Throughout your childhood and entire school career, students frequently hear many questions and prompts to choose a career. This is one of the most important decisions you will ever make and with two thirds of working people in jobs they dislike, it’s one worth putting in some time and thought. Although there are no guarantees, About Careers offers the steps you need to take now to set your career goals.

Self-Assessment: Identify your interests, values, skills, and personality traits that will help you narrow your scope towards a desirable career. Think about the work you’ve done in the past – academic and otherwise – what was most satisfying for you? What did you like the best? What skills made you the most successful in doing those things?

Brainstorming Options: Use the Occupational Outlook Handbook (http://www.bls.gov/ooh/) to scan through different types of careers based on the values most important to you. Once you find an industry that may interest you, keep narrowing your search to define position titles you may be interested in.

Research Options: Once you have a list of careers worth looking into, look for information online. You can use the aforementioned Occupational Outlook Handbook or Google the position. Sites like eHow can provide you with a great step-by-step guide to becoming whatever career you choose. When conducting your research make sure you pay close attention to the growth potential, educational requirements, day-to-day demands of the position. These will all be very valuable in ultimately determining your path.

Job Shadowing: After you’ve narrowed your scope to your desired industry, it’s a good idea to see the industry in action. This is like a grown-up “Take your child to work day” where you schedule in advance with someone currently in the industry to follow them and see their work for a day/hour/week.

Internship: This will give you hands-on experience in the field. Broaden what you view as an internship – volunteer work will achieve the same experience goals.

The Decision: At this point, you should be very ready to make a career goal. If you’re still deciding, seek the guidance of a counselor or adviser at your school or a career counselor in the community.

Don’t forget! Deciding on your career is just the beginning! Now that you’ve chosen what you want to do, get out there and make it happen!

You can find more about setting career goals and other tips from about careers by following this link: http://jobsearch.about.com/od/college/fl/how-to-set-career-goals.htm