Going to attempt a serious post here ... be nice. Long story short, I'm freaking out. 28, college graduate, been working at an Austin computer company for the last 5 years. Customer suppport, eventually into the eCommerce arena, lowpay, but stable. Started as just a "job", and to be honest I've been kind of skating by for some time. By that I mean not really looking at the big picture. Wasting time. Well it's come time to get serious, but the issue is this : #1 - I'm not really interested in the industry I'm currently in. #2 - My degree in Communications will not likely be used either. So in summary, I'm essentiallly asking for career pointers that many of you successful people may have. What would you do in my position ? How does someone "start over" ? So far my plan of attack is to do some leg-work, talk to some contacts, and figure out what line of work I want to do. Sales, banking, insurance, real-estate, etc. Then I plan on identifying what I'd need to do to get my foot in the door in that area (licenses, experience, certifications). What else ? Obviously I'm making the process less complex than it will likely be, but this is to not completely freak myself out. I want to also add that my ideal career would not have to be anything extravagant as far as pay ... just something stable, something with a future and a career path. A place where there are always options for growth. Well I feel like I'm losing my audience. Anyone have any experiences/advice they could share ? Anyone been in a similar position and felt completely lost ? ANY idea or thought would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
Well, what the hell do you like to do? If pay is not that much of a factor, search your heart and pursue that/those areas. Or you can try to go back to school. If money is not that much of a factor, student life is pretty nice, albeit poor. Plus it would be easier to get season tickets!
You sound a lot like a friend of mine. After some thought, he tried taking the foreign civil service exam as a start. It gave him the option to use his degree in Corporate Comm, although in more of a political arena, it offered the chance at travel, and it appealed to his social conscience as well.
I went to UT and floundered for a bit. Finally decided to major in Psychology. Went to work for the state for a year or two to earn money to finish my degree. Got into computer programming, got a raise and before long I had been there ten years. I stayed with the state and kept taking classes at UT. I don't make big money, but I enjoy the work and am around good people. I also get to live in Austin and park a few blocks from the stadium everyday. Tailgating and football in the fall, basketball and baseball in the winter and spring. Later this year I qualify for state retirement. Maybe I have been lucky, but I have been very happy. Don't go into something just because you enjoy that activity as a hobby. It has to be a good fit for you. I loved playing guitar and played in a band for a while. It was great until I tried to make a living at it. That almost ruined it for me. Fortunately I found a good career.
ya i learned my lesson with the whole 'try to do what you love' with sports radio in college. i love sports and they are one of my main hobbies.... but when i was forced to talk about them for a set 2 hours or w/e the setup was, it SUCKED. when i looked into doing somethign i loved doing as a job, it was no longer 'something i enjoyed doing' and really felt like a job.
If you have the time & $$$, try grad school. It gives you the opportunity to take some time off to re-evaluate career decisions & you get a crack at entering industries you wouldn't directly be considered for.
How skeptical should I be in my job search if I find openings for like "financial advisor/sales" at a reputable place. The one I'm looking at now talks of extensive training given, and mininal experience required. Too good to be true ? Sounds like an interesting industry to get in ...
aI think a buddy of mine did an interview for "financial planner" with Ameriprise Financial and I forget exactly what the hours were but it was a shitload of them. First and foremost think about taking your skills somewhere else to get more money for them or get a raise. Think of how your present skill set might help you start your own business if you have some concept that you think is marketable. Real Estate is a good career but takes a while to get rolling, and the financing issues are still abundant. Basically everything is one of a couple things, Sales, which drives everything. Sales support which is in essence what you are probably doing now and product development to give the sales guys something to sell. You don't give us much of a hint as to your direction of interest, but the grass isn't always greener on the other side. Most self employed people use their skills and contacts aquired at their former employer to go into business for themselves just as something to make a mental note of if you are looking a the LONG TERM big picture and think self-employment is something you are interested in.
several have mentioned the more education/grad school route. I agree, but will throw one more option out there. Who do you know? Who do you know that are business owners in a field you like that know you well enough to hire you? Business really is in many ways who you know. I know that if I ever thought a career change was in order, I would probably look at school and probably also look at working for a business owner that I know.
Whatever you do, do not go to grad school unless you really want to pursue a certain area or, unless your parents are willing to pay for it and it will be free.
Going to grad school sounds like a great idea, but taking the tests, filling out applications, writing essays, getting recs, and then paying for it all is a total pain in the ace, and I mean just paying for the admissions, not even including going to school. After all of that, you have to do all of these interviews for different schools all over the place, but some will have interviews in your area. I wouldn't recommend it unless you are really dedicated and know what you want to study. I'm in the middle of it right now (MBA) and it's a whole different monster than I anticipated.
Why do I feel like the older guy in Office Space who, after his horrific car accident, tries to comfort Peter by telling him that something good can happen to him too? Lots of good advice on this thread. I'll add a general comment. If that's the way you feel about your career right now, you're not going to start feeling any better. You're doing the right thing, thinking about doing something different. When I was your age, I felt the same way you do now. Don't make the same mistake I made, which was to do nothing. I finally did change careers and am happy with my life. But I wasted a lot of valuable years in-between. Good luck.
If you really want to use your Comms degree then get in to Corporate Communications and by that I do not mean PR. PM me for some suggestions. This is my line of work and I've managed forge a pretty darn good career so far.
Barton Hills, My advice would be to do nothing until you have more information than you currently have. No law school, no MBA, no further education. Nothing until you know yourself better and how your skills and personality would do in various professions. My suggestion: call UT or ACC or Texas State and find out if they have tests that will assess your skill sets, personality and aptitude against those of successful people in a variety of professions. If they don't, call career counselors (Yellow Pages, if nothing else) until you find one that will administer and interpret those tests for you. When I was about your age, about five years after my MBA, I was promoted to an IT management position, and after about a year, I hated my job. I found a local university that had some career assessment tests. I took those and had a few meetings with a counselor who helped interpret the results. The tests indicated that one of the professions in which I'd likely do well, and would probably like, was that of a management consultant. They also said I’d likely be successful as an attorney or a judge and a few other things that would have required me to go back to school, but I’d had enough of college at that point. After talking with a few management consultants, I interviewed with the eight largest management consulting firms in the area and got six offers. Several of them offered me senior positions to start. I accepted one of those offers and it set me on a fine career path. Seeking out those tests and following the direction they pointed was one of the best things I ever did. I’m retired now and having a great time of it. I look back on deciding to take those assessment tests as a turning point in my life. Since those tests match your own personal characteristics with those of successful people in a variety of professions, you'll get a number of professions to investigate. Once you get the results, seek out people in those professions. If you don't know very many people in one of the recommended professions, just find out who some such people are and call them up and explain what you are doing. Keeping calling people until you can go see a few people in several of the recommended professions. If you are assertive enough to do that, it probably won't take you long to figure out which one of those careers you'd really like and in what you would likely do well. At that point, you might need some additional education, or you might not. Whatever you do, don't go enrolling in some law school or start an MBA program or any other such further education until you have a clear idea of what you'd enjoy doing and in what sort of career you'd likely do well. It's out there. It just takes a little work on your part to gain that knowledge.
Many of the best careers are weird little niches that people don't find in job postings and ads. They find them by working in a general field of interest and following opportunity, or by making their own opportunity. I am continually amazed by the really cool and satisfying niche careers that people seem to find. Some can be rewarding, some lucrative, and some both. Find the general area that excites you - sales, production management, technology, urban planning, public policy, research, real estate, etc, then start working in that field. Always make the most of your job and keep your eye a few steps down the road for your opportunities. I would have never found my job/career in a newspaper job posting.
Barton Hills, Sounds like a great plan. It always has amazed me that our society spends so many years educating us, in large part so that we can have gainful employment during our 30 - 50 working years. We're required to take all sorts of courses from elementary school through college, along with the requisite tests to see if we've retained the material. But seldom, if ever, are we required to take even one test to see what all that education, in combination with our own motivations and interests, adds up to re what we would enjoy doing and in what areas we would likely excel. Combine that with the huge portion of American workers that regularly report how unhappy they are in their jobs, and we have the makings of lots of dissatisfied lives. It starts early. It's often a big mystery to kids in school re what they want to do when they get out. And, like you and me, many start out from high school or college without a tested and researched understanding re what they'd do well and like. Think maybe our educational system is horribly failing us in that area? Maybe in one's sophomore year in high school, a course that included a vocational assessment test might be required. And then based on those results, for that course the youngsters would be required to explore a few alternate career avenues as well as interview a few people in the highest matched professions. As a result of that process, armed with vastly greater information than you and I had, children could then focus their remaining education on those target professions. And maybe another set of testing could be administered the first semester of one's senior year in high school, as a course correction mechanism. If, as a society, we did that, can you just imagine how much happier and productive the American work force would be? I wish you well.
I understand the value of an education for its own sake and am tremendously grateful that I lived in a country that gave me the educational opportunites that I had. I am so much better off as a result. However, I think that the reality is that almost everybody goes to college so they can qualify for a profession. A very few do it purely for the opportunity of the education alone. Just look at the various schools in a university. Except for the school of liberal arts, the vast majority of them are tied directly to some sort of occupation -- nursing, business, engineering, architecture, journalism, education , government, law, medicine. And I think that educating a young person (and providing guidance) about what they would do for the rest of their life that they would enjoy and where they would make the greatest contribution to society should probably be the highest goal among educators. It clearly isn't, or if it is, they aren't doing a very good job of it since so many people prepare for occupations that they find out they really don't like. A little help along the way would be enormously valuable to so many.
If it makes you feel any better, I'm in the exact same situation, except I have zero work experience (to go with my chinese degree of uselessness). So not only do I not know what I want to do, but I don't have many options either. Pretty fun stuff!
same thing here. I'm 9 years into my insurance job. I'm in a lot of Leadership groups and am looked at as a "high potential candidate". Problem is that I don't want to move all over the country just to get a promotion to the next level. That and the fact that I absolutely hate what I do. Everyday I am reminded that I am the Peter Gibbons of insurance. I'm currently looking into medical equipment sales, but I would use it as a means to an end. I like to own things like real estate so I would just work my tail off to be able to buy real estate and work on that. I came to realize this nearly 10 years to the day after I graduated.
I'm in an industry that I find enjoyable, but I need something that is more challenging and exciting. I've been thinking about how to fix that for sometime. Fortunatly, there are some different career directions I can head in soon that I believe will address both those issues. For my wife and I, this will require us to move across the country. But we are both on board (I'm excitied, she's ok but kinda scared of the whole idea) with this and I really hope and believe that one day we will look back on this as one of the best decisions we ever made. I'll get back to you in 30 years and let you know how it went.
