6 STEP GUIDE TO CHOOSING YOUR DREAM CAREER

Shane Hummus 1
 6 STEP GUIDE TO CHOOSING YOUR DREAM CAREER

Step 1: Sample Platter ...........................................................................................................................3

Step 2: Self Inventory ..............................................................................................................................4

Step 3: Dip Your Toe In ...........................................................................................................................9

Step 4: Deep Dive And Make A Plan ................................................................................................ 11

Step 5: Re-Evaluate .............................................................................................................................. 14

Step 6: Confidently Choose Your Career......................................................................................... 16

Shane Hummus 2
 6 STEP GUIDE TO CHOOSING YOUR DREAM CAREER

T
here is no such thing as a “best career” just like there is no such thing as a “best
food.” There is only a best career or best food FOR YOU. For one person a
career as a Data Analyst would bore them to death and for another person it
might be their dream career.

You want to try different things out and figure out what you enjoy and what you’re
good at.

Think about your favorite food. How would you have ever known it’s your favorite
food without trying it first? It would have been impossible. The same thing goes with
finding out what you enjoy. You have to try different activities to see what kinds of
things you enjoy spending your time on.

So accept that invite, join that club, try that sport, play that game, learn those skills,
and meet with that person. Many of the things you try you will find to be boring or
you might find that you aren’t very good at it. But once in a while you will find
something that you seem to excel at or you find to be extremely fun… And oftentimes
people find that the things they are good at are also the things that they enjoy!

This is where we move on to Step 2: Take A Self Inventory

Shane Hummus 3
 6 STEP GUIDE TO CHOOSING YOUR DREAM CAREER

T
his is probably the most important step and it’s the step that so many people
skip because it requires a tiny amount of work.

Don’t skip this step. Your future self will thank you.

The first thing you want to do is write down a list of AT LEAST 10 things that you
enjoy doing both inside and outside the classroom. Don’t think about it too much or
judge yourself, just think back on your life and start writing. Don’t limit yourself to 10
either, but definitely don’t stop until you reach a list of at least 10, even if it takes you
an hour. It’s worth it.

Shane Hummus 4
 6 STEP GUIDE TO CHOOSING YOUR DREAM CAREER

For reference, here’s a list of 15 things that I love:

1) Video games

2) Youtube/entertainment

3) Math and problem solving

4) Entrepreneurship

5) Investing and personal finance

6) Extreme sports

7) Helping others

8) Philanthropy/charity

9) History

10) Science and experiments

11) Movies, Films, and Documentaries

12) Traveling

13) Reddit and other online forums

14) Board games like chess

15) Futurology (trying to predict future trends)

Don’t use my examples, think of your own. Take time to really think back on your past
and things you really enjoyed. Find a quiet place where you can meditate on this.
Don’t go on to the next step until this is complete.

The next thing you want to do is to make a list of your strengths and weaknesses.
Think about times in your life where someone has told you that you’re really good at
something or maybe you’re really bad at it. Be brutally honest with yourself here. This
isn’t about being the ego or being humble, just try to evaluate yourself and your skills
as fairly as possible. Write down a list of your 5 strengths and 5 weaknesses.

Shane Hummus 5
 6 STEP GUIDE TO CHOOSING YOUR DREAM CAREER

So for reference this is my list:

Things I’m good at:

1) Public Speaking

2) Experimenting/Science

3) Problem solving/conceptual thinking

4) Teaching/Helping others

5) Giving others good advice/Practical thinking

Things I’m bad at:

1) Following my own advice sometimes

2) Memorizing things

3) Staying focused on one thing

4) Small talk

5) Memorizing things (lol)

Again, don’t use my list, make sure to come up with at least 5 strengths and
weaknesses of your own before moving on.

The next thing you want to do is decide what your GENERAL career and lifestyle goals
are, and by that I mean you want to ask yourself these questions:

1) How much money do I want to make?

2) At what age do I want to retire?

3) Does my career need to be fun, or is it just a way to fund the rest of my lifestyle?

4) What actually makes me happy and fulfilled?

5) How important is stability?

6) Am I a competitive personality that loves to work long hours and do whatever

it takes to win?

Shane Hummus 6
 6 STEP GUIDE TO CHOOSING YOUR DREAM CAREER

7) Am I a person who enjoys a good work life balance and would rather work in a
chill job?

8) Where do I want to live?

9) Do I want to work a 9-5 for the rest of my life, or do I want to eventually become
an entrepreneur?

10) How important is job satisfaction to me?

A big thing to realize here is that making money does increase your happiness to a
certain level and beyond that level your happiness doesn’t increase anymore
(generally speaking). Depending on what study you look at it ranges from $70k a year
to $95k a year so just keep that in mind.

You can use sites like Payscale and Glassdoor to do research on this stuff

My example:

I wanted to retire before the age of 40 and be able to travel the world and eventually
settle down somewhere in CA so I can be close to my family, and so this is my big
career goal. At the same time I knew that I would never stop working in some capacity
as I’ve always loved working, but it likely wouldn’t be in a career (most likely starting
my own business).

Now, anyone who’s familiar with CA knows that it’s extremely expensive and
traveling the world is also very pricey so I will have to save and invest a lot of money
in order to do this and so the careers that I list will all be high paying ones as that is
the only way I will be able to retire that early. Six figures a year would allow me to
live the lifestyle that I want.

I also wanted to start a business at some point as well once I acquired skills and life
experience that would make it more likely for me to succeed.

Make sure you complete this list before moving on to the last task. I mean it, it’s very
important to do these lists one at a time. The last task requires you to have all of the
lists done already. If you move on now without completing the other tasks you will be
decreasing the effectiveness of this process.

Shane Hummus 7
 6 STEP GUIDE TO CHOOSING YOUR DREAM CAREER

I’ve found it really helps to ask your family and friends what you’re good at and what
you struggle with. This can be awkward but send them this:

“Hi, hope you’re having a great day! I’m taking a class on leadership and development
and they gave me an assignment to ask 10 of my friends and family what my
strengths and weaknesses are. I would really appreciate it if you sent me a list of 5
things you think I’m good at and 5 things I could improve on. Also let me know what
you think my “superpower” is. Please don’t be shy telling me what you think I can
improve on, I promise I won’t get mad and I appreciate the honesty. This assignment
is due in a few days so please get back to me as soon as you can. Thank you!”

Also, for the ones that respond to this, ask them to make a list of the other steps as
well. Also ask them what careers they think you would be good at. This is especially
effective for people that have spent a lot of time around you like parents, siblings,
classmates, or close friends.

Now you will have a list of what you think are strengths, weaknesses, passions, and
what lifestyle and general career type is best for you… AND you will have a list of other
people’s perspectives on the same topics. This is invaluable information.

Much of the time when it comes to ourselves we are too focused on the trees to be
able to see the forest, so it can be life changing to have third party input from people
that have spent a lot of time around us. I can almost guarantee that this will be one
of the most insightful and important exercises you’ve ever done in your life.

This might have been one of the most important things and one of the turning points
in my life when I did this exercise myself. I sent it to 30 people and got about 23
responses. This gave me a realistic idea of what my strengths and weaknesses as
well as my passions and goals were and made all of the other decision making in my
life much easier. I still reference and update these responses to this day.

Now you’re ready for step 3:

Shane Hummus 8
 6 STEP GUIDE TO CHOOSING YOUR DREAM CAREER

S
o you have a better idea of who you are now but how do you go about finding
this ideal career? The first step is to figure out what careers are out there. You
do this by exploring. Watching youtube videos (where you probably
discovered me), browsing reddit, participating in niche online forums, and reading
articles about careers.

Important things to consider are: Salary, Job Satisfaction, Demand, And Personal Fit.

For salary some great resources are BLS.gov (for American jobs), Glassdoor, Payscale,
and Ziprecruiter. For Job Satisfaction Glassdoor, Payscale, and careerexplorer.com
are good references to start off with. For Demand BLS.gov is a great resource and
also glassdoor and payscale can be used to search how many job listings there are
for different types of careers.

Shane Hummus 9
 6 STEP GUIDE TO CHOOSING YOUR DREAM CAREER

Personal fit is the hardest but the best ways to search online for this are to watch
youtube videos, read blogs, look on reddit.com for subreddits that are for people that
are in those careers, and also find specific forums for niche careers (such as
studentdoctor.net for medical related careers) and Facebook groups. These are all
places where you can get a much more realistic view of what the careers are like and
in many cases talk to people in these careers.

Take your time doing this. It should keep you occupied for at least a few weeks if not
a few months. Once you’ve done it for awhile, you should start to get a good idea
what types of careers you might want to go for. For instance, maybe you know for
sure that you don’t want to do anything art, engineering or science related, but you’re
interested in technology, business, and health careers.

Now it’s time for you to make a list of at least 10 candidate careers that you find might
meet your criteria in the lists that were made in previous steps.

So I did this when I was 17 and I don’t remember the exact list but it was something
like this:

1) Doctor

2) Geologist

3) Petroleum Engineer

4) Computer Engineer

5) Computer Science

6) Pharmacist

7) Architect

8) Physician’s Assistant

9) Biomechanical Engineering

10) Physical Therapist

One thing I should note about this section is “deep diving” on a career is time
consuming and can’t be done unless there’s only a few careers you’re looking into.
This is why you want to just dip your toe in and look for general information around
the internet on the careers, then once you whittle your list down a bit you can move
on to the next step.

Shane Hummus 10
 6 STEP GUIDE TO CHOOSING YOUR DREAM CAREER

A
fter this you want to look into each one of these and start making specifics
about why or why not you would want to do each of them, start looking into
different specialties and opportunities in each of them, look into future job
outlook, look into job satisfaction rating and look into other things that are specific to
you.

So I didn’t want to be a doctor because I didn’t want to have to do 4 years of

undergrad then get rejected 2 years in a row because it’s really hard to get into med
school, then finally give up and get into a caribbean school, do another 4 years, then
a 3-7 hear residency, racking up half a million in debt before I finally start making
money

Shane Hummus 11
 6 STEP GUIDE TO CHOOSING YOUR DREAM CAREER

I decided against all of the engineering degrees because although I am decent at

math, I’m not exceptionally good at it and I also don’t want to do it for a living.
Architect is out because it didn’t align with the lifestyle that I wanted and same with
geologist.

So that left me with physician assistant, physical therapist, pharmacist and computer
science. When you’ve narrowed the list down to 3-5 careers, this is when you want
to do a deep dive on the remaining options. Contact people in the careers and ask
them key questions about the careers so you can get an even better understanding
on what you might be getting yourself into.

This is the second most important step and also the step that many people skip as
well. They skip this because it’s inconvenient, they skip it because they are introverted
and afraid to contact people, they skip it because they think it’s not necessary.

So not skip this step! It’s incredibly important. Up until now you’ve been getting
general information on careers. Now it’s time for you to get specific information on
careers. And the ONLY way to get specific information is to ask people who are
currently in that career (and preferably people that recently got their first entry level
job in the career). There is no other way to get specific information, any other way is
just guessing. The reason for this is because even if information you read on a forum
was correct, times change and maybe it’s not correct any more. If you want to know
what Jenny wants for lunch don’t ask her friends what she wants for lunch, don’t
search google for what she wants for lunch, don’t do a survey about what people like
eating for lunch, just simply ask Jenny what she wants for lunch. It’s that simple, and
there is no other way to get accurate information. If you skip this step then you’re just
guessing and anyone who tells you otherwise is wrong.

I contacted people who worked in these fields and I asked them a bunch of questions
and I also shadowed them so I could see what they did on a day to day basis. I
attended lectures and events where I could meet people in these different fields and
ask them questions.

The questions will vary based on what is important to you, but some important things
include: What education level do you recommend for people going into this career?,
are you happy with the direction the career is headed?, what kind of personality traits
do you see in people that do well in this career?, What are some personality traits that
would indicate that you shouldn’t get into this career?. Etc.

Shane Hummus 12
 6 STEP GUIDE TO CHOOSING YOUR DREAM CAREER

At this point you might have made some connection on the forums or subreddits you
frequent and you’d be able to contact those people and ask them questions. If not,
the best ways to contact people that are actually in the career are linkedin, facebook
groups, or asking people in real life. In any case, make sure to be very respectful of
their time. Some people will be too busy to get back to you so contact at least 10 and
you should get several responses. Try to lead with value (giving a compliment,
offering to buy them lunch if appropriate, etc) and never waste their time.

At this point you have probably narrowed down your list to 2 or 3 good options and
you should really just go with your instinct and gut, pick the one that feels right and if
you’ve followed these steps you’re 1000% more likely to make a choice you will be
happy with.

After going through this process and identifying a lot of reasons that were specific to
my situation and significant, I chose to go with pharmacy.

Shane Hummus 13
 6 STEP GUIDE TO CHOOSING YOUR DREAM CAREER

G
arry Kasparov, arguably the greatest chess player of all time, wrote in his
2007 book “How Life Imitates Chess” that “It’s better to have a bad plan than
no plan at all.” I remember when I first read this I didn’t think much of it and
shrugged it off. Now that I have more life experience I realize how important this is,
and how right Garry was.

If you’ve followed the steps up to this point, you now have a plan. It’s possible that
this plan is bad though… or at least it’s not as good as it could be.

The real reason that having a plan is so important is because if and when you fail, you
can look back at your plan and identify what went wrong. You can identify a cause
and effect relationship and learn from your mistakes. Then you can make a better
plan based on what you’ve learned.

Shane Hummus 14
 6 STEP GUIDE TO CHOOSING YOUR DREAM CAREER

However, if you don’t have a plan there will be no cause and effect data for you to
learn from. You will be like a leaf blowing in the wind and go with whatever career
your parents chose for you, or whatever career you saw on TV, or whatever career
popped up in your life by happenstance and if it doesn’t work out, you won’t know
why.

So if you go through these first 4 steps your chances of choosing a career you enjoy
that meets your needs are probably 10x higher than everyone else that doesn’t. But
you should still periodically look back on your plan and re-evaluate things as your life
and situation change.

Robert Burns once wrote “The best laid plans of mice and men can still go wrong” and
this couldn’t be more true. This is why it’s important to remain flexible and keep an
open mind. Don’t be afraid to change your opinion on things as you learn new
information. Don’t be afraid to go through steps 1-4 again and again, each time
getting closer and closer to your perfect career.

YouTube for instance started off as a dating site. Yes, you read that right. It started
off as a dating site where you could share videos in order to find a date. They started
off with a plan, then they pivoted when they realized that people were using it as a
site to share cool stuff, and not to find dates. It’s very rare that any business starts
off with a plan and never changes it all the way to success, and it’s also rare with
people and the careers they choose. So make sure to be flexible with your plan and
keep an open mind to opportunities that come your way.

Shane Hummus 15
 6 STEP GUIDE TO CHOOSING YOUR DREAM CAREER

A
t this point, you have done your research more thoroughly than 99.9% of
people and you have a strong plan that you can be confident of.

You know your current situation (strengths, weaknesses, and passions), you
know your desired situation (Goals, lifestyle, and career) and now you need to
determine what steps you need to take in order to achieve your desired situation. This
is where you want to reach back out to those people that you contacted in the career
you chose and ask them more questions that are specific to how you can go about
getting into that career. For instance, you might think that you have to get a masters
but the person in the career might tell you that all you need to do is get certain
certifications. Boom, you just saved yourself 5 years and $50k in student loans by
reaching out to them (this exact situation happened to a student I worked with). You
might also think that in order to get a job you need to get a 4.0 GPA when in reality
employers don’t care at all about your GPA.

Shane Hummus 16
 6 STEP GUIDE TO CHOOSING YOUR DREAM CAREER

Shane Hummus

Shane Hummus 17