How to choose a career in seven steps

Choosing a career is a matching problem with two sides. On one side is you: how you think, decide and spend your energy, what you enjoy doing for hours, and what you need from a job. On the other side is the work: what people in the job do all day, what it pays, how many openings there are and what it takes to get in.

Most career advice covers one side. Follow-your-passion advice says little about the jobs, and lists of high-paying careers say little about you. The method below works through both sides in seven steps, starting from a blank page, and you can do it alongside a full-time job.

The short answer: describe how you work and what you need, build a shortlist of careers that fit, check each one against job data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, then test your top three with conversations and a small piece of the work before you commit.

Step 1: Describe how you work

Your personality at work shows up as patterns that stay fairly steady from job to job. Some people get energy from a room full of people and others from a quiet afternoon with a hard problem. Some want a clear process and others want to design the process. Some decide quickly and adjust as they go; others want the analysis done first.

These patterns matter more than job titles, because one title can reward different ways of working. Two marketing managers can spend their weeks in opposite ways: one in spreadsheets testing campaigns, the other in meetings selling ideas to senior leaders.

Write down evidence from your own history:

• Three times when work or study held your attention and the hours went quickly. What were you doing, and with whom?
• Three times when a normal day left you drained. What did those days have in common?
• What people come to you for, even when it is not part of your job.

The Realign Career Test measures this side in a structured way. It scores six work traits: Communal (energized by people and cooperation), Analytical (drawn to logic and detail), Pragmatic (practical and hands-on, wants results you can see), Bold (comfortable with risk and persuasion), Orthodox (structured and steady) and Imaginative (curious and inventive). Your two strongest traits give you an archetype, and the full mix shapes which careers the test matches to you.

Step 2: List the tasks you want in your week

A career is a bundle of tasks. Job titles hide the tasks, which is why people are often surprised by what a job involves once they are in it.

Make two short lists using verbs:

• Five tasks you would happily spend a Tuesday afternoon on, such as analyzing numbers, explaining things, building, organizing, negotiating, caring for people, designing or fixing.
• Five tasks you would avoid if you could.

Keep both lists. You will use them to read job descriptions and to question people in step 6. A role whose core tasks sit on your second list will wear you down, however good the pay or the title.

Step 3: Write down your limits

Some things are facts of your life more than preferences. Write down:

• The lowest income you can live on, and how long you could earn less while you switch
• Where you can live and work, and whether you need remote work
• How much time and money you can put into training
• Caring responsibilities, health needs or anything else that shapes your hours

Then sort each limit into hard limits and assumptions. “I can’t take a pay cut” sometimes means “I can’t take a pay cut for longer than a year,” which opens more options. Our guide to what career is right for you goes further into separating the two.

Step 4: Build a long list, then a shortlist

Collect candidates from several places so you are not limited to the jobs you already know about:

• A career test. The Realign Career Test matches you to ten careers using your traits, interests and situation. Each one is a Bureau of Labor Statistics occupation, so you can look it up yourself.
• Similar occupations. Every job profile in the Occupational Outlook Handbook links to similar occupations. Start from a job that sounds right and follow the links.
• People with your background. Search LinkedIn for people who once held your job title and look at where they went next.
• People who know you. Ask five people, “What could you see me doing?” You will hear roles you had not considered.

Aim for fifteen to twenty candidates, then cut to five to eight. Drop anything that breaks a hard limit from step 3, or whose core tasks sit on your avoid list from step 2.

Step 5: Check each career against the data

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes the Occupational Outlook Handbook, a free guide to several hundred occupations. For each one it describes the work and the work environment, and lists the median pay, the typical education needed to enter, the projected change in employment over the next ten years, and the number of openings expected each year.

Read these parts carefully:

What to look up	What it tells you	How to read it
Median pay	The middle of the pay range for the occupation	Half of workers earn more and half earn less. New entrants usually start below it.
Projected employment change	How fast the occupation is expected to grow or shrink over ten years	A slow-growing occupation can still have many openings each year as people retire or move on, so check openings too.
Typical entry-level education	The usual price of entry	Look for routes in that give credit for the degree or experience you already have.
Work environment	Where, when and how the work happens	Hours, travel, physical demands and shift work show up here.

Pay also varies a great deal by location. BLS publishes wage estimates by state and metropolitan area through its Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, so check the figures for where you live or plan to work.

The career test does this lookup for you. Each match in the full report shows a pay range, projected growth and typical education from BLS data, and when BLS has no figure for a career, the report leaves it blank.

Step 6: Test your top three

A shortlist is still a set of guesses. Test the top three before you spend money on retraining.

Talk to three people in each job. Ask questions that get past the job description:

• “What did you spend yesterday doing, hour by hour?”
• “What surprised you in your first year?”
• “Who does well here, and who leaves?”
• “If you were me, how would you get in?”

Our list of informational interview questions has more.

Do a small piece of the work. Build the sample analysis, write the training session, volunteer for a project at your current job that borrows from the target role, or shadow someone for a day. A few weekends of the work will tell you more than months of reading about it.

After each test, notice your energy. Did it rise or fall as you learned more? Did the work use the traits and tasks you wrote down in steps 1 and 2?

Step 7: Decide, then plan the first 90 days

You will not reach certainty, and waiting for it is how people stay stuck. Choose the option with the strongest evidence, set a date, and commit to it for a defined stretch. If you are torn between two strong options, our guide on how to decide on a career has a scoring method.

Then plan the first 90 days:

1. Map the route in: a bridge role that values your current experience, an internal move, or a credential if the field requires one.
2. List the skills employers ask for most often in job postings, and pick the one or two you are missing.
3. Build one piece of proof in the new field, such as a project, a portfolio piece or a volunteer role.
4. Tell the people you met in step 6 what you chose, and ask who else you should talk to.

Every Realign Career Test report includes a 90-day plan built from your answers, with points along the way to check in with a coach.

Mistakes that make the choice harder

• Choosing by title. Read what people in the job do all day before you decide you want it.
• Choosing by pay alone. A high median does little for you if the daily tasks sit on your avoid list.
• Researching without testing. Reading stops helping once you have a shortlist. Conversations and small projects move the decision forward.
• Letting one bad job decide. A poor manager or a difficult team can make a good career feel wrong. Our guide wrong job or wrong career? helps separate the two.
• Choosing for other people. Status and family expectations are easy to mistake for your own goals. Check each option against your notes from steps 1 to 3.

Where a coach fits

You can run this method on your own. People tend to stall in two places: narrowing a long list to one choice, and turning that choice into a plan they act on. A career discovery coach works on those two points with you. Your career test report also names a Realign coach matched to your answers, if you want help with the next step.