Career Planning is something many young people never get to do, mainly because they’re just thrown into “life”, if you’d let me put it that way. However, the absence of it doesn’t make it less important. Young professionals have a better chance of career success if they planned it. This doesn’t mean everything will go according to plan, but having a plan is always much better than freestyling or winging it.
There are several stages of career planning, the first of which is self-exploration. This stage also happens to be the most important, and it’s not close. To understand how vital this stage is, we need to first understand what it is. Let’s talk about self-exploration for young Nigerians.
What Do You Do in Self-Exploration?
Self-exploration refers to the stage in one’s career where you figure out what you like and enjoy, what you don’t enjoy as much, and what you absolutely cannot stand the thought of. For example, I realized early on that I had no career in sales. I knew that if my livelihood ever came down to me needing to convince someone to part with money, I may go hungry.
This realization shaped my career, and made me realize I had to build skills to get me income in other ways. Self-exploration reveals your interests to you, but it also reveals your values. What matters most to you? This is important, because when we open the topic of “a fulfilling career”, the word fulfillment now has to be defined. This is why knowing your values are important.
For some, money is the key, and that’s OK. For others, it’s family, and yet for others it’s personal happiness. If the most important thing to you is what makes you happy, it means that’d affect the kind of roles you can take in the professional world. This is also true whether you place the most value on money or family.
Self-exploration centers on the individual, because your career will be dependent on you as a person. There may be more money in tech than in music, but if you’re not at all interested in tech, it’d be difficult to devote enough time and resources into tech to be successful at it.
Knowing your interests and values are only one part of this exercise. This stage is not complete until you know your strengths and weaknesses.
Strengths and Weaknesses: The Core of Self-Exploration
Knowing your strengths will inform what kind of skills you’d excel at. The same with knowing your weaknesses, but in a slightly different way. Your weaknesses inform what kind of skills you’d find difficult to develop.
For example, someone who excels at problem-solving will shine in fields like software development and other tech-related areas. Someone with great observational skills will do well as a Data Analyst and Business Analyst. Of course, if you hate math, you may want to go away from tech altogether, as much of it involves calculations in what way or another.
The mistake many people make is not being honest with their strengths and weaknesses. Often, the idea of being poor in certain areas brings shame, and hence denial. You’d see people who are horrible at communication not realize that they are, and you’d wonder what world they’re living in. So it goes without saying that honesty is required in this aspect of career planning.
This doesn’t mean you won’t work on your weaknesses, but it does mean you won’t build a career around something you’re not very good at.
Why Your Strengths and Weaknesses Determine Every Other Aspect of Career Planning
Your strengths will help narrow down the kinds of careers you can research. It also affects the goals you’d set for yourself regarding your career development. If you know what you’re good and bad at, you’d know what it will take you a long time to learn, and you’d be able to set realistic benchmarks for yourself.
It also helps you understand what you should build skills in, rather than waste resources on skills that don’t match your strengths. Of course, skills affect what roles you’d take, and what areas you’d get experience in.
The idea of having several career choices is good, but in reality it takes a lot out of young people. People often focus on learning everything, and end up not building enough experience in a certain fields to become high earners.
Conclusion
Self-exploration is not just the first step in career planning, it’s the most important. It informs every other aspect of career planning and development. Decision-making is quick and reliable when the decisions are informed. That information is embedded in honestly accessing your interests, values, strengths and weaknesses.
Remember, self-exploration determines every other step in career planning and development. Treat it with the attention it deserves.
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