Coming to the end of another year and only six months or so to the Leaving Certificate examination. And you are still unsure as to what you want to do for the rest of your life. You have met the Career Guidance Teacher, you may have met a Professional career Guidance Counselor and you may well be closer to a decision, but still not quite sure, you are not definite. You would like to have clarity by year end, complete the CAO also by year end and start the New Year (the last most important six months of your life to date) with a 100% focus on study so as to achieve the highest points possible. And this you should strive to do.
In order to have this focus, how do you come to a decision about your ideal Career and ideal Third Level Course?
I presume you have met with your Career Guidance Teacher in your school and / or a Professional career Guidance Counselor outside of the school and have some ideas on where your aptitude, skills, talents competencies are? If not, you need to, this is priority and foundational i.e. gathering information, facts, knowledge about you so as to make an informed decision, mainly completed through Psychometric Career Assessments / Tests.
By the process of elimination initially, and then most interest, choose your top three career areas / fields. For each start studying the course contents, speak to people that you know who work in each field, research and read about each really getting into the vision of working in it, the environment, the people, stakeholders, customers, clients. Then you will find that one to two career fields will come to the fore. If these are still two and they are both very different, do more of the above until it comes one clear winner and complete your CAO accordingly.
