, and don’t be afraid to do something different if where you are isn’t the right fit.
There are no deadlines for finding a dream job.
It’s fine to try a few career ideas on for size to see if they fit.