What to Do If You Don’t Know What Career Path to Take

If you’re reading this, you probably know the feeling. Your friends seem to have plans. You don’t. And the standard advice (“explore your passions, follow your dreams”) doesn’t actually tell you what to do on Monday morning.

Two things are worth knowing up front.

First, this is much more common than the people around you make it look. A 2025 survey found that nearly half of graduating students felt unsure about their direction. More than half didn’t feel ready for the job market.

Second, the research on how careers actually unfold says certainty isn’t really the goal. The goal is to build the skills and exposure that let you respond well to chances you can’t predict yet.

This guide explains why “I don’t know what I want to do” is a normal state, not a problem to fix. It explains why “follow your passion” is partly bad advice. And it shows you what to actually do this week, this month, and over the next few quarters.

How common is it to not know what you want to do?

Much more common than it looks. The data is clear. The social signal is misleading.

If you feel like you’re the only one without a plan, the data doesn’t agree.

Here’s what recent surveys show:

TopResume Graduate Job Search 2025: 1,000 students graduating in June 2025 surveyed. 44% had picked a path but felt unsure how to get there. 52% didn’t think their degree would land them a job in the next 12 months. 56% didn’t feel ready for the job market.
Forage Career Readiness Survey 2022: 1,000 US students. 47% were not confident, or only somewhat confident, that they knew how to get a job after graduation. The number was higher for humanities and arts students.
Monash University study (Australia): 2,800 secondary students. 34% said they lacked clarity about which careers might suit them. 41% reported feeling aimless about their career direction.
YouScience graduate survey (US): 500 graduates. Three-quarters felt only moderately, slightly, or not at all ready to make career decisions. 41% felt unprepared to declare a major or pick a career.

There’s a clear social pattern at play. The friends posting about their “new role at X” are visible. The equally large group still figuring it out is invisible. So when you compare yourself to what you see, the comparison feels accurate, but it’s biased.

One more thing worth knowing. Career uncertainty is linked to real distress. Monash researchers found that high career uncertainty in young people is connected to higher rates of helplessness, stress, and depression. This is part of why getting moving on a sequence (even an imperfect one) tends to help more than waiting for clarity.

Why “follow your passion” is partly bad advice

The research suggests passion mostly follows skill. Not the other way around.

For the past 30 years, most career advice has gone like this: figure out what you’re passionate about, then chase it. Steve Jobs’s 2005 Stanford speech is the famous version (45+ million views on YouTube). It feels right. The research doesn’t back it up as a main strategy, especially for graduates.

Two strands of evidence are worth knowing about.

Strand 1: Passion is mostly built, not found

Yale researcher Amy Wrzesniewski studied college admin staff. She found workers were split roughly evenly between three views: the work was “just a job,” “a career,” or “a calling.”

The biggest factor wasn’t the type of work. It was how long they’d been doing it. Skill and identification with the work seemed to create the sense of calling, not the other way around.

This fits with broader research on motivation. Edward Deci and Richard Ryan’s Self-Determination Theory finds that competence, autonomy, and connection (not pre-existing passion) are what keep people motivated long-term.

Strand 2: “Find your passion” can backfire

Cal Newport’s 2012 book So Good They Can’t Ignore You makes a sharper version of the argument. Newport (a Georgetown computer science professor) says the “passion mindset” focuses you on what your job offers you. That makes you hyper-aware of what you don’t like about it.

The result, he argues, is constant frustration and frequent job-hopping. People keep chasing a calling that never quite arrives.

His alternative is the “craftsman mindset.” Focus on what you can offer the world. Build rare and valuable skills (he calls this “career capital”). Then use those skills to get the things that make a job great: creativity, impact, control.

In this view, passion is a side effect of skill. Not a starting point.

You don’t have to fully buy Newport’s framing. The simpler takeaway is this: as a graduate, you almost certainly don’t have a hidden passion that, if found, would solve everything. What you have is the ability to build deep skills in any of several directions. The choice of direction matters less than building the skills.

Source: Wrzesniewski et al., “Jobs, Careers, and Callings,” Journal of Research in Personality (1997); Cal Newport, So Good They Can’t Ignore You (2012); Deci and Ryan, Self-Determination Theory (multiple papers since 1970s).

A better framework: Krumboltz’s Planned Happenstance

If certainty isn’t realistic, what should you aim at instead? This is the answer.

In 1999, Stanford psychologist John Krumboltz, with co-authors Kathleen Mitchell and Al Levin, published a paper in the Journal of Counseling and Development. It was called “Planned Happenstance: Constructing Unexpected Career Opportunities.” It became one of the most influential career frameworks of the past 30 years.

Here’s the core idea.

Career indecision isn’t always a problem to solve through more self-knowledge. Most real careers are shaped a lot by unplanned events: a chance conversation, an unexpected opening, an internship that turned into something, a friend’s connection.

The traditional model (figure out your interests, match them to jobs, follow the plan) overweights the parts of a career you can predict. It underweights the parts you can’t.

Krumboltz’s reframe: instead of trying to plan a career, build the ability to spot and act on chances when they appear.

He named five learnable skills that separate people who do this well:

Curiosity. Actively exploring new interests and learning.
Persistence. Keeping going through setbacks and rejections.
Flexibility. Updating your plans as you learn new things.
Optimism. Treating new situations as possibly useful, not as threats.
Risk-taking. Acting even when you don’t have full information.

Kim and colleagues later turned these into a tested questionnaire (the Planned Happenstance Career Inventory). It has held up in studies across different cultures, beyond the original US setting.

Krumboltz’s 2009 update made the practical point clearer. Career counselling should help people take small, exploratory actions that create exposure to new chances. The clarity comes from the action, not before it.

Action first. Clarity through action.

Source: Mitchell, Levin, and Krumboltz, “Planned Happenstance: Constructing Unexpected Career Opportunities,” Journal of Counseling and Development 77, no. 2 (1999); Krumboltz, “The Happenstance Learning Theory,” Journal of Career Assessment 17, no. 2 (2009); Kim et al., Planned Happenstance Career Inventory studies (2014, 2016).

Worth knowing

Why this matters for a graduate. If you’re waiting for clarity before you act, the Krumboltz framework says you have it backwards. Clarity comes from acting, in cheap and reversible ways. The five skills above decide whether your actions actually generate useful information. The next two sections show how to apply this in practice.

The five skills, applied to your situation right now

Skills, not personality traits. Things you can deliberately do.

Krumboltz was clear: these are skills, not fixed traits. You can build them. Here’s what each one looks like in practice for a graduate trying to figure out direction.

Curiosity: actively exploring

Read about industries you know nothing about. Try the Financial Times careers section, McKinsey Insights, Trouw on Dutch labour trends, or Magnet.me’s blog on graduate jobs in NL.
Have one short conversation per week with someone working in a field you’re curious about. Twenty minutes by video or coffee. Most people say yes if you’re specific and respect their time.
Take a free online course in something next to what you’ve studied. Look for things that combine your degree with a useful skill (for example: economics + Python, biology + data, history + product management).

Persistence: keeping going through setbacks

Track your applications and rejections. Job hunting feels like personal failure when each rejection is unstructured. It feels like a process when it’s in a spreadsheet.
Set a weekly minimum for activity, not for outcomes. “I will reach out to 3 people this week” is in your control. “I will get an interview” is not.
Treat the first 20 to 30 applications as the cost of learning the market. Not a verdict on your worth.

Flexibility: updating as you learn

Be willing to change your target after every 5 to 10 conversations. If a path you wanted sounds bad once you talk to people doing it, that’s information, not failure.
Hold loose hypotheses, not strong identities. “I’m thinking about consulting” is more useful than “I am a future consultant.”
Stay open to lateral moves and stepping-stone roles. The first job is rarely the destination.

Optimism: treating new situations as possibly useful

When something unexpected happens (a course you have to take, a side project, a part-time job), look for what you might learn. Not what you might lose.
Notice when you’re catastrophising (one rejection becoming “I’m unhirable”). Naming the pattern usually breaks it.
Optimism here is not toxic positivity. It’s a working assumption that new situations may contain useful information until proven otherwise.

Risk-taking: acting under uncertainty

Apply for the role you’re 70% qualified for. Most graduate roles are designed for people who will grow into them. The bar is rarely 100%.
Take the internship in the next-door field. The cheapest way to find out whether you’d like a sector is to spend three months in it.
Send the cold message to the person whose work you admire. The downside is silence. The upside is occasionally meaningful.

A practical sequence: this week, this month, this quarter

Three time horizons. Concrete actions for each. Skip the parts that don’t apply, but skip them by choice, not by default.

This week (5 to 7 hours total)

Write a 200-word “current state” note. Where you are. What you’ve considered. What’s blocking you. Just writing it usually clarifies more than expected.
List 5 to 10 sectors or types of work you’ve come across (through your degree, family, friends, internships, side interests). Don’t filter. Just list.
For each, write one sentence on what you find interesting and one sentence on what worries you. Most people find this easier than they expect.
Pick 3 sectors or roles worth a 30-minute information conversation. They don’t have to be your top 3 by interest. Pick the ones where the information would change your thinking the most.

This month (3 to 5 hours per week)

Set up the 3 information conversations. Search LinkedIn for people in the role. Send specific, brief messages.
A message like “I’m a recent X graduate considering Y. Would you be open to a 20-minute chat about what your work actually looks like day-to-day?” gets a much higher response rate than vague networking asks.
After each chat, write 5 lines of notes. What surprised you. What attracted you. What put you off. What new direction this opens up.
Read 2 to 3 substantive articles or one short book per area you’re considering. Not LinkedIn posts. Pieces with actual research and specifics, not motivational content.
Apply to 5 to 10 roles, even imperfect ones. The goal isn’t to land the job. It’s to learn the process and start getting interview practice.

This quarter (a couple of focused commitments)

Pick one direction to test for 8 to 12 weeks. Not commit to forever, just test. An internship, a part-time role, a project, a regular volunteer commitment, or an intensive course.
If your test changes your thinking, that’s a good outcome. The point is to turn abstract uncertainty into specific information.
Keep 2 or 3 other directions “warm” through ongoing chats and reading. You’re testing one thing intensively, not narrowing too early.
At the end of the quarter, repeat the sequence with what you’ve learned. Most people only need 2 to 3 quarters of this before a clearer direction appears.

Dutch-specific paths that are genuinely good for figuring out what you want

Some structures in the Dutch system are unusually well-suited to career exploration. Worth knowing about.

Traineeships. The Dutch traineeship is a great fit for graduates who don’t yet know their direction. These are 2-year programmes where you rotate through 2 to 4 different roles or business units inside one employer. Common at ABN AMRO, ING, Rabobank, Achmea, Heineken, Unilever, Shell, and the Rijkstraineeship for Dutch government. You exit with concrete experience across functions and a much clearer sense of what fits. We have a dedicated post on this.

The zoekjaar (orientation year). If you’re an international graduate of a Dutch university, you have up to 12 months after graduation (the “orientation year highly skilled migrants” residence permit) to take any work. That includes internships, traineeships, and part-time roles. It’s built specifically for the situation this post is about. Detailed in our Internationals Guide.

Project-based or short-term consulting. Dutch consulting culture (Big 4, mid-tier, boutique) is often willing to hire on 6-month or 1-year contracts before extending. This gets you exposure across multiple sectors faster than most countries do.

BBL (apprenticeship-style) routes. For more applied or vocational directions, the BBL (Beroepsbegeleidende Leerweg) lets you work 4 days a week and study 1. You earn formal qualifications recognised across the sector. Less common for university graduates, but worth knowing about for adjacent applied fields.

Working at a startup. The Amsterdam scaleup ecosystem (Adyen, Mollie, Picnic, Bunq, plus international scaleups with Amsterdam offices) often hires graduates into generalist roles. You may end up doing 3 different jobs in your first 18 months because the company is growing too fast. High exposure, fast learning, good optionality. Lower starting salary than corporate, but materially better learning per month.

A structured gap year (with a project). A gap year with a clear, named project (one specific volunteer commitment, one country, one skill being deliberately built) reads completely differently on a Dutch CV than an unstructured gap. Dutch employers are generally more accepting of structured exploration than US or UK employers.

When career indecision is actually a different problem

Sometimes “I don’t know what I want to do” is genuinely about careers. Sometimes it’s a sign of something else that needs different support.

The framework above assumes career indecision is a normal, navigable state. For most readers, that’s right. For some, the problem underneath is different and needs a different response.

A few patterns worth recognising in yourself:

You’re paralysed even when you have good options. If you’ve been offered or could clearly access roles that meet most of your criteria, but you can’t decide or move forward over weeks and months, the issue may be perfectionism or anxiety, not lack of information.
Everything feels all-or-nothing. If every option feels like an irreversible commitment that has to be perfect, that’s worth examining. Almost no graduate first job is irreversible. The framing itself can be the problem.
You’ve lost energy or interest in things you used to enjoy. Career uncertainty alone doesn’t usually flatten the rest of your life. If it has, that may be depression, not indecision.
You’re having thoughts of self-harm or feeling that life isn’t worth living. These are not career questions. They are signals to talk to someone today.

Where to find support in the Netherlands:

Your university’s student psychologist or studentendecaan, if you’re still enrolled or recently graduated. These services are usually free and continue for a period after graduation.
Your huisarts (GP) if you’re registered with one. They can refer you into the Dutch mental health system, often with limited or no cost depending on your insurance.
MIND Korrelatie, a free Dutch helpline for emotional support: 0900-1450. Chat is available via mindkorrelatie.nl.
113 Zelfmoordpreventie, a 24/7 free crisis line: 113 or 0800-0113. Conversations are confidential. They have an English option.

Worth knowing

If you’re reading this section and thinking “that’s me,” please reach out for support. Career-discovery content (this post included) genuinely helps when career uncertainty is the actual problem. When something else is going on underneath, the support that helps is different. Both kinds are real and accessible. You don’t have to wait until things are worse to use them.

Frequently asked questions

Should I just take any job and figure it out from there?

Mostly yes, with one filter. Almost any first graduate job will teach you about yourself faster than more deliberation will. The filter: pick a job where you’ll work alongside skilled people who can teach you something. The specific industry matters less at this stage than the people you’ll be exposed to.

Are personality tests like Myers-Briggs or 16 Personalities useful for picking a career?

A bit. Personality tests can give you a vocabulary for noticing what energises and drains you, which is useful self-knowledge. As career-choice tools, they’re weaker. Their ability to predict actual job success or satisfaction is contested in the academic research. Treat them as conversation starters, not as oracles.

How long is too long to be unsure?

There’s no clean answer, but here’s a useful rule. If 12 months go by without you testing anything, your indecision has become inaction. The Krumboltz framework says the goal isn’t to resolve the uncertainty before acting. It’s to act in cheap, reversible ways that generate information. 8 to 12 weeks of deliberate testing usually shifts the picture.

What if I take a job and realise I hate it?

That’s one of the better outcomes of testing. You now know more than you did. Dutch employers don’t penalise short first-job tenures the way some other markets do, especially if you can explain what you learned and why your next move is more aligned. One year is enough to count as real experience. Two is comfortable.

Is it OK to choose a career mostly for money?

Yes, with a clear-eyed view of the tradeoffs. A higher-paying first job can give you optionality (paying off student debt, building savings, supporting family) that a lower-paying one can’t. The honest version is to be specific about the tradeoff. What hours, what work, what culture are you trading for the money? The bad version is taking a high-paying job for vague status reasons rather than specific optionality.

Should I pick a career based on what I studied?

Not necessarily. Research consistently shows that majors are less predictive of careers than people assume. A 2014 Federal Reserve Bank of New York study found that only about 27% of US graduates work in a job directly related to their major. In the Netherlands, the picture is broadly similar. Your degree gives you signal and skills. It doesn’t determine your path.

How do I deal with parental or social pressure to have it figured out?

Two things. First, the data in Section 1 is genuinely useful here. “About half of graduating students don’t know their direction” is shareable. Second, having a specific current action (“I’m doing 3 information conversations this month and applying to 8 graduate roles”) tends to satisfy the underlying concern. The concern is usually “are you doing something” more than “do you have it figured out.”

How does Aurora help with this specifically?

Aurora’s career-discovery agent walks through the Krumboltz framework with you. It helps you build a shortlist of directions worth testing, drafts the information outreach messages, and tracks what you learn from each conversation. It’s the most directly relevant Aurora capability for this situation.

Sources

Where to start

The single most useful thing you can do this week is one of the “this week” tasks in Section 5. A 200-word current-state note. A list of 5 to 10 sectors you’ve come across. Identifying 3 information conversations worth setting up.

None of those takes more than two evenings. Any one of them tends to produce more clarity than another month of unstructured worry.

If you’re feeling stuck, that’s normal, and the framework above is designed for it. If something deeper is going on (Section 7), the support resources listed are real and worth using. Both of those are valid responses to where you might be right now.

Aurora’s career-discovery agent is built to walk through this exact sequence with you. That includes the Krumboltz framework, generating a shortlist of directions worth testing, drafting the information outreach messages, and tracking what you learn. It’s the most directly relevant hand-off we have for this topic.

Internal links

How to Discover What You’re Good At (post #17, rewrite pending; natural pair with this post)
Top Industries Hiring Young Professionals in the Netherlands (post #3, rewritten)
What Is a Traineeship and How Can It Boost Your Career (post #19, rewrite pending)
Working in the Netherlands as an International Graduate (post #1, rewritten)
How to Build a Professional Network as a Student (post #18, rewrite pending)