The most difficult part of finding a career which suits you, whether you’re a recent graduate or somebody who’s realizing they’ve spent a few years in the wrong job, is figuring out which of your talents best translate into a business environment.

It’s easy to see your skills as useless in the business world, but there’s an industry for every talent under the sun; you just need to find it, and that starts with figuring out how your hobbies or personality traits could help you succeed in a company. Here are some ideas for inspiration.

Artistic skills

You were probably discouraged for your creativity at school because it’s a hard thing to mark. You might be able to draw a beautiful picture or write an imaginative piece of fiction, but teachers struggle to put an objective grade on such pieces of work, so they tell you that these skills aren’t useful in the “real world”.

Well, many of them do. Others realize that creative skills are perhaps some of the most important skills in the real world. Creativity is what leads to innovation, and that’s a coveted skill in business.

If you’re an artist then you don’t need to become the next Van Gogh to build a career of your talent. You could go down the route of graphic design and learn how brand design or adverts work. So many businesses need people with a keen artistic eye to help them design professional and captivating imagery which captures the attention of consumers.

There are numerous avenues open to you. You could even start a freelance business with talents such as writing because bloggers need guest posts and businesses need written promotional materials.

Mathematical skills

This is perhaps a straightforward skill set to tie to certain fields of work, as you’ve probably already realized.

If you’ve always had a talent with numbers then the possibilities in terms of future careers have probably always seemed endless to you, and that’s true, but you might not realize quite how many varying job opportunities are open to you.

You could look into opportunities for accounting jobs on recruitment websites if you wanted a place to start searching for positions because there are so many different kinds of financial careers out there.

It can definitely help to work through experts who are dedicated to finding careers for people who are uncertain about how their talents relate to the “real world”. Of course, it helps to look through multiple avenues.

You don’t want to just leap at any opportunity which comes your way (especially if you find it boring) without considering that there might be more avenues available to you.

You could become a government statistician or a forensic accountant, for example; you don’t have to just “work in a bank” if you want to do something more with your numerical brain.

People skills

Having people skills is one of the most important attributes any business professional can hope to attain, so don’t underestimate your worth if you’re a smooth talker and you love to socialize with people. That’s a talent other businesses want.

In fact, it the core talent necessary to go into a sales, marketing, or advertising career, and those industries are hugely diverse. There are numerous different paths you can take, but the point is that the necessary ingredient for selling a product to somebody is the person at the other end.

If you know how to talk to people then you already know how to sell something.

This post has been contributed by Ryan Gatt, it may contain affiliate links.