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How to find a career?

How do you begin to find a career after or before graduating? How do you even find something you may want to do for a long time? What if my degree doesn't line up with what I ultimately do?

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Anoop’s Answer

The most important thing is for you to realize your latent strengths and skills and then marry them with your passion areas to see which professions present a confluence of these two. Long term happiness and success is always more assured when you're pursuing a passion area from a position of strength. Approaching this exercise as a structured process - where you take the time to list and write these down and make a systematic map of strengths, passions and professions that afford them is most encouraged. This will also reveal any gaps / or pathways that you might identify to pursue to help you realize your aspirations.
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Megan’s Answer

My best advice for finding a career before or after graduating is to get an internship. Internships are a great way to get your foot in the door and build up your experience. It can also help you with finding out if the career and company are a good fit for you. Many companies hire interns. It is ok if your degree does not line up with what you want to do as long as it has relevant skills. Some careers require a specific degree but a lot of careers hire for general degrees or related degrees. For example, you can not become a nurse without a nursing degree or a teacher without a teaching degree. As long as you can relate your degree to the career of interest and show some experience in the area you should be OK.

I hope this helps!
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Linda’s Answer

I would recommend applying in your senior year of college and also, while in college, look for opportunities through your school. A lot of universities have relationships with local businesses or bigger scale companies that can be a great shoe in. Networking is really key these days and making friends, both peers and professionals, will go a long way. I would be hesitant about internships unless it's a sacrifice you can afford. Most internships are unpaid and not realistic for those who have no way to pay their way.

Now about your degree not aligning. It's hard to imagine but you're not even in the first quarter of your life, to try to guess what you want to do in the future is nearly impossible. Look for what you want to do now, it will likely change. And as important a degree is, experience wins out in the end. For example, nothing in my high school or college years would have told me that in ten years, I'd be looking for jobs in gardening. Another good example is my mother's career, she graduated high school, was working as a receptionist, ended up moving all over the world and accidentally fell into teaching. That journey took two decades and there's no way she could have known that. She didn't have a college degree whatsoever, even less a teaching one. Another example, my last manager had a degree in biology and ended up a graphic designer.

Aim for short goals. I call long term goals long term hopes. It's good to have a distant image but don't bet everything on it because you can never know how your world and opportunities might change. And if there ever are walls between you and new goals, there are usually ways to work around them. Professional licenses don't all require degrees.
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