Monday, May 11, 2009

Choosing A Career After High School

High school graduates can continue their education or go straight into the workforce.


After you graduate from high school, you can either choose to continue your schooling or pursue a career, with all its seemingly endless choices. Start thinking early on about what kind of work you may want to explore after high school, remembering that you can change careers several times throughout your work life. Your exact choice should take into consideration your interests, personality and personal goals. Read on for some general options to think about when you are choosing a career after high school.


Instructions


1. Take a personality and interests test. There are many good online tests that will help you discover what kind of career suits your personality. The Keirsey Temperament Sorter assumes that you have your own patterns of attitude and actions that are as unique to you as the build of your body. The Keirsey test gives you 71 multiple-choice questions to determine exactly how you interact with the world.


2. Find out the educational requirements for your career choices. Careers in the professions and most government work require a college education, with a minimum of a bachelor's degree. Other careers do not require college, but rather offer on-the-job training and start you out in an entry-level position from which you can grow.


3. Enroll in vocational training courses. Vocational training prepares you for a specific job and can usually be completed in six months to one year. This may not be a very good option if you struggled with your grades in high school. Vocational training programs are usually modeled after academic training, but are much more hands-on as they allow you to actually do the work while you learn.








4. Enlist with the military. You become eligible to join at the age of 18. The military pays for your future university education and offers you an attractive enlistment bonus. You will trained to learn a variety of skills; be prepared for a highly structured environment that demands self-discipline and hard work.


5. Start a business. It is important that you enter a career that makes you want to devote yourself wholly. If you cannot find the right fit in an existing job, then you may be able to create your job through self-employment. This option takes serious discipline and focus, and it requires you to learn basic business skills in addition to the skills of your particular kind of work.

Tags: high school, after high, after high school, kind work, require college, Vocational training