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Is Your Dream Job a Reality?
For most students, the decision is rarely a clear one. For many it can extend the time it takes to graduate because they elect to change their major at least once. These individuals come to a realization that the career path they mapped out for themselves does not fit their goals, their personality or their picture of the future. Others simply defer this pivotal life decision by escaping into graduate school, hoping that immersion into a particular area of concentration will somehow provide them with the career direction they are seeking.
Even those individuals who felt drawn to a particular profession early in their college life can find after several years of real world experience, that their initial image of a career and the realities of such are vastly different. And for millions of other Americans each year, the need to re-examine their career choice is brought on by actions totally beyond their control, such as mergers, acquisitions, downsizing, layoffs and restructuring. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, over 20 million Americans change jobs each year.
The bottom line for all these individuals is that they find themselves facing a career choice. The more real-world, practical information they can gather about a particular profession, the better the chance their selection will be a good fit.
Interviewing real-world professionals about their careers
Career development directors on campuses throughout the country, as well as career counselors within American industry and business, always recommend having as many "informational interviews" as possible before making a decision. The more advice students receive from real-world professionals, the more informed their decisions will be.
But just what questions should you ask those whose profession you are considering pursuing? The goal should be to ask questions that will produce more than the traditional well-tailored marketing pitches often found in promotional materials produced by representatives of various professions. What you should be after are candid "insider" observations about "the good, the bad and the ugly" of a profession. During these critical informational interviews you need to include questions such as:
Discovering our goals and expectations
Most of us approach choosing a career based on a variety of criteria such as salary, hours, advancement opportunities, health insurance coverage and geographical location. Yet in search for our life's career, most of us ignore the most critical component -- will we be happy in our chosen profession? In our capitalistic society, money is the way we keep score. Who has the highest salary, the biggest house, the coolest car? Who goes to the best schools or travels to the most exotic places? It is easy to get caught up in such comparisons, and yet as the years fly by, it can begin to feel like a race with no finish line.
Yet aren't our careers and professions about more than just making money? What if we focused on becoming enriched rather than just rich? What if we kept score not in comparison with others, but with ourselves, with our own goals and expectations? To discover these goals and expectations, there is one question we can ask ourselves that gets to the core of selecting the right profession -- if you had all the money you needed, what career would you choose for your life?
In other words, if you didn't have to work, how would you spend your time each day? There is only so much golf one can play and beaches one can walk on before the brain starts to turn to mush. As individuals, most of us seek an intellectually stimulating life --one that makes you want to get out of bed in the morning. This has been a universal yearning for centuries. Shakespeare wrote over 400 years ago, "To business that we love we rise betime, and go to't with delight."
We all have different dreams and expectations, and none of us can ignore our monetary obligations for long. If we are going to have to work to support ourselves and our families, wouldn't it be a more delightful world (as Shakespeare noted) if we loved what we did? Doesn't it make sense to be paid for doing work you enjoy rather than for work you simply tolerate? Rather than select a career that pays well and then hope it makes you happy, we should all strive to select a profession that makes us happy, and let the monetary rewards be derived from our your productive and creative efforts at a daily endeavor we enjoy.
Interviewing real-world professionals about their careers
Career development directors on campuses throughout the country, as well as career counselors within American industry and business, always recommend having as many "informational interviews" as possible before making a decision. The more advice students receive from real-world professionals, the more informed their decisions will be.
But just what questions should you ask those whose profession you are considering pursuing? The goal should be to ask questions that will produce more than the traditional well-tailored marketing pitches often found in promotional materials produced by representatives of various professions. What you should be after are candid "insider" observations about "the good, the bad and the ugly" of a profession. During these critical informational interviews you need to include questions such as:
Discovering our goals and expectations
Most of us approach choosing a career based on a variety of criteria such as salary, hours, advancement opportunities, health insurance coverage and geographical location. Yet in search for our life's career, most of us ignore the most critical component -- will we be happy in our chosen profession? In our capitalistic society, money is the way we keep score. Who has the highest salary, the biggest house, the coolest car? Who goes to the best schools or travels to the most exotic places? It is easy to get caught up in such comparisons, and yet as the years fly by, it can begin to feel like a race with no finish line.
Yet aren't our careers and professions about more than just making money? What if we focused on becoming enriched rather than just rich? What if we kept score not in comparison with others, but with ourselves, with our own goals and expectations? To discover these goals and expectations, there is one question we can ask ourselves that gets to the core of selecting the right profession -- if you had all the money you needed, what career would you choose for your life?
In other words, if you didn't have to work, how would you spend your time each day? There is only so much golf one can play and beaches one can walk on before the brain starts to turn to mush. As individuals, most of us seek an intellectually stimulating life --one that makes you want to get out of bed in the morning. This has been a universal yearning for centuries. Shakespeare wrote over 400 years ago, "To business that we love we rise betime, and go to't with delight."
We all have different dreams and expectations, and none of us can ignore our monetary obligations for long. If we are going to have to work to support ourselves and our families, wouldn't it be a more delightful world (as Shakespeare noted) if we loved what we did? Doesn't it make sense to be paid for doing work you enjoy rather than for work you simply tolerate? Rather than select a career that pays well and then hope it makes you happy, we should all strive to select a profession that makes us happy, and let the monetary rewards be derived from our your productive and creative efforts at a daily endeavor we enjoy.
10:10 PM
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