Deciding on a Future Career

The college courses I am teaching this semester are coming to an end. I enjoy teaching and interacting with the students, along with some unplanned, off-the-syllabus activities such as providing career guidance.

A personal benefit of teaching is that I hear students’ concerns about their future careers and then try to help them. These are things that I can’t read about or find out from talking with my friends or even colleagues. The young people working at Withum and other firms I interact with are reluctant to share their thoughts with me since they consider me a ‘boss.’ They likely feel any equivocation they express will reflect in their career advancement in their current positions. The college students have no such fears when approaching me or raising an issue during one of my class discussions that veer from the technical topics I teach. I try to impart some real-world experiences and expectations.

A big topic of discussion is how they should choose a career or a company to work at. One of the courses I am teaching is an undergraduate course at Baruch College about managerial accounting for students who are not accounting majors. These students are majoring in almost every major or sub-major the school offers. The other course I am teaching is a graduate course at Fairleigh Dickinson in auditing for those with a college degree who want to become accountants. These students are now pursuing a degree that qualifies them to sit for the CPA exam. My students have concerns about the type of accounting firm they should try to work at. Are there better opportunities in private accounting, i.e., a non-CPA firm? Or should they use their degree and accounting training to work in a nonaccounting position? In effect, both groups of students have the same concerns.

I addressed many of these concerns in ten years of graduation speeches I never was invited to present but which I posted on my blog. You can get a file of these speeches by emailing me at [email protected] and putting “Graduation Speeches” as the subject. No message is necessary.

My students aren’t going to read this file – they should! – as they want a quick and short answer. Well, there is no quick and short answer, but there is some guidance based on my experience and what I’ve seen that I can share with them and perhaps use as a way to judge their interests.

Many students express interest in ‘exciting’ or ‘glamorous‘ fields that they also believe are high-paying positions and will lead to stimulating careers. But when I question them, they actually know very little about them. If they want to do something, they should have an interest in it. For instance, if they want to be investment bankers or engage in merger and acquisition work, be involved in real estate or entrepreneurship, stock market trading, public accounting or auditing, food service or health care, do they read or at least scan news articles about current events in those industries? Do they read any books written by or about people in their sector of interest? Do they read annual financial reports released by companies in their chosen industry? Do they have an innate curiosity about that industry, speak to professors or people they or their parents know that have backgrounds in those industries, attend college meet-and-greets by successful graduates, and seek out role models and mentors? There are so many activities they could pursue to find information about what they profess an interest in.

They cannot wake up the day after their college graduation, take a pill, and instantly fall in love with the end game of a career they will just be starting. They need a questioning interest in the career field: understand how a career is developed, the skills required, and the educational backgrounds they should have either from school or acquired. Importantly, they should have a drive to succeed.

A simple test is to ask someone in their 50s about their career, what they did, and whether they recommend it. Listen to them and look for the passion. Most will say they had good or great careers, but do they describe their work with passion? Without passion, they spent their working lives with excellent jobs, but not a career. You deserve a passionate career.

A career is a long time until it isn’t and can change. You do not need to be mired in your first choice, but each step in your career must be 100% without equivocation, second thoughts or a hidden agenda. Failure to be all in on your decision will likely result in a less-than-satisfying career.

My young friends, you have all your choices in front of you. Be smart, make the right choices, and if you realize you made a mistake, cut your losses deliberately and quickly and move forward. Vacillating is not a forward movement.

Choose something you are interested in and passionate about.