At some point in your life, whether early in your academic career or after you’ve been working in various other fields for a while, you will likely ask yourself what you want to do professionally in an ideal scenario.
Depending on what form your aspirations take, this could be something that you could realistically achieve with the experience that you already have. Still, it might also be somewhat more distant than that, and the path towards it might present certain obstacles.
However, that’s not something that should stop you, and it might just be that getting to this point requires the right preparation. This preparation might take the form of experience, but it could also mean that specific training or qualifications are what you need to get there.
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The Appropriate Preparation
In certain situations, it can be easy and even tempting to think that training and qualifications simply represent red tape or a mere piece of paper that signifies the result of your efforts. While the qualification itself is what allows future employers to know that you’ve put in the work, that doesn’t mean that the process of study itself is invaluable. You might find that the training can offer you a valuable chance to become more familiar with skills that you’ll come to rely on in many cases.
Other times, it might also mean that the process you undergo in order to achieve the qualification also presents you with opportunities to network or get involved with employment positions that can get you started in the right line of work before you’ve even finished. In these senses, you might find that opening your mind to what training can genuinely teach you about your desired career could be the best way to proceed.
Depending on what career you want to get into, you might find that the training you’re looking into might be quite broad – being something transferrable that you could apply to a wide range of careers, or maybe something more specific. In the case of the former, you might find that certain qualifications relating to the field of IT serve as a good example of this – being a skill that finds its home within an incredibly diverse range of industries.
When it comes to the latter, you might be aware that what you’re trying to get into has quite specific requirements as far as qualifications are concerned, and certain parts of the world might even require you to undergo specific training in order to be considered. One example of this is the American state of California and what facilities within that location look for when hiring an assisted living administrator. If this is the professional path that you had in mind for yourself, this might illuminate the fact that undertaking research before you start applying for such roles can tell you exactly what you need.
Narrowing it Down
Suppose the training that you’re undertaking is something more broad, like the aforementioned example of an IT-related skill. In that case, the process of undergoing this training might work to help you understand exactly what it is that you enjoy about this field, and which direction you’d like to go with it.
When you think of your dream career, you might think about how the field aligns with your interests or how your skills line up with what might be expected of you. However, from this distant viewpoint, you might not think so much about what the day-to-day experience might look like.
Of course, it might be difficult to gleam this without actually living a day in the life yourself, but the right training can prepare you for the unknown, and might start to give you some idea. Furthermore, having a qualification that is applicable in a wide variety of situations and workplaces can mean that you get into the career that you initially wanted, only to discover that it isn’t for you. However, your qualification can still help you look for work elsewhere in the hope that it can serve you just as well.
Furthermore, while you might begin your training or education with a specific goal in mind, the process itself can start to change your mind; the information you gather might tell you that you want to take your life in a different direction entirely. This might be because new information about your career came to light that changed your opinion of it, or perhaps you were informed of another available option that simply sounded more appealing.
Of course, if the training that you’re undertaking is more specific, you might have only gone down that route with a single career in mind. If this is the case, it’s worth being sure before you begin that this is the best professional choice for you – and part of this might involve shadowing someone who already works within that industry or volunteering to get a sense of what your potential career might look like.
Additionally, you could also talk with people who have already worked in such a career or look online in order to understand what you might be getting into. While this kind of preparation could be applicable to any job, qualifications that have numerous uses might not apply this kind of pressure due to the branching road ahead.
Inner Confidence and Understanding
As mentioned previously, training isn’t simply about gaining a qualification that you can then use to catapult yourself forward into the desired career. Proper training in the field of your choice will be able to actually teach you things about what you can expect to encounter within that job and how you will deal with it, as well as a deeper understanding of your prospective responsibilities that can truly make you a professional.
While you might have an idea of what you want your dream job to look like before you go through the pursuit process, the act of being dropped in that professional situation might seem like a completely unreasonable prospect. But it can greatly benefit you – not just in terms of experience and skills but also in acquiring an accurate picture of your dream career that will help you feel confident in figuring out if it’s really for you.
Also, when you see that you’re required to have a certain qualification under your belt before you can apply or be hired for a role, it might make you take a blasé attitude towards said training obligation without thinking about how much it can actually improve your skills and confidence in the variety of situations that you could encounter in the role you’re aspiring toward – so give it thought and see exactly how you can benefit from all qualifications and training, not just the ones you’re interested in.
Of course, different people start at different positions, and due to this, some people will be more knowledgeable or more prepared than others before the training is even conducted. This is natural, and while there’s every chance that you could be the one in this position, there’s also the possibility that it could be someone else – and finding yourself training at the same time as this person will doubtlessly lead to comparisons between the two of you in your mind.
However, while this might be a natural inclination, it’s important that you try not to take these comparisons too seriously or let them impede your focus. You’re there for your own training and education; it doesn’t matter how anyone else is doing or if you feel as though they are out-performing you, and the act of overcoming this might be what gives you the confidence to push forward.
Learning what you need to succeed in your desired role and gaining an in-depth understanding of it is simply part of the process of training. While aspects of what you have to learn might seem somewhat daunting at first, taking it piece-by-piece and building up your confidence in this field through the gradual accumulation of knowledge and the application of what you’ve learned can have you ready to enter your dream job by the time you’ve finished.
