By Shawn Bakker
With the start of school and many returning to work from summer vacation it is a natural time to think about your career. Knowledge about type preferences and making use of Sensing, Intuition, Thinking, and Feeling in a step-wise manner can help you clarify your options.
STEP ONE: USING SENSING TO FOCUS ON THE FACTS
Making use of your sensing perception is a good place to start. Identifying the realities of the career issuethat you face and the resources at your disposal is very important for making good decisions. Questions you need to ask yourself include:
1. What have I liked/disliked in the past?
2. What is my current financial, social, educational status?
3. What jobs and corresponding salaries are available?
STEP TWO: USING INTUITION TO IDENTIFY POSSIBILITIES
Your intuition helps you identify the different possibilities in your situation and generate opportunities for change. Using your intuition perception will allow you to think of ways to make the most of your skills. Questions that can help you use your intuition include:
1. Besides the one perfect career, what other jobs/occupations require people with my skills and preferences?
2. What are the future possibilities for each of my career options?
3. What do the careers I find attractive/unattractive have in common?
STEP THREE: USING THINKING TO IDENTIFY CONSEQUENCES
You need to use your thinking perception to make a critical and objective analysis of your situation. Having already identified both the facts and possibilities of your situation, you need to look at the positive and negative consequences of the different options. Some questions that will help you use your thinking perception include:
1. What are the pros and cons of each of my possible career choices?
2. What would I objectively recommend to someone who had the same choices?
3. How well do my skills and preferences fit with each of the careers I am considering?
STEP FOUR: USING FEELING TO IDENTIFY WHAT IS MOST IMPORTANT
Your feeling perception will help you identify what you care about most in both your life and career. Using your feeling perception to weigh the outcomes of your choices ensures that you will meet your personal values. Questions to ask that will engage your feeling perception include:
1. What do I care about most in my life and work?
2. Which of my career options immediately give me a good or bad feeling?
3. How would those important to me react to my different career choices?
Making the most informed decisions comes from using all four steps. While these steps will not guarantee perfect career decisions, they will help you be more informed and provide a clearer understanding of your options. The trick is to focus on each of them equally, even though our individual preferences incline us to skim over some and concentrate too much on others.
