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I Don’t Know What I Want To Do

   Most employment counselors will advise you to slant your resume toward the type of job you’re looking for, stressing persuasive experience when going after a sales job, stressing hands-on technical ability or familiarity with automobiles when applying for a job as a mechanic. But what if you don’t know what you want to do?

  First off, write down what you’ve already done, and whether you liked it or not. Be as specific as possible. Don’t just say “Counter guy at fast food joint.” Break your former job down into as many specific tasks as possible, from greeting customers to preparing sandwiches to making change at the register. With each task, ask yourself, “Did I enjoy doing that? Would I like to do it again? Would I mind doing it again? Would I hate doing it again?” 

  If you’ve had more than two jobs, after a while you’ll see patterns emerging. For example, you may have worked a cash register in each job you’ve had. Analyze the ways in which each cashiering experience was the same and different. This should give you a better idea of whether you enjoy working a cash register, and under what circumstances. You may have hated checking customers out at the fast food joint, but loved it at the florist’s, which had a slower pace.  

  Now think about experiences that may not have been jobs in the strict sense of the term, but entailed hard work you really enjoyed. Perhaps your community group helped repair a front porch, and you got great satisfaction out of the experience. Were there any positive aspects of your jobs at the fast food restaurant and the flower shop that were also present in the home-repair job? Perhaps you enjoyed interacting with people or achieving a sense of completion. These would be things you’d want to seek in your next job as well. 

  To help narrow down your choices and give you a better idea of the types of jobs that are out there, your public library should have interest inventories that would help you choose several careers that suit your personality type. Combine these results with the work experiences you’ve enjoyed, and you are now in a position to seek a job you’ll really like.

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