As the old saying goes, if you love what you do, you’ll never have to work a day in your life.
Working out what you love is often the easy part. It tends to be the things you enjoy doing in your spare time, on weekends or even things you’ve just always read about.
Sadly, for many of us, these passions are rarely considered to be a viable career prospect. In a perfect world, however, our passions would be our strongest career prospects. But who’s to say we can’t inject a little perfection into our own worlds?
Believe it or not, but there are actual tangible steps you can take to transform your passion into a career prospect in its own right. Want to know how? Read our little guide to making a career out of your passion below.
Courses and upskilling
It’s important you understand not just how your passion works as a hobby, but how it works as a career. For example, graphic design may seem fun when you get to design whatever you like, but designing for a client can be rather different.
Take graphic design courses to ensure you have all the professional skills you need in order to translate that particular passion into a lucrative career.
Taking a dedicated course can help you not only engage with industry terminology and best practices, but also all the strongest design methodologies and processes used by the pros.
You’ll find that your time in a graphic design course will involve using different design software to broaden your understanding before diving into a career.
Regardless of what your passion may be, taking on a focused course can provide you with the opportunity to upskill and invest in your own self-development. By investing time in yourself, your skills and your passion first, you will be a much better prospect for a potential employer.
You should feel encouraged to reach out to professionals in the industries or roles you’re interested in, both through forging connections in your courses, as well as by attending industry events.
Be sure to pick the brains of professionals you admire and gather some more intel into how you can position yourself to be the strongest job applicant you can be once you gain your qualifications.
Do Your Research
Speaking of gathering intel, one of the simplest ways to get a better understanding of the career you aim to pursue is to jump online. Look on LinkedIn for individuals who already work in the field, and engage with any resources they’ve published.
You may even decide to check what courses they have done, the types of qualifications they have, the companies that they have worked for, and assess the trajectory of their own careers to get a sense of what you can expect as a fresh graduate or budding professional.
Another great research tip is to check out job notice boards, search for a job title you’d love to have, and read what employers are looking for across both job listings and attached position descriptions.
All of this research is invaluable as you try and turn your passion into a career prospect.
Try It Out
If you’ve been sitting around wondering what your passion looks like as a career pathway, why not try it out by dabbling in a few short-term professional projects, or perhaps even some pro bono opportunities?
You can look for opportunities to get unpaid experience or even volunteer at companies that specialize in what you’re interested in doing.
This kind of on-the-job experience and first-hand insight into your desired career pathway simply can’t be underestimated.
Not only will you experience what your day-to-day life will look like working in this professional role, but you’ll also get to walk away feeling either more motivated and with a newfound respect and understanding for that career pathway, or the valuable knowledge that the job role may not actually be as perfect for you as you may have originally thought it to be.
Either way, you’ll get the chance to know for sure whether turning your passion into your career prospect is something you should follow through on.
Call around and ask if any companies are looking for an extra set of hands, and then ask to shadow the roles you’re most interested in. You may have to spend some time doing other work, but it will all be worth it at the end of the day.
Sell Something
If your passion is in creation, design or even product development, then why not try selling some of your wares independently and building a name for yourself before you even enter the workforce? This is one of the best ways to turn your passion into a career prospect almost overnight.
Use platforms like Etsy to help create a digital marketplace for you. You’ll get data on what customers like, the people they buy from and can then use all this information to gauge just how popular your products and creations may be.
These kinds of insights are so valuable, because they can provide additional guidance surrounding your foray into turning your passion into a profession.
Conclusion
No matter what your passion is, there is likely a prospective career pathway just waiting for you, either within or even surrounding what you love to do and what you do best.
If you’d like to fully realize both your personal and professional dreams by doing what you love every day of the week, then the best steps to take are the ones that we’ve outlined above.
Do your research, take some courses or better yet, do all of the above and use all your newfound technical and soft skills in order to land yourself some great work opportunities.
With just a little direction and grit, you’ll be able to build up your digital skill sets and perhaps even a killer portfolio in next to no time at all.
