A handful of people expressed interest in learning about the career counselling I received after I mentioned it in my previous post, so I figured I would explain that in a bit more detail for anyone who is interested.

What did I do? What did I learn?  Did the counselor and I become best friends after she learned about what an awesome person I am?!?

[Disclaimer: We did not become best friends, so maybe don’t expect that to happen to you.]

Remember that little thing called your childhood? Turns out it’s important.

I know that growing up I told everyone I wanted to be a paleontologist because I just loved dinosaurs so incredibly much, but I obviously had no idea what that really entails. A childhood fantasy is just that – a fantasy and not ever an indicator of anything in real life, obviously.

Did you have any specific hobbies or interests as you were growing up? I’m sure you did, but you can totally forget about them because you have definitely grown out of all those things and probably actually hate them now that you’re an adult.

I know which subjects I excelled at in grade school, and even university. But classes and grades aren’t anything like real life, so they obviously have no baring on what I should pursue as a career, right?

WRONG!

As I grew up and became more self-involved, everything I liked and did when I was younger kind of drifted out of my mind. Life started happening and I forgot that I enjoy writing; being a teenager meant ignoring the fact I actually do well at & like science because I wanted those class-free hours in high school; I all but completely gave up on my creative outlets in order to drink with my friends in university. Career counselling reminded me of these seemingly small things and helped me reconnect with my metaphorical roots – I remembered the things I liked to spend my free time on, the activities that challenged me in positive ways, and reaffirmed the things I definitely still do not like.

Quizzes are fun! And I guess I learned about myself too.

I’ve always enjoyed doing random dumb quizzes online, and almost always like to complete those customer satisfaction surveys you get everywhere, so I was very excited to learn that my career counselling involved taking a few interesting tests. The tests were very extensive and investigated my personality, interests, and skills – my counselor gave me a couple days to complete the tests, then she compiled some reports and we discussed the meaning of the results. Here’s some highlights:

• My Myers Briggs Type is INTP – aka “The Logician”, “The Thinker”, “The Architect”
• I can become so focused on logic that I sometimes disregard people’s feelings and come across as blunt, sarcastic, condescending or dismissive
• I dislike performing routine, practical tasks
• My ideal work environment is flexible, casual, and unstructured, allowing me a high degree of personal freedom and spontaneity, without much emphasis on rules, procedures and restrictions
• The thing I value most when it comes to a career is the ability to solve problems using my creativity and originality
• My Holland Code is IAR (Investigative, Artistic, Realistic) – I like to work with data, ideas & things

The results of each test were very detailed, and definitely made sense when I went through them. Do you ever have a feeling about something but just need someone else to confirm your feeling is correct? That’s what taking these tests was like – confirming what I thought I knew about myself and giving me insight into why.

Lifestyle and other considerations.

An important factor that I didn’t actively think about when pursuing career counselling was how my lifestyle would impact my potential choices.

Do I want to go back to school?
How long am I willing to go back to school for?
Can I afford tuition and not to work for a period of time?
Am I looking for a job I can enter with my current education and skill level?
How much of a salary cut am I willing to take?
Am I willing to make any lifestyle changes as a result of a career change?

These questions were relatively easy to answer for me, but I can see how complicated they could be for someone in a different situation. I’m lucky enough to be able to leave my job and make a drastic career change because of my lifestyle and the opportunities offered to me; I am aware that not everyone can go to career counselling or make changes like this.

Either way, my counselor asked me questions like these and took my answers into consideration when developing my final report.

The results.

In the final session of my career counselling I was given a package with all the detailed results of my tests, along with a list of potential careers that match with my results and everything we discussed up until that point. The package also included information on various university programs, courses, etc. I could take to set myself in the right direction of my chosen career. My counselor was also kind enough to indicate which careers had a positive outlook or higher demand.

It was very eye opening – there were careers in the list I didn’t even know existed, and other careers I would have never considered for myself. There were three main careers that stuck out to me and matched most closely with who I am:

Get yourself some career counselling.

Seriously. Do it. If you have the time, the will, and the means to do so, I 1000% recommend career counselling to everyone stuck in a job rut. I’ve included information about the psychologist I met with in the box below! Until next time, friends!