BANGALORE: What should your first job be? The suggestions to choose the right career path indeed vary for different individuals. However, many people seem to offer one single advice for every person who is deciding his or her very first job!  The approach of ‘one-size fits all’ has its own pros and cons on the career prospects of every confused and naive sophomore who is scrambling with career options.  . Businessinsider.com has compiled a list of the three most common pieces of job advice and weighed the merits of each:

Follow your dreams:

When searching for your first job, everyone from your relatives to the movie screens will tell you one thing, “Follow your dreams”.  However, this can be quite a dangerous idea, because the dreams of a 22 year old are often not fully developed.

David Brooks explains this phenomenon in an op-ed in the New York Times: “Most successful young people don’t look inside and then plan a life. They look outside and find a problem, which summons their life.”

Brooks also mentioned that passion for a job is tied to a person’s interests and experiences, and does not arise through analysis. People compare the life of a rock star to an accountant and decide that the former is obviously more fun than the latter.

Both jobs come with their own sets of pressures and the challenges of a rock star might seem trivial in the eyes of an aspirant.  There is great possibility to be misled and disillusioned about the dream job owing to a significant lack of transparency in all careers.

When considering a dream job, young people don’t think about the day to day work, but about the larger impact they hope to have. However, it is only by understanding the everyday work and progress that one can plot the timescale of achievements.

Working to become a performer, or improve education, the environment and health and wellness are all worthy goals, but the process can be long and incremental. There is often no clear cut path, or monthly bonuses. The prospect of immediate change or total creative freedom is as much a myth in these jobs as it is in others.

Therefore, many people prefer to work in a field where the rewards of their effort can be seen more rapidly.

This doesn’t mean that young people should abandon such jobs or dreams. They should understand that the motivation necessary to thrive will have to be very strongly internal.

Follow your peers:

For every generation, there are certain career paths that can seem like a stairway to heaven.  The career progressions in some fields like medicine or law have remained the same for years while, in the others such as business and engineering have changed with the weather.

Many parents and peers advise young graduates to follow career paths that can be looked up with prestige, rewards handsomely and comes with a clear set of steps to easily get to the top.

This method is viewed as more sensible option than following vague ‘dreams’.  This will certainly help an individual can gain experience and accumulate wealth, but in some ways, it can be as much of a trap as the first method.

Many people want to make realistic decisions that minimize the adverse effects of risk. The   incentives and heavy pay checks draw people to a stable job and make them forget about its drawbacks.

These days, even seemingly steady professions are subject to shake ups. Those who aren’t good at adapting to new, confusing, or chaotic situations, find it hard to advance and excel in their respective professions.  Recessions have put even doctors and engineers out of business, and technology is changing every business.

It is commonly quoted that nowadays one can expect ’7 career changes in your lifetime’, compared to previous generations where people worked with the same company from graduation to retirement.

So if climbing the steps doesn’t guarantee you’ll reach the top anymore, how should you approach selecting a job?

Follow the headroom:

 It is commonly seen that those who were happy in their earlier jobs and positions reportedly faced challenges and had ample growth opportunities.

If you remove the additional perks of particular job opportunity like industry, mission, money (to a point) and prestige, what is left will be is perceived as the actual value of an opportunity. 

The best kind of workplace for those seeking challenges and encouragement is the one with an engaging team and a boss who lets you increase your competencies. People tend to switch jobs on the basis of prestige, thinking that if they earned more money or worked in finance instead of HR will be a good move or looks more prestigious on their CV

In today’s fast changing world, movement between previously disparate industries is becoming more common. Companies don’t look particularly at an applicant’s experience level, but mostly on performance in previous jobs and flexibility to learn new skill. If you’re in a job that requires creative problem solving, then you feel welcomed because you’re good at it, you will thrive.

One does not have to give up on the idea of doing what you love, or what is considered successful. Just re-think the path to getting there.

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