The International Writers Magazine: Career Choices

Where are we now…? • K E Sidwell … in relation to what you may ask. Well let’s look at this for a starting point – you’ve finished your degree you’ve had a nibble at the working world with a short temporary contract via a job agency. Can you now honestly define in a nutshell what excites you - “the career path you want to take”?

Let’s take this next point and expand the person specifics, what if you’re a mature student, does age and lack lustre make a great difference in your motivation to find a job? The dilemma could change for these individuals too, thus “the career path you need to take” seems more applicable. With bills and dependants your desire for a career could quite easily turn back into the lowly paid forty-hour per week job of drudgery that you studied so hard to get out of originally.

So what add-ons are required to make you feel that your degree can work for you, or will work that CV for you. There are many graduate sites offering boosters and fog clearers for the completely disillusioned. You can get down to clearer definitions of what job you would like and if that matches the geographic’s of where you live. There is no point wanting a job in painting buses red if where you live they are all green, but you get the metaphor. Why would any post-graduate need to refer back to ‘career path decisions’ in the first place; wasn’t there a clearly devised plan at the beginning, or maybe career guidance whilst on the degree?

There could be a third point here in making this career pathway confrontation compulsory. A mind path should be clear and level but think of all the advice and ‘sort out the mess’ companies that spring up from mistakes being made – too many people are tripping up.

What can you see yourself doing? Would you have job satisfaction? Is there a salary that matches a happy lifestyle – you know that life-work balance people discuss whilst sipping margaritas in Constantinople.

How about this for a fourth point: how close are you allowed to get to job openings these days and also to the people who want to gain brightly polished new recruits? It is a maze of agents that connect to other agents that hopefully get your application to the core company - eventually. Therefore can one suggest that you are privileged if you get a reply, and can one state you are blessed if you actually get that reply from the employer – direct?

It is a lonely world for the job seeking graduate who stares longingly at all the newly perked  apprentices - three or four years younger with the jobs the former longed for and the lowly wage the same, only they are finishing the late shift with their fellow burger bun brethren.

Times are changing and with all the books (and films based on books) regarding pilgrimages it might be appropriate to find some career answers on the road. A rucksack acquired containing a loaf of bread, a tin of beans and a bottle of cheap table wine may be the tools to assist in a revelation.

Best foot forward then on a different type of well-trodden path; I’m sure my Job Centre Advisor mentioned volunteering so let’s start with tourist guide –
”you there, group of people…you’re going the wrong way”….

© K E Sidwell January 2015

http://embeddedexhibition.blogspot.co.uk/

More Comment

Share |