Decision Making in Career: 7 Step Guide

Making decisions is a part of our daily life. While some are small, others are life-changing such as decision-making for your career. It can have a huge effect on how our lives shape up eventually.
There are many aspects to decision-making, such as what you are passionate about, which job offer you accept, whether you relocate, etc.
Here are some steps to guide you in making a career decision that suits you.

Steps to Make a Career Decision

Identify your goals clearly

The very first step in decision-making is to ensure that you identify our goals clearly. This is one of the significant steps to take during a career planning journey. Focus on your goals for life and make well-informed decisions.

For instance, you may be good at something and passionate about another. So which one should you choose? It would be best if you focused on various aspects, such as growth in the industry, salary, and what you eventually want from your professional journey.

Elimination process

Decision-making is not just about what to do. It also entails understanding what you should not do. In matters of career, what not to do is as important as knowing what to do. It helps to create a list of pros and cons. This method will clearly show you which decision is best for you.
When you are clear on what you need to avoid, the entire process of elimination becomes very easy and less challenging. Once you go through the elimination process, it becomes easier to decide.

S.W.O.T analysis

It stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. This analysis is instrumental in decision-making because it can help you identify the different aspects of your decision. It is a primary yet famous method used by many professionals worldwide.
Draw a square with four boxes and label each of them as strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, respectively. Then fill the boxes according to their titles. Once all the information is in, you will have a clear picture of your strong suits, where you lack and what you need to improve.

Simulate outcomes

Although this is not a foolproof method of knowing the outcome of your decision, a rough simulation can help you get an idea. You list down the several outcomes and evaluate accordingly.
If you are familiar with it, a more technical approach would be to use scientific analysis such as issuing trees, SCQA (situation, complexity, question, answer), and MECE (mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive). This is a technique used in project management to visualise the outcomes of your choices.

Review your options

Once you know your goals and what you want and do not want from your career, review the available options. This can help your decision-making and improve your chances of accomplishing your goals.

For instance, if you want to pursue further studies, you can pause work, or delay looking for jobs and focus on learning. This way, you can plan finances and other things. Or, if you are aiming for a promotion or want to manage a team, you can upskill while working with leadership courses.

Either way, reviewing options is a great way to make better decisions.

Seek advice

Everyone with a successful career has been where you are. They, too, would have hit the wall, unable to decide on the next steps. It is important to understand how they overcame this barrier. Ask your friends, family, peers or mentors for their advice. Look for professionals online and try to reach out to them. Read testimonials by famous people for encouragement and tips.
Seek, and you shall find!

Learn from your mistakes

It is human to make the wrong choices and bad decisions. However, one must also learn from these choices and ensure that the same mistakes are not repeated. Bad decisions are opportunities to help you understand what not to do. And this is what will help you perfect your decision-making.

The steps provided above are a great way to plan, analyse and decide. Hope it helps you decide well for your career. Look up courses to upskill, talk to people, take advice, check out the top highest paying jobs in India and worldwide to see what will suit you the best, and so on.

You can explore online courses across different categories that Emeritus India offers in collaboration with reputed institutes like ISB, IIM, IIT and MIT xPRO. Experienced faculty members design a diversified curriculum to help professionals upskill, grow and earn a competitive pay package.

Remember, do not over analyse small decisions or keep worrying about major ones. Decision-making takes a bit of extra planning and thought, that’s all.