What Career Is Right for Me? A Coach's Five-Question Method

What career is right for me? Answer five questions in order to find out. What do you do well, with proof? What do you need from work, and what will you refuse? What kind of work interests you? What does the job market near you pay for? And what can you test in the next 30 days? A role that passes all five goes on your shortlist. Free tools help with three of the questions. The last one, a real test, does more than any quiz.

I work as a career coach for International Motivation Training Deutschland (IMT), on its Understanding German and Work (UGW) programme. Since 2022 I have coached more than 2,000 adults in Germany's career and integration programmes, in groups and one to one. They are adults starting over in Germany, many of them from Ukraine. The method below follows the order of the course I teach: strengths and needs first, then goals, then the job search.

What career is right for me? The five questions

Work through them in this order. A quiz taken first hands you a list of thirty jobs and no way to cut it. Strengths and needs cut the list down before it grows.

Question 1: What do I do well?

List ten things you achieved in work, study or life outside both. An achievement is anything you made happen that would not have happened without you: a process you fixed, a customer you kept, a family move you organised, a language you learned. One day of the course I teach covers what counts as an achievement. Count the ones that came easy to you too.

Next to each, write what you did and the result. Then look for repeats. If "explained it so others understood" appears four times, explaining is a strength.

Check your list with two people who have worked with you. Ask one question: "What do you come to me for?" Their answers will name strengths you take for granted.

In the course we also use a DISC profile, a self-description of how you tend to act at work. Use a profile like that as a mirror for discussion. It describes style, and it cannot tell you which job to take.

Output: five strengths, each with one piece of proof you could tell in an interview.

Question 2: What do I need from work?

Strengths tell you what you can do. Needs tell you what you can live with. Write down what you need in five areas:

• Money: the monthly income you need, not the one you want
• Time: hours, shifts, travel, flexibility
• Place: commute, remote work, city, country
• People: alone or in a team, with customers or behind the scenes
• Values: what you will not do for money

Then mark each item as a dealbreaker, a preference or unknown. A dealbreaker removes a role from your list, however well it matches your interests. In the course we cover needs with Maslow's hierarchy and a self-test on professional needs, before any job search starts.

Output: a short list of dealbreakers. Keep it under five, or nothing will pass.

Question 3: What kind of work interests me?

Now use a test. A good free one is the O*NET Interest Profiler (opens in a new tab), from the US Department of Labor's O*NET programme. It sorts your answers into six interest types:

The short version has 30 questions and takes about 10 to 20 minutes. You can take it on My Next Move (opens in a new tab), which links your results to over 900 occupations with tasks, skills and pay.

Two alternatives:

• UK: the National Careers Service skills assessment (opens in a new tab) asks about things you like to do or are good at and gives career suggestions to compare.
• Germany: the Federal Employment Agency's New Plan (opens in a new tab) tests your abilities and strengths, and shows where other people with your job moved.

Take one test, not five. Copy the six to ten suggestions that survive your dealbreakers from question 2. Cross out anything that uses none of your strengths from question 1.

Output: six to ten role ideas that fit your strengths, needs and interests.

Question 4: What does the market pay for?

A role that fits you but has no openings near you is a hobby. Check each idea against three things:

1. Demand. Search job ads for the title in your city or for remote roles. Count them. Read ten and note what they ask for again and again.
2. Pay. Compare the salary range with your money need from question 2. In Germany, the Federal Employment Agency's Entgeltatlas (opens in a new tab) shows median pay by occupation and region. In the US, each O*NET profile includes wages.
3. Entry route. Note what you need to get in: a degree, a certificate, a portfolio, a licence. A regulated profession also needs a licence.

Cut every role that fails on demand or pay. Keep the ones where the entry route is realistic for your time and money.

Output: three roles. If you have more, keep the three closest to your strengths.

Question 5: What can I test in the next 30 days?

This is the question most career advice skips. You cannot know whether a job is right for you from a description. You find out by doing a piece of it.

For each of your three roles, plan two things for the next month:

• One conversation with someone who does the job now. Ask what a normal week looks like and what they would warn a newcomer about.
• One small piece of the work. Write the report, run the lesson, sell the product, fix the spreadsheet, design the page. Do it for a friend, a nonprofit or yourself.

Afterwards, write down how you felt the next morning. Energy tells you more than enjoyment in the moment.

Then set one goal for the role that tested best. In the course we write goals in SMART form: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. "Find out about marketing" fails that test. "Talk to three marketing managers and finish one campaign plan by 30 November" passes it.

Output: one role you have tried, and a dated next step.

Put the answers together

Score your three roles on one page:

A "no" on dealbreakers ends the row. Among the rest, the test score breaks ties. If two roles end level, test both again with a bigger project.

When the method gives you nothing

Sometimes no role passes. Check three things:

• Your dealbreakers are too strict. Look at each one again and ask whether it is a need or a fear.
• Your strengths list is too thin. Ask three more people what they come to you for.
• Something else is in the way. If you feel stuck in every area of life, not only work, read my post on the quarter-life crisis. If a voice in your head rejects every option before you test it, read limiting beliefs.

If you already have a career and want a new one, the career pivot guide shows how to keep what you built. If you are 30 and wondering whether it is too late, read career change at 30.

Work through the questions with a coach

You can do all five questions alone. Question 5 is the hard one to do alone: testing feels exposed, and no one waits for the result. When groups in my seminars finish, the feedback I hear most is about individual attention, a clearer plan for the next step, and not feeling alone in it.

"I valued the clear structure and the hands-on content. He responded to each participant individually and encouraged us to believe in our professional goals." Valentyna A., Medical doctor, seminar participant in Germany

In my career coaching we answer the five questions together, build your shortlist and plan the tests, in English, German, Lithuanian or Russian. Book a call and bring your list of achievements.