Making a career choice is one of the most difficult decisions that people are faced with in their lives. Many considerations should be made before making a career choice. For instance, a person may want to choose a career that he or she has a passion for, but the career may not be rewarding moneywise. On the other hand, a person may want to choose a career that is rewarding in terms of finances, but this may force him or her to do something that he or she does not love to do.
The ideal career choice would be the case in which a person pursues something he or she really loves to do, and luckily the same turns out to be financially rewarding. “In most of these cases, the person actually has a natural flair for the career and thus, he or she does not encounter major difficulties while working” (Rides).
For instance, a person with a natural flair for athletics would make a perfect career choice if he or she chose athletics as a career, and it turned out to be lucrative. Another example would be a person with a flair for computer programming.
If this person chose computer programming as a career and it turned out to be lucrative, he or she would have made an ideal career choice. “As such, career choice is a decision, which entails critical thinking of the diversified choices available to an individual” (Smith).
However, there is common knowledge that people will not normally get financial benefit from doing the things they really love doing. There are many reasons behind this. One of the main reasons is unemployment, among others such as poor career planning. To explain the latter, it would be unwise for an introvert to study a course in a college that would lead to a career that involved public speaking.
Therefore, an introvert who studied political science or communication might pursue unrelated careers even if he or she has a passion for political science or communication. Such kind of people, together with those who lack employment opportunities are therefore, forced to make more pragmatic career choices.
Most people make career choices that are not related to what they love doing, in other words, their passion. This has been fuelled by the high rate of unemployment in the world, which has seen people pursuing careers that are unrelated to what they study in college. “For instance, it is common to see an engineer working as a human resource manager, a social scientist working as a journalist or even a teacher in an unrelated career” (Rides).
This has been because of unemployment making people indulge in careers that are unrelated to their subjects of study in college in order to make a living, as they wait to get a perfect job. The sad reality is that some of these people wait for a lifetime to get those jobs.
On the other hand, people who stick to what they love doing in most cases get frustrated. This is because it may take a year or two to get a job after college. After a long period of unemployment, one may get a job that is not worth writing home about. “The job may have limited financial rewards and it may lack opportunities for growth” (Rides). This has contributed to the occurrence of the aforementioned career-switches.
From the discussion above, it is clear that career choice should ideally be dictated by a person’s passion and natural talent. However, it is good to be dynamic in career choice in order to ensure that one balances life’s demands with passion. If one is able to secure a well-paying job related to what he or she love to do, then that is okay.
However, a person may be unable to secure a well-paying job that is related to his or her natural flair, something that disappoints most graduates after college. This makes people indulge in jobs that are not in their line of career. However, such decisions bring about major limitations, in that the person may not be satisfied with the job that he or she settles for. This will obviously lead to stress and burnout that may affect the quality of work that he or she delivers.
Despite this, the main consideration when choosing a job or career path should be one’s passion and not financial benefits that come in hand with the career. “This is because with passion, one is able to produce quality work, as they love what they are doing and end up being happy in life regardless of the benefit package associated with the career they are doing”(Smith).
Works Cited
Rides, Dark. Tips on choosing the right career for you. Hub Pages. 2009. Web.
Smith, Tim. How to Choose a Career That’s Best for You. On Careers. 2010. Web.