Making a career choice is, perhaps, one of the most difficult decisions that people are faced with in their lives. There are varieties of considerations that should be made before making a career choice. For instance, a person may want to choose a career that he/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 his/her to do something that he/she does not love doing. This paper states the ideal career choice, the pragmatic career choice and takes a stand on how people should choose their careers.
The ideal career choice
The ideal career choice would indubitably be the case in which a person pursues something he/she really loves doing, and the same turns out to be financially rewarding. In most of these cases, the person actually has a natural flair for the stated career and thus he/she does not encounter major difficulties while working (Rides 1).
For instance, a person who is born with a natural flair for athletics would make a perfect career choice if he/she chooses athletics as a career, and it turns out to be lucrative. Another example would be a nerd with a flair for computer programming. If such a person chooses computer programming as a career and it turns out to be lucrative, he/she will have made an ideal career choice.
It is however, common knowledge that people do not always get financial benefit from doing the things they really love doing. There are many reasons behind this. The main one is unemployment, but there are other factors like lack of good career planning. To explain the latter, it would be unwise for an introvert to study a course in college that will lead to a career that involves public speaking.
Therefore, an introvert who studies political science or mass communication is likely to pursue unrelated careers even if he/she has a passion for political science or mass communication. Such kind of people, together with those who lack employment opportunities are therefore, forced to make more pragmatic career choices.
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 world over that has seen people pursuing careers that are even 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.
This has been the result of unemployment because 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 these jobs.
On the other hand, people who stick to what they love doing oftentimes get frustrated. This is because it may take a year or two to get a job after college. After the 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 1). This has contributed to the occurrence of the aforementioned career-switches.
Personal opinion
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/she loves doing, then that is okay. However, a person may be unable to secure a well-paying job that is related to his/her natural flair.
It will be wise for such a person to consider a career-switch into choices that are more rewarding, or even look for a rewarding temporary job while waiting to get the ideal job. However, this choice has a major limitation in that the person may not be satisfied in the job that he/she settles for.
This will obviously lead to stress and burnout that may even affect the quality of work that he/she delivers. Despite this, the main consideration when choosing a job or career path should be the financial benefits of the career/job.
Conclusion
From the above discussion, it is clear that financial considerations should be the determinant factor in choosing a career, in case a person is unable to get a well-paying job related to what he/she loves doing. If a person makes enough money doing available lucrative jobs, he/she can be able to do what he/she loves doing.
For instance, if he/she has a passion for charity work, he/she does not have to work for a charity foundation. One can make enough money from other jobs and start his charity foundation. An engineer may make enough money, while working as a Human Resource Manager, to start his/her engineering firm.
Works Cited
Rides, Dark. Tips on choosing the right career for you. 2009. Web.