Career Choices

Sometimes kids go through school and they are told to pick/find “the one” career that is their calling in life. This is a lie. Most people work for a number of employers over their lifetime, and often change careers to do something completely different. Your career is not your identity. It is okay to do something for work and not have it define you. Most people that I talk to become enthusiastic for their career after they have worked in it for a while, even though to a teenager it sounds really boring.

Also, taking your favorite hobby and turning it into a career is a really fast way to ruin that for you. Your hobby will become work, and not fun anymore. It may be better to find a career that gives you plenty of time to spend outside of work on your hobby.

For example, let’s say that working on cars is your favorite hobby. You could turn that into work, but then are so tired of working on cars that after work you don't have the energy to tinker on your own car. And you may often end up having to work weekends, because that is when the shop is open. Or you could have a well paying 9-5 job where you have plenty of money to buy car toys and time to tinker on the weekend.

I recommend kids go through an exercise when they are evaluating career choices. First, make a list of 5 jobs that are interesting to you. These should be different jobs. e.g. Police officer and Sheriff are roughly the same thing. Rank these jobs according to your interest.

For each of these jobs, do some research on them. Yes, I know this sounds like work. But it is less work than going through school only to find out years later that it was a bad choice. Find out the following:

1. What do these jobs pay. Don’t just look at the average, but look at both the starting pay, mid-career, late-career. Look at the distribution of pay in the available jobs. Look out for industries where only a few people make a lot of money, but most people make very little. What about benefits? These days health insurance is very expensive. If a job offers *good* health insurance and lots of other benefits, that is a positive indicator that the supply of people for the job is not as much as the number of jobs available.

2. What sort of training does it take to get the job, and what does that cost? Look at the full cost. Some careers only take a couple years of vocational training. Many require a bachelors degree in something specific. A lawyer requires really expensive law school.

3. What is the supply of jobs? Years ago, jobs working in the steel mills were plentiful and paid well. Today, all those jobs are gone. It doesn’t matter how good you are at the job if nobody wants to hire you to do it. Where are those jobs located? If you want to live in a particular state or region, are the jobs there to support you? A good indicator is if you talk to a college and find out that many of the people graduating in a particular degree are unable to get a job related to that degree. That is in an indicator that there are not enough jobs for the people that want to do the job.

4. What is the supply of people wanting to do the job? Is it more or less than the supply of jobs? This is the problem with being a social worker or a 7th grade English teacher. There is an endless supply of people that want to do these jobs. Employers know that they will not have to pay much to fill these jobs as they can easily replace them with someone else.

5. What sort of quality of life does the job have? Do you have to work evenings and weekends? Do you have flexibility to go on vacation? If there is a pandemic, can you work from your home?

Now for the hard part. You have to compare what you have learned. Remember, life is not fair. Your favorite, fun choice may not be the best choice. There likely isn't going to be a perfect choice. And it is okay if you want to take a competitive, difficult path. Just be aware of what you are getting into so you don't find out after it is to late.

Compare the cost of getting into a career with the amount that you will get paid. Social Workers are an example where the math here doesn’t look good. You need a masters degree (6 years of college), but the average salary in Utah is $45k. That can get even worse if you go to an expensive college and rack up student loans of over $100k. If you have student loans the size of a house payment, but your job pays very little, that is your fault and not the government’s fault.

Now go talk to people in these careers. Go talk to lots of people. They will tell you the reality that your teacher doesn’t know to tell you. A professor at college that has never worked in an industry job is a bad person to ask. Go talk to someone that just started that career a few years ago. And also find someone that has been in that career for 15 years. Information is power.

You are probably going to discover that your top pick isn’t really a good idea. Not all of us can be rock stars, or the star forward on an NBA team. That’s okay. You may find that your third option is a really good balance of good pay, plenty of jobs, and good working conditions. You will be happier in a job where there are many employers looking everywhere to hire you and pay you well. You will be happier if when you find you find yourself working for a bad boss or dying company and know that you can easily switch to a different company.