Job Hunting in Houston? Hone Into Your Professional Skills

If your time in college is coming to a close you probably identify with the thousands of others, just like you, getting ready to look for a job. Maybe you had an internship you enjoyed this past semester, and they’ve agreed to keep you on after you graduate. Or maybe you’re entirely dedicated to your major and you found a job that’s a perfect fit for you post-graduation. Some students are ambitious and driven to continue their education, going on to graduate school for additional training for their intended career path.

What your advisors office will not tell you is that the last group of students? They are pretty rare. Just as mystical as a rainbow unicorn, people who truly know their path are far, few, and in between, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to find your way, or that you won’t be able to with a bit of guidance.

Finding a career path sounds intimidating because of the way we learn about professional work through our schooling. Of course you can’t use your calculator in math -- when will we ever have them in real life?

With that in mind, there is a bit of a magic recipe for figuring out what your next move might be. It applies to new grads as well as professionals who have been working for some time and don’t know how to connect the dots moving forward.

The recipe is simple. You need to find what energizes you, what makes you curious, and you need to learn to communicate about it. Effectively.

Ultimately figuring out what energizes you makes it easier to discover your “purpose”. Asking yourself questions about how you are actually feeling about topics, other students, your relationships, and any other area of your life can help you figure out the things that light up your life. And when you begin to figure out what those things are, you can look for a job that will meet those needs.

Think back to the days when you’d haphazardly meet someone and tell them you loved their shoes because they lit up on the playground. Or how you made friends with someone in middle school because you ran track together, but you both decided you hated running and opted for playing lacrosse together in the spring.

Although you make choices on your own as an individual, people who know “their people” and where they fit, in terms of their preferences, have an easier time floating through the first phases of their career when imposter syndrome is rampant, awkward emails are plenty, and more than once, you’ve wanted to cry in the bathroom.

Based on your communication style, there’s a career path and a role for you so perfect it would slip on like Cinderella's lost slipper. The point here is if you look inward, you’ll find you have a particular style for dealing with conflict, confrontation, and communication. Every job is different but communication styles are much like high school cliques. Like-minded people, focusing on similar topics, doing collaborative work.

When you figure out what makes you excited to get up, what makes you itch to solve a problem, or what questions you want to answer with your career, you’ll find that the dots connect themselves.