Factors determining career choice

The answers that people provide to these questions: why do people work? why do they decide on the fields which they choose? and what factors affect their decision? are very important to career planning and subsequent satisfaction during the adult years. After all, work affects most persons between the ages of 16 and 61, and the decisions adolescents make about their work, occupations, and careers will significantly affect their future social relationships and leisure-time activities. It is evident then that work is a major part of human experience. Many young people appear to sense that it is through work that they must ultimately validate their adult status and acquire a measure of power and self- determination. Work is so central to most of people's daily existence that their entire outlook is affected by it. In essence, a vocational decision implies a lifestyle decision. For choice of career is not an event which can be located at one point in time. It is a process which stretches back into childhood where basic personality characteristics begin to be formed {Stephens, 1970; Gothard, 1985 ). In making a choice, the individual will seek a career which s/he sees as desirable, as one in which s/he will have the best chance of realising the various needs, hopes and expectations which at the moment of choice s/he believes to be important.peer-reviewe