What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up? Part 2
August 27, 2024 - Rick Robb, Online Student Advisement Coordinator
In a previous post we looked at the Japanese concept of Ikigai, your “reason for being,” and how you can use that to discover possible personally fulfilling careers. In this post we will look at some more practical planning ideas that focus on the who, what, when, where, why, and how.
The ideas I’ll present here are based on my experiences in working with job applicants for several regional corporations as well as concepts from Purdue University professor Richard Johnson-Sheehan’s textbook, Technical Communication Today.[1]
When you are starting to prepare for your post-college career, the first thing you might need to do is to adjust your expectations; the job market is competitive. According to a 2023 LinkedIn article, the typical corporate job opening attracts around 250 job applications. That means that, on average, you are competing with 249 other job seekers, many of whom may be more qualified than you. Thirteen years ago, when I first taught students about looking for a career, that number was 100 applications per posting. Clearly, the stakes have gotten higher.
Because of that, planning where you’d like to work — even before you graduate — is essential. Corporate recruiters and career planning professionals agree that, for college students, the ideal time to begin planning is in their sophomore year. This is a time when many students are declaring their majors which are, occasionally, not the one they thought about when they first entered college. Having a more specific career in mind gives them an opportunity to take classes that will help achieve that goal.
As you begin to choose and prepare for a career, I recommend creating and maintaining a list that asks the following questions, giving specific answers, even if they seem a little idealistic.
- What do I want from a job or a career?
- Who would I like to work for?
- Where do I want to live?
- How soon do I need to be employed?
- What interested me in this career in the first place?
- How much salary, vacation, and benefits do I need?
Begin by making this list. It will be a living document that you update as needed. Remember that what you want now, before you’ve even gotten your diploma, is likely to change. The list may be something that you return to on occasion once you’ve been working in your chosen field for a time. You’ll learn about what things you really liked, and which made your career seem unattractive. Research!
What do I want from a job or career?
A good starting point for setting your career goal is to consider what it is you want to achieve from your job. (If you missed Part 1 of this series, responding to the questions presented there might help you to zero in on what you are looking for in a career.) Is making a lot of money what’s important to you? Do you want something that will allow you to help others? Or maybe you’re looking for something that will express your creativity or satisfy a natural curiosity about the world around you. For some people, an uplifting corporate culture can offset lower pay or benefits in the beginning. Obviously, happiness and satisfaction will fall into your wants section. You might even break this section into a Pros & Cons list.
Who would I like to work for?
While it may seem like a game of “let’s pretend,” considering what company or organization you’d like to work for can give you some great insight. If you’d like to work for Apple, for instance, it may be that the things that attract you there might be the same for similar businesses in Silicon Valley or other global centers for technology. Research these companies, looking at their websites for hints on their corporate culture, opportunities for growth and advancement. Some larger entities may have testimonials from current employees. You can also look for a News or Current Events section on their site to see what sort of projects they’re involved in. Conversely, doing a general search (e.g. “Boeing Corp in the news”) can give indications of a company that is doing some things that really interest you (or is struggling or has major lawsuits going on).
One other place to look for potential future employers, even if you aren’t ready to apply anywhere, is at career fairs. Chatting with the corporate recruiters at these events can give you a sense of the positions they hire, the skillsets they look for, and what the corporate culture is like. Plus, if you are one of those people who get nervous during interviews, this can be a great chance to practice talking to employers without any threat; you aren’t applying for a job, just having a chat. Be prepared to ask them about what they are looking for in job candidates.
A simple way to discover potential employers is to do online searches using terms along the lines of “Engineering jobs in Albuquerque” or “Teaching positions in New Mexico” or “Community Health Education careers in the Pacific Northwest.” These searches will let you see what organizations hire in the field and area you are interested in, potential pay and benefits, and the skills they are looking for.
Thinking outside the box here can open up new career potentials you hadn’t thought of before. Suppose you are a business major focusing on HR. Employers that typically come to mind will be some sort of corporation or business. But let’s expand on that. Are you a sports fan? Major sports organizations such as the NFL, WNBA, or the US Olympic & Paralympic Committee are all organizations that need HR specialists (or computer science majors or any one of a dozen other majors) regardless of your athletic abilities. If you enjoy the entertainment industry, look at job postings for movies studios and record labels. If you’re thinking of a more altruistic organization, non-profit and non-governmental organizations even the United Nations has a need for a wide variety of skillsets and have very competitive salary and benefit packages.
The job market has changed quite a bit over the last 20 years. But, having target companies is still a great idea, and you can use what makes that place desirable to search for other companies with a similar model. As you research employers, create a spreadsheet that list them, the URL for their jobs site, and maybe what about them you find attractive. Add to this list whenever you hear something about an employer that you find interesting. You can revisit this over and over.
Where would I like to live?
This isn’t always an obvious question to many students considering their futures, but it can be very critical to your happiness and satisfaction down the road. To begin with, does the employer you are interested in have locations in the city — or country — where you’d like to live? Once again, researching a company can show you those options. Try this: Go to Google Careers and, in the search field enter a job title — I used “Business Manager.” In the results, you can see cities and countries where Google has operations. In some instances, for non-U.S. locations, it will let you know what level of fluency you need to have in the local language. (That can help you figure out if you should be taking specific foreign language classes while you’re still a student.)
One other important thing to think about when considering where you want to live is “what is the cost of living?” A right-out-of-college starting salary of $50,000 in New Mexico isn’t bad, but that money in another market like San Francisco, Chicago, or New York City might not buy as much. The website Salary.com has a Cost of Living Comparison Tool that lets you compare the buying power of the same dollar amount between two cites. In the example I chose, New York City had an 85.3% higher cost of living meaning your $50k would be worth about $30.5k less. (I’ve had friends who found this out the hard way.)
How soon do I need to be employed?
This is a tricky question with a short answer. Are you graduating this week and need to have money coming in fast? You can probably not afford to be picky about aspects like pay, location, or employer just yet. Years ago, when I was contemplating leaving an uninspiring job — even though I didn’t have a new one lined up — a coworker reminded me that “bad breath is better than no breath.” In other words, a job that stinks is usually better than no job, especially if you’re relying on that paycheck. Remember, though, if you don’t like your job anymore, you should be returning to this process of looking for the one you want.
Now, if you aren’t slated to graduate for a year or two, you have the luxury of putting in the time researching employers. As I said earlier, create a list of employers and revisit if often. Look at job postings for your chosen field and make sure you are on track to meet their qualifications. That semester before graduation is when you should be getting active. Don’t wait until you’ve got your diploma because your classmates likely aren’t.
As the old saying goes, “you never have a second chance to make a good first impression” and your cover letter and résumé are that first impression. (In a previous career in management, I rejected applicants because of major typos or inattention to details in their application materials.) You should be creating a neat, attractive, and error-free résumé. UNM Career Services will be happy to help you with this.
You should also plan to attend job fairs and meet employers. Send out résumés with cover letters, noting that you’ll be graduating soon and expressing interest in applying for a given position.
What interested me in this career to begin with?
This is one of those things you may ask yourself over the course of your career. It might be asked in frustration; Why did I choose this career?! Going hand in hand with the “wants and needs” question we looked at earlier, we can recall what the attraction was.
And, sometimes, as our careers progress, we can return to this to help us remember. “I got into this to make fat stacks of cash,” might be your reason. Is the career you are looking at eventually going to make the kind of money you want? You might need to refine either your search or your expectation. “I got into Community Health Education because I legitimately wanted to help people.” Remembering this during the times when you are feeling a little jaded might help. Or it might be a prompt to move to a different employer who does more of the work that fulfills you.
What kind of salary, vacation, and benefits do I need?
This question will require you to do a little budget projection. It will also involve some guesswork. Notice that this question ends with the word “need”? Naturally, we all want to live very comfortably, and money is helpful in that area. But here we want to consider the bare minimum that we can survive on or, better put, the minimum salary we can work for and cover all of our needs. This is the bottom line of what you can work for. If you will require $60k a year to meet your minimum expenses, you probably shouldn’t consider a job that pays $10k less. If you have a family, those expenses need to be factored in.
You’ll want to take a look at the cost associated with living in the city you plan to work in. Look at the cost of rents, groceries, and utilities. If where you will live is a long way from where you’ll work, what are the gas prices like compared to where you live now? What kind of transportation will you need? You’ll want to include at least some entertainment expenses in there. Don’t forget savings! Once you’ve got a number, you should use the previously mentioned cost-of-living calculator to determine how much you might need in a different location.
Benefits, including medical, dental, and vision, are fairly standard, but the cost of copays that you’ll be responsible for will vary. If you or one of your dependents have any medical challenges or important medications, benefits become more important but may not be immediately available.
Vacation time can be important. Not just for the mental health benefits that taking a break from work can provide, but for visiting friends and family or traveling. Be aware that with some employers you’ll start earning vacation time from day one. Other places may require you to work there for 6 months or a year before you get vacation, and some will have blackout periods where you can’t take off.
Salary, benefits and vacation time will always be in a state of change, and you’ll make adjustments and updates as time passes based on large purchases like a house or new car or adding children to your family.
There are a lot of considerations and possible unforeseen circumstances when planning your career. Current data suggests that the average person changes jobs about 12 times in their working lives. Knowing that change is inevitable, it’s useful to keep documents such as this list — along with your résumé — available and updated so you are prepared in case your job goes away or, as happens, just stops meeting your needs. You never know when you’ll run into a serendipitous job offer you can’t resist.
If you’d like to talk more about finding your ikigai and choosing a career, reach out to UNM Online’s helpful Student Success Team at online@unm.edu, or UNM’s Office of Career Services at career4u@unm.edu
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[1]Johnson-Sheehan, Richard. 2018. Technical Communication Today (Instructor's Review Copy). 6th ed. Boston: Pearson.
