职场百科：专家教你如何选择适合自己的职业

How to Choose Your Career

如何选择适合自己的职业

Nothing in career strategy is more important than picking the career field that's right for you. Get that right, and you may be headed to happiness and fulfillment in your work.

选择合适的职业领域才是所有职业策略中最重要的一步。只有选对了，你才能获得工作上的幸福和成就。

The most straightforward path to that field is to build directly on your capabilities. A great deal of research shows that people who work in areas where they're especially strong accomplish a lot and enjoy the work. By building on your strengths, you'll find the right opportunities. Employers and investors will be more likely to bet on you if they think you're up to the challenge —if you really can help them accomplish their goals.

根据自己的能力寻找职业方向是最简单明了的办法。大量的研究表明那些在自己擅长领域工作的人能收获更多的成就和乐趣。不断强化自己的优势，你总会找到合适的机会。如果你的确能够帮助老板和投资者达成目标，他们才更愿意在你身上赌一把，赌你能完成挑战。

Guide your career by consciously building on your capabilities. Here are three ways to do that:

根据自己的能力选择职业领域，下面三个方法可以试一试：

1. Recognize your core capabilities. The first step in thinking about a capability-driven career is to understand what to build on. Begin with a self-appraisal. Look for distinctive talents, skills, and knowledge that will make you highly competitive for certain lines of work.

1.认清自己的核心能力所在。要找到基于你能力的职业首先需要了解你到底有哪些能力。对自己进行一个评估吧。找出那些能让你完全胜任某些工作的天分、技能和知识。

I'll illustrate this idea with a computer solutions sales manager. His list might include understanding customers, meeting information needs with computer solutions, coaching junior salesmen, and communicating well verbally. These characteristics are certainly important for that field of work, but they're too general. They're similar to what other sales managers might say about themselves.

就拿电脑解决方案的销售经理为例，这份工作需要了解顾客，熟知电脑解决方案的信息，训练初级销售人员以及拥有良好的沟通能力。这都是该职业中重要的技能特点，但似乎又有点过于泛泛之谈，和其他领域的销售经理似乎并没有太大的区别。

A more specific list would be a stronger career guide. For example, go beyond "meeting customer information needs with computer solutions" by noting your deep knowledge of how to do that in a specific industry, like your experience with a particular computer solution technology, like integrating iPhone functions with a company website. Don't just jot down "understanding customers," but also describe your talent for imagining customer problems and needs before the customers even recognize them.

那么就需要更加详细的清单来指导职业规划。比如，与其说“满足顾客对电脑解决方案的信息需求”，不如为做好这份工作进行更多的知识储备，比如你在处理某一电脑解决方案时的技术经验，再比如如何将iphone的功能和公司网站有机集合。不要泛泛地说“了解顾客”，而要描述自己能预测顾客会有哪些问题和需要。

2. Build targeted capabilities over time. Once you've identified the talents and capabilities you already have, consider what you need for career growth. Your target capability set can be expertise in a field (like the computer example above) or in a function (like financial analysis or human resources management).

2.长期有针对性地培养能力。一旦确认了你已经拥有的天分和能力，那么接下来想想要想获得职业晋升，还需要些什么。你的能力必须是某一领域(比如上述的计算机的例子)或某一职能方面(比如财务分析或者人力资源管理)的专家。

How do you build your target capability? Some steps are obvious. You might enroll in a graduate degree program in that area or achieve a qualification certificate. You certainly would work in that area. Other steps are more complicated and can raise dilemmas. You'd be cautious about accepting an otherwise attractive promotion, or a new job offer if it didn't build capabilities in your target area. If you were proactively looking for a new position, you'd focus your search on roles where you'd grow your target skills rather than on the possibilities that seem the easiest.

如何有针对性地培养自己的能力呢?有些步骤是显而易见的，你需要在这个领域获得研究生文凭或是拿到资格证书。这样才能在该领域工作。其他的方法就更加复杂甚至让人感到头晕了。如果有一份很好的工作或一次晋升的机会，要求的能力却是自己不擅长的领域，那你就要谨慎对待了。你需要研究一下，新的机会中哪些方面可以让你继续培养自己的专业能力，而不是被“这些要求应该很简单”的可能性所迷惑。

In saying this, I'm certainly not arguing against broadening assignments. They can be critical parts of personal development. If an attractive broadening assignment appears, do two things: Think through how that assignment can lead back to opportunities in your target discipline, and if that's hard to envision, ask yourself whether your fundamental strategy is still right for you.

这么说并不意味着我反对扩大就业范围。这对个人的发展也是十分关键的一部分。如果诱人的工作机遇来临，不妨做这两件事：想一想它能否让你获得自己核心领域的工作机会，如果仍难以抉择，问问自己，到底适不适合你。

3. Add new capabilities to shift direction. If you discover that the skills you have and the direction you're headed isn't your ideal path, you may wish to change fields. In this case, you'll need a different personal value proposition, and it will require new skills and knowledge.

3.为跨行工作添加新的技能。如果发现你的技能和工作并不是一个理想的职业选择，你就会希望跨行工作。在这种情况下，你需要完全不同的个人价值陈述，包括新的技能和知识。

When making this kind of switch, people sometimes abandon their existing capability base. That's an option, but it often requires a step downward, and the ultimate result is uncertain. Unless you're extremely dissatisfied with where you are, the simpler path is to leverage what you know to find something new. Take the perspective of an employer or investor in a new field or function, and imagine what you'd need to add to persuade them to bet on you.

要做到这一转化，人们时常需要抛弃自己原有的能力基础。职业转变是一个选择，通常需要退后一步，最终的结果也未可知。除非你对现在自己的处境极度不满，最简单的跳槽方法就是根据自己所知的去发现新的职业领域。站在新领域的老板或投资者的角度看问题，想象一下要想说服他们雇用你，你需要再学哪些技能。