How to get ideas for your career

Our online tools can help you get career ideas.

CareerQuest – take this quiz to find career ideas based on your interests.

• CareerQuest quiz

Job profiles – explore over 400 jobs.

• Job profiles

Skill Matcher – get career ideas based on your skills.

• Skill Matcher

Subject Matcher – get career ideas based on the subjects you studied at school.

• Subject Matcher

Get career ideas from the people around you.

Friends and family/whānau

To get career ideas, ask your friends and family/whānau about their career paths. How did they choose their careers? What did they do?

Ask them what they think your skills are, and what careers you might be good at.

Teachers, tutors and career advisers

Teachers, tutors or career advisers can help match your skills to possible careers.

Or contact us to get free career help.

• Contact us for free career help
• Career Development Association of New Zealand – find a career adviser

Employers and industry associations

Employers and industry associations can talk to you about the range of jobs in their organisation and what it's like to do a particular job.

Employers can help you trial a career by doing work experience, or give you ideas for careers you can progress into.

People you admire

Think about people who have the life you'd like. Would their career suit you?

People at career expos and job expos

Career and job expos are an ideal time to talk to training providers, industry associations and employers about your options.

• TechEvents website - workshops competitions and conferences for careers in technology and beyond

Career stories from people who love their careers can inspire you and give you advice on how to work towards your career goals.

• Check out the inspiring career stories in our job profiles
• Watch successful New Zealanders talk about careers on Oompher
• Find career inspiration on our careersnz channel

Think about someone who has the career and lifestyle you admire. Use this worksheet to uncover their career path and help you get ideas.

• My career inspiration worksheet - (PDF - 57KB)

You can get career ideas from:

• browsing job vacancies
• browsing advertisements for businesses or franchises
• thinking about services or businesses that could help people
• finding out about what industries have skill shortages.

• Job vacancy and recruitment websites
• Jobs in skill shortage

Once you've found some careers ideas, you need to learn more about them.

Research your career ideas so you can remove some jobs or add new ones to your list.

Do online research

Doing online research is an important step in making an informed career choice.

Find information about:

• how you enter the jobs
• study or training needed
• opportunities, pay and other employment conditions
• training or geographical limitations, for example, is there only one training provider for the job or can the job only be done in certain regions?
• level of demand for the job ideas you’ve identified
• where you’ll find most of these types of jobs in New Zealand
• the risk of automation.

• Use our job profiles to research possible jobs