Traditional Careers versus Niche Careers

When I finished high school, I had no idea how many niche/specialized careers there are out there.  Avoid the temptation to discount career options too quickly without looking into all the potential opportunities a particular career path might have.  Here's a few examples I've run across:

Careers in Computer Programming.  Software isn't all about programming.  There's a bunch of other career opportunities that work hand in hand with 'the nerds' on the computers.  For example, have you ever thought it would be great to be a software tester in a company that makes video games?  That's the QA (Quality Assurance) department, and most companies that do software development seriously (not just gaming companies) hire software testers.   Project Managers are also required in software development.  They manage resources, time, money, and risk on software projects, and they generally get paid pretty well (more than the programmers).  Business Analysts translate what the client wants into requirements documents that the programmers use to build the application from.  BA's need to be familiar with the technology the programmers user, and they also need to be familiar with the client and their business.  Technical Writers compose the 'help' documentation for the users (this is the manual for the game, so to speak).  They translate what the application actually does back into language that the average 'Joe' on the street can understand so 'Joe' will know how to use the application.  And I could go on about DBA's (DataBase Administrators), SEO Engineers (Search Engine Optimization Engineers), Network Admins, etc.

Careers in Geology.  Geology has a lot of specializations I never would have imagined.  Hydro-Geologists specialize in studying water that's locked underground, where it's found, how it fluctuates, how it impacts other resources in the ground (like oil and gas), and much more.  Astro-Geologists study the geology on other planets. There are quite a number of people with this specialty working at NASA on the Mars Rovers and other current projects.  One of the last astronauts on the moon specialized in this field.  Vulcanologists study volcanoes, magma, lava flows, earthquakes, etc.  Archeologists I think could be included in this group as well, but they have a bunch of their own specialties.  We have a geologist where I work now who specializes in coal (I'm not sure if there's a name for that specialty or not) It's really quite amazing when you stop to break down one particular field into specialized areas.

Careers in Policing.  Switching gears a bit, there is actually a pretty good variety of specialties you can find in the police force.  Obviously there working 'the beat', catching speeders and robbers - the typical policing gig that everyone thinks of.  But there's more...  think about CSI.  Many police forces have Tech Crimes Units that specialize in retrieving evidence from computers, cell phones, video cameras, etc.  There are also Canine Units that work with police dogs.  Forensic Pathologists find clues and evidence on deceased people.  Police forces have their own Training Units that are staffed from withing the force itself.  They train new recruits coming onto the force.  There's also the SWAT team (hopefully no explanation required), and even Forensic Accountants who go through finances of individuals and companies looking for evidence.

Be careful not to discount a career because it sounds boring or you think there is no future in it.  A fellow I played basketball with in high school got a degree in forestry (which I thought had no future) and now he helps run a company that harvests trees from the bottom of dammed rivers using robotic submarines!  I never would have guessed.

Investing for Grads and Young Adults

My first lesson in finances after I finished came the day after high school was over.  I received a call from the principal of the high school asking me to come 'to the office' at school - can you believe that!?!  I had been the treasurer of the Grad Class that year.  As it turned out, I had not left the books 'balanced' as it were.   So I spent a good part of that day - the day after school was out for the summer - tearing through a file cabinet looking for documentation and receipts in an attempt to balance the Grad's account that year.  Not an auspicious way to end high school or start my life after high school.

Finances are not something that should be ignored or put off after you graduate or during college.  Whether your parents are helping you with your post secondary education or not, it will do you well to carefully consider how you spend your time and money after you finish high school.

Consider this: many people enter into post-secondary education in an attempt to start a career that they hope will take them to retirement.  At the very least, a young adult stands to make over 2.2 million dollars during the course of their career (conservatively, 50k/year x 45 years).   This makes your post-secondary education an investment decision.  If you are looking at those kinds of 'returns', doesn't it make sense to treat your post-secondary education as an investment?  You need to ask yourself where you will get the best returns for you money, your time, and your effort during this time of you life.

I need to clarify something here - when I use the phrase 'post-secondary education', I don't necessarily mean college or university.  Some people aren't ready to go back to school full time right after high school.  I certainly wasn't.  Sometimes the best post-secondary education one can get after high school is getting some working experience.  Or going on a trip.  There is a world full of other things you can learn outside of a formal education while you wait for your 'education motivation' to return.

If you do have an idea of what you like to study and you have the motivation to study it, do some research first.  Ask lots of questions.  You motivation for asking?  2.2 million dollars of your (future earnings) money - is on the line.  Its amazing how changing your perspective like that can help you find good questions to ask. Find people who have made careers of what you are interested in and ask them for their perspective and advice.  Research what courses you should take and then find the best schools and teachers to learn from.

Check out PayScale's College ROI (Return On Investment) report.  It essentially highlights which universities and colleges give the best (future) return on each dollar you spend.

My Plan after High School Graduation (My Job Journey Part 1)

Planning is important. I momentarily realized this while I was working a summer job in between grades 11 and 12 at a local restaurant. I was assigned to clean tables that afternoon. For whatever reason there was a lot of left-overs that day - all of which went into the garbage. The wheeled cart which held the garbage (along with dirty napkins and dinnerware) was located in a recess on wall of the middle of the restaurant - surrounded by tables. It was very busy that day, and the garbage bag was full. One of my responsibilities was to take the garbage out when it was full.

I don't know what I was thinking - obviously I wasn't thinking too hard. The thought of planning the maneuver I had to execute with this full garbage bag never occurred to me. As I lifted the bag out of it's place in the cart, it burst open in full view of all the diners of the tables nearby. The result wasn't appetizing or appealing for them and was definitely embarrassing for me. I had to get a new bag and clean everything up.

Unfortunately, it took me a lot longer to learn some good lessons about planning even after I had that experience. My brother and I had talked about becoming school teachers after high school - he would be a Physical Education teacher, and I'd teach Music/Band.  We would ski together during the Christmas break, and then on Summer breaks we would tour the world together.  We thought we had a good 'plan'.

Our plan soon fell by the wayside as it was more like 'wishful thinking' than a plan that we could execute.   For whatever reason, I wasn't very motivated to go to university right out of high school.  Frankly, I was a bit burned out on school for the time being.  Also, I wasn't aware of the scope of different opportunities besides university that I had available to me. As a result, I didn't have much of a plan for my life then. My decisions lacked foresight as I was looking ahead a year at the most.

If I had thought about it, I actually had a number of good examples of how to put a plan together, even at that time of my life.  Every song we played in band in high school had a 'plan of execution' - the musical score.  It's a written plan of how a song is to be played, it's notes, dynamics, how fast or slow, when not to play, etc.

Another plan that I was exposed to at school were plays we used in basketball.  Our coach would write both offensive and defensive plays down on a board.  We'd have to commit them to memory and practice them so we knew who was going to be where at a given time during the play.  This would help us be more organized and confident when we were playing a game.  Everyone knew their place/position and their responsibility.

Key elements of a plan to me are:
- writing it down
- prioritizing what I've written down
- executing it properly
- learning from the execution

If I could rewind my life and have that time over again, here's is what my plan would look like after high school graduation:

a. I still wouldn't think about doing a degree right out of school. I was burned out on education that wasn't practical.

b. I might take an intense, fast-track program at a nearby community college that would give me practical experience at a skilled job and get me out into the work force in 18 months or less.  Or, if I couldn't find the right course, I'd work for a year and then skip to point 'd'.

c. I would get a job that utilizes my training and work it for 2-3 years, all the while asking questions and keeping my eyes open for interesting opportunities for the future.

d. Once I had saved a bit of money, I would go traveling. I'd try travel for at least 2 years - working while I traveled. I'd make a concerted effort to get fluent in a foreign language and live like the locals do, learning about their cultures.

e. Then, if I felt the time was right, I would return home and consider investigating universities where I could complete a degree. By this time, I'd hope that I'd have a very good idea of what I'd like to study. I'd seek out the best school's to learn by:
- going to the schools
- sitting in a class for a day, seeing what the learning atmosphere is like
- learning about the teachers - have they had industry experience?
- asking the students what they are learning and how they feel about it

Think about planning your life before you finish grade 12. Confucius said, "He who does not reflect, and does not lay his plans far in advance, will find difficulties at his door" I can attest to the truth of this statement. Learn from my mistakes.

Links to the rest of my job journey are below.

• Considering Careers with Diversity
• Part 1 My Plan After High School Graduation
• Part 2 Work Experience in School
• Part 3 On My Own - The Tradesman
• Part 4 Married, Working, and Living Overseas 
• Part 5 Searching for a Real Career
• Part 6 A Career Change
• Part 7 A Career in IT
• Part 8 Undercurrents in My Career Quest

Life Is What You Make It by Peter Buffett

Life Is What You Make It: Find Your Own Path to Fulfillment by Peter Buffett is a thoughtful book that I thoroughly enjoyed.  If I had a school for helping young adults discover what they wanted to do with their life, this book would be required reading.  Peter offers meaningful anecdotes and wisdom on topics like finding personal values, seeking out your true vocation, learning from mistakes, and defining success.  I personally enjoyed the chapters on vocation and giving back, and the epilogue carried just as much impact (if not more) than the rest of the book.  I'd highly recommend this book for the thoughtful graduate.  It's a medium read - my paperback was a little over 250 pages. 4.5 out of 5

What Now? by Ann Patchett

What now? by Ann Patchett is written for Graduates of either high school or college.  It's based on a commencement speech she gave at her Ala Mater, Sarah Lawrence College.  My hardcover is a very quick read (I read it on one bus trip home from work).  It has less than 100 pages, including pictures.  I enjoyed the book, particularly the personal stories about baking a particular batch of chocolate-chip cookies and filling in for a dish-washer.  The lessons that she drew from these situations and others show a depth of thought and wisdom that will be relevant to the lives of young adults and graduates.  I'd recommend this book and give it a 4 out of 5

Test Drive A Career!

Have you ever wanted to know what it would 'really' be like to work in your dream job?  Always had a dream to become a veterinarian?  Or a music composer?  Archeologist?  Flight Instructor?  Did you know you can actually take a career for a spin?

Vocation Vacations specializes in arranging 1 to 3 days hands-on career experiences with expert mentors.    They built their company on the belief that every work day should feel like a Friday.   They want to give their clients an opportunity to see what it would be like to get paid for doing what you love rather than doing what you have to do.

While I haven't experienced a vocation vacation yet (I think I'd like to try Composer or Music Producer), I think it would be a great way to get your feet wet and see if you are really cut out for what you 'feel' you want to be.

While you're checking out the blog, don't miss our Career Resources for Graduates and Young Adults page.

Living Life in Reverse - Patrick's story

Patrick decided after finishing college that he would live life in reverse, so to speak.  For 10 years he would travel and experience the world and get that out of his system, and then he'd come back to Canada and work like a dog for 10 years.

In making that decision, Patrick compares it with the analogy of driving.  Good drivers always look some distance ahead down the road so they can see what is coming, not only right close to them, but what is further along.  That way the trip ends up being smoother and you don't make yourself dizzy.  Drivers who focus on the road right in front of the car aren't aware of what is coming further, and as a result, have to make split second emergency decisions to keep from crashing.  That or they get information overload from focusing on so much going by so fast as close as it is.

Patrick felt that the majority of graduates coming out of school were making decisions focused on what was hitting them in the face, rather than thinking about how they will feel about their life 10 or 20 years down the road.

Patrick ended up following his plan.  He was a scuba diving instructor in the tropics around the world in the summers.  In the winters he would work at the ski resorts in Europe.  He kept up this routine right into his early 30's.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Patrick tells two stories.  The first story is of his first trip to Europe.  He was taking a train from Budapest, Hungary, to Prague in what was Czechoslovakia at the time.  A lady in her early 40's was the only other person in his compartment, and he ended up getting into a conversation with her.  It turned out that after she finished college she started traveling and didn't stop for the last 20 years - teaching English or finding odd jobs in the different countries that she had been traveling in.  She told Patrick that her last teaching stint had been in China where she had met a compatriot that she wanted to get more involved with.  This special fellow had already gone back to England and was working.  She was going back there to join him and see if a life-time relationship and perhaps a family would be in the making.  As the train crossed the boarder into Czechoslovakia, the lady abruptly opened her travel back, unpacked a bottle of champagne and two glasses and asked Patrick to join her in a celebration.  "What for?" Patrick queried.  "This is the 100th country I've been in," she replied.  This made a huge impact on Patrick.  She had made a concrete, emphatic decision to travel until she was ready to do something else.  Instead of go along with life and rolling with it's punches, she had taken life 'by the horns' and did what she wanted to do, enjoying it to the full with the resources and opportunities that came her way.

The second story Patrick tells took place after he'd been traveling for 8 years already.  He came back to his hometown in northern BC to work for the summer.  Of course, being back in his home town, he ended up running into friends he grew up with.  Patrick got into a discussion with one and it turned out that since high school this fellow had taken over the family farm, paid it off and become financially very stable. Besides working on the farm, he was doing some equipment hauling for the oil patch.  Looking back on the conversation, Patrick was amazed to realize that this fellow had basically summed up 15 years of his life with 4 words.  'I've been busy working.' 

Patrick says that even still almost all the old friends he's run into - to a person - have said 'oh, I wish I had the opportunity to go traveling.'  Patrick believes that they each had the opportunity when they were younger.  They just never made the choice.