If you are young and have not chosen your career yet or if you've been working for some time and have decided to change your job or career but are not sure which career or job you are going to change to, you can take advantage of career help available online as well as offline. Career or job change has been more and more common in our turbulent job or labour markets, and many people all over the world are trying to find a job, every day.

What does such a career aid consist of and which steps do you have to go through to get the job or career you really want? The steps below will give a brief description of a general process of career planning and development.

1. Find out what you really want to work with

This step is basic and if you do it thoroughly, you are virtually assured to get the job or career you were meant to have. You must go inside yourself and ask "what was my purpose for being born?" What is my mission? What is my unique gift that I should use to help others with on this earth. Take a look back in your life and make a list of which tasks or activities you really liked to perform since you were a kid. Also write down all your working skills and potential job or career areas where you know you are specially clever. Use a brain storming method and write down all that comes to your mind, no matter what it is. When you are finished, you can go back and edit what you have written.

There are many work quizzes, work interest tests, work skill tests etc. online and you can take advantage of these as well. The purpose of this step is to come up with a list of tasks that you really want to work with in your life and that you can perform cleverly. It doesn't hurt if you gather some information about which occupations or professions are predicted to rank high in the future job market. If one of them matches your preferences, it's a great plus, but don't let yourself get sidetracked; you should choose a career that is important to you, no matter how hot it is or will become.

2. Get a view of your specific knowledge, qualifications and skills

This includes personal as well as professional or potential job skills. Sit down and make a list of your education, courses, seminars etc. which you have participated in, special interests, special skills. Also make a list of personal skills that can be career or job relevant like social abilities, patience and persistence, positive attitude etc. There are personality tests, job knowledge and job skill tests online and you can get some help from these but the important thing is that you go very carefully through your current knowledge and skills and write them down on a paper.

3. Make a plan for filling the gap regarding knowledge, qualifications and skills

You should now have a clear image of what you want to work with for the rest of your life, that matches your abilities. You might find out you like to work with numbers and figures and your dream job would be to work as an Accountant. You have now worked out a list of the knowledge and skills you already have in accounting. Your job now is to find out what you need in addition to become a certified accountant. You probably have to go to a school or college to obtain this professional certificate. Then apply to a school or institute or whatever and acquire this knowledge.

4. Write your resume

Now you know what you really want to work with in your life, you have acquired all the necessary work knowledge and work skills. Now, before you go to the or labour market you need to do some important preparatory work; You must write a resume where you tell the job market what your job qualifications are and why an employer should employ you in particular. This job consists of working out the material for marketing yourself on the job or labour market. There are lots of free job resume templates and samples of job resumes which you can utilize.

5. Write your cover letter

Together with the resume your cover letter is an extremely important factor to get thing noticed by the job market. The latter is especially important because it introduces you to potential employers. Therefore, you should do a really careful job with writing it. You can use a career or job consultant or you can collect information from the web. Questions about details like, which format it should be in, how the structure and compositions of the letter should be, how to make it stand out from the crowd and how to avoid common mistakes etc. are answered here.

6. Perform job searches

With your high quality resume and cover letter in box, you are now ready to go into the job or labour market. The easiest way, is to enter job search websites on the internet. There are two kind of job search sites; general job search and more specialized job search sites, for example a job site for Accountants.

Make a list of at least 40 job search sites and post your resume to each of these sites. You can outsource this job for a minor fee. You will now become available for millions of potential employees.

7. Prepare for the job interview

When you have positioned yourself in the job search databases in the labour market, you will soon begin to receive inquiries from potential employers that are interested in your professional abilities, and they will call you in for a job interview. The job interview is the last rock in the road to get the career you want. Therefore you need to acquire as much job interview knowledge and training as you can. You also need to perfect you communication abilities and social skill.. You need to know exactly what to do get the job, therefore you need to practice job interview training in settings as similar to real job interview settings as possible. You need to learn how to answer the questions the job interviewers are asking and how to handle especially difficult job interviewers.

The job interview part is so important that you should hire a career expert to give you the training you need. There are many books written about job interviews and you'll find information online as well.

8. Get the job

You may be going to several job interviews before you get the job you really want. Each job interview you enter you must follow up. If you are called to return for a second job interview, you can be sure you are one of the job candidates. It is important to stay in contact with a potential employer after the job interview if you really want this job.

If you follow the career development steps above carefully, your chances are good to get the job or career you were meant to have. This is only a brief view of the main steps and it is necessary that you acquire the detailed knowledge and training you need to perform each step as good as you can.

About the Author: Terje Brooks Ellingsen is a writer and Sociologist who runs http://www.1st-self-improvement.net/. He writes about self improvement issues like career help, see http://www.1st-self-improvement.net/take_command_of_your_career.htm and help to achieve financial freedom, see http://www.1st-self-improvement.net/financial_freedom.htm