Creating a Pathway to Your Dream Career

Designing and Controlling a Career Around Your Life Goals​

Tom Kucharvy

• Publisher: Business Expert Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9781606498989
• eBook ISBN:
  9781606498996
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Human Resource Management
• Index: Business

What do you want your life to be like when you're 25? 35? 55? Do you want a job that will feed you and your family or do you want a career that will be an integral part of your life—a career that will feed your passions, enable the lifestyle you choose, and be a continual source of engagement and pride? But do you really have the luxury of even considering your dream job in an era in which more than 40 percent of college graduates can't even get jobs that require college degrees, much less jobs in their field? Not only should you think about your dream job—you owe it to yourself to do so. You just need a plan. This book will help you develop that plan by first examining how the careers of the future will differ from those of the past, where these jobs and careers will and won't be, and the range of skills (many of which are not taught in schools) they will require. With this context, it then lays out a three-stage, 20-step plan that will help you: • Objectively assess and develop your skills and align them with your passions • Assess the career opportunities that will best utilize these skills in pursuit of your passion • Expand your career options and hedge your bets by identifying complementary "safety careers" • Evaluate your post-high school education options and create an education plan that is best suited to you and your career choice • Prioritize the factors you should consider in targeting your critical first career-track job and use that job to expand your long-term career options

CHAPTER 1

Transformation of the U.S. Jobs Market

. . .the underemployment rate [among recent college graduates] rose somewhat sharply after both the 2001 and 2007–09 recessions, and in each case, only partially retreated, resulting in an increase to roughly 44 percent by 2012.

—Jaison R. Abel, Richard Deitz, and Yaqin Su
Federal Reserve Bank of New York

Key Points

• Higher levels of education directly correlate with higher employment rates and salaries.

• Employers increasingly require that new employees contribute immediately to the company, but are skeptical of whether many college graduates can do so.

• Underemployment is rampant, with an estimated 44 percent of recent graduates not getting jobs that require college degrees.

• Majors matter: science, technology, engineering, and mathematics; healthcare; and education graduates are much more likely to get jobs—especially jobs that require college degrees.

• Up to 95 percent of jobs lost during the recession and recovery were among the middle-income type jobs that typically go to recent college grads. Virtually all job gains are going to workers at the top and bottom of the wage scale.

• The big winners will be those with high levels of highly differentiated skills. Average performers will lose big in the New Normal.

The Great Recession marked the end of an era. A college degree, long viewed as the passport to a stable, rewarding career and comfortable lifestyle, will no longer guarantee you a job. It certainly won’t ensure a job in the field for which you have prepared—much less a predictable and secure career that allows you to pursue your passions and live a life of your own choosing.

Although reading this fact may be painful, you have to understand the future if you hope to prepare for it. You have to understand the odds, if you hope to beat them.

Employment Realities

Hundreds of studies portray and attempt to explain the current job market. Although each study has a somewhat different focus and comes up with somewhat different results (due to different assumptions, methodologies, and sampling bases), all agree that U.S. workers have taken a beating during the recent Great Recession (the economic downturn that began in June 2007). For example, although the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has surpassed prerecession levels, and corporate profits and stock markets have hit record highs, employment and wages remain far below their prerecession levels. The U.S. economy still employs fewer people than before the Great Recession. Real wages (after adjusting for inflation), meanwhile, are still below those of 1999!

All of these studies also agree on a number of other facts. For example:

• Young adults, as is often the case in recessions, have fared worse than their older counterparts. They are among the first to be laid off and the last to be hired or rehired. Compared to older and more experienced workers, they have higher unemployment rates, their time out of work is longer, their wages fall more rapidly, and they experience far worse underemployment (the ability to get a job that requires and makes use of their education). They are also less likely to get jobs that offer insurance, retirement contributions, and other benefits.

• Regardless of age, the higher one’s level of education, the more likely they are to be employed, earn higher wages, enjoy higher lifetime earnings, have longer life expectancies and lower divorce rates, and live in safer neighborhoods. Their children are also more likely to attend better schools and achieve higher levels of academic and economic success.

• Despite that U.S. educational attainment has reached record high levels (as of 2012, 33.5 percent of Americans aged 25 to 29 had at least a bachelor’s degree), employers claim they face a continual shortage of workers with the skills they need and that even most college graduates are ill-prepared for today’s jobs.

• Workers with degrees in high-demand fields, such as healthcare, education, and one of the STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics), are more likely to find employment that actually requires a college degree than are those with degrees in other fields.

Behind the Headlines

Let’s look at a few findings from some of these reports and studies that illustrate the previous conclusions as well as provide a broad range of other insights important to those who hope to enter the workforce.

Consider, for example, unemployment rates. As shown in Figure 1.1, unemployment rates, as compiled in the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) Study “The Class of 2013,” are consistently higher for those under the age of 25 than for older workers. This gap between older and younger workers has grown greater since the Great Recession than at any time since 1970.

Figure 1.1 Unemployment rate of workers who are less than 25 years old and all workers, 1969–2013

Note: Shaded areas denote recessions.

Source: Shierholz et al. (2013), Figure A.

Education also plays a critical role in determining your prospects for getting a job and how much you will earn (see Chapter 7 for more details on this point). The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics2 neatly sums up the correlation between the level of education one achieves and their employment and earnings prospects (see Figure 1.2). This doesn’t mean that college grads will necessarily get jobs that match or make use of their education. However, when employers have a choice (and experience is not a deciding issue), they are more likely to hire and pay more to a candidate with a higher level of education. This education premium, which has doubled over the last 30 years, from $17,411 in 1979 to $34,969 in 2012, will continue to grow.3

Figure 1.2 Earnings and unemployment rates by educational attainment

Note: Data are for persons aged 25 and over. Earnings are for full-time wage and salary workers.1

Source: Data Table from Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Population Survey (2013)

Although unemployment rates are consistently higher for those under the age of 25 than for older workers, those with college degrees have significantly lower unemployment and higher wages than do those without.

Higher education certainly helps, but it does not guarantee a job. When comparing the linkage between education and employment across nine countries, for example, a McKinsey Center for Government study4 found that 48 percent of U.S. companies contend that a lack of candidate skills is an important reason for their inability to fill empty positions.

Accenture’s 2013 Skills and Employment Trends Survey: Perspectives on Training5 confirmed these findings. Executives at 46 percent of surveyed large U.S. companies claimed concern that they won’t have the skills their company will need in the next one to two years.6 Thirty-eight percent said they would hire more people if they could find qualified candidates.7 These skill gaps are twofold:

• Many applicants do not have the required hard skills (especially in IT, engineering, sciences, and sales).

• Even those that have these hard skills may lack soft skills such as leadership, written and oral communication, an entrepreneurial mindset, or the ability to drive change.

Recent graduates, in contrast, generally do believe their education has prepared them to get and succeed in jobs. According to Accenture’s 2013 College Graduate Survey, 84 percent of surveyed 2012 graduates thought their investment in education was worthwhile and 70 percent of those who were employed thought it prepared them for their jobs.8 To the extent they did find it difficult to find a job, 48 percent thought it was primarily due to their major.9 Only 16 percent attributed it to deficiencies in their school. (In contrast, a 2012 McKinsey study found that ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Abstract
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Transformation of the U.S. Jobs Market
• Chapter 2: Why the Jobs of Tomorrow Won't Be Like Those of Today
• Chapter 3: The Skills You Will Need for Tomorrow's High-Skill Careers
• Chapter 4: Twenty Steps to Your Dream Career
• Chapter 5: Discovering Your Passions, Your Skills, and Yourself: Steps 1 and 2
• Chapter 6: Crafting Your Career Goals and Your Professional Brand: Steps 3 Through 10
• Chapter 7: The College Conundrum: Steps 10 Through 12
• Chapter 8: The College Equation: Steps 10 Through 14
• Chapter 9: Alternative Ways of Getting an Advanced Education: Steps 10 Through 14
• Chapter 10: Your First Job as Launchpad for a Lifelong Career: Steps 15 Through 20
• Chapter 11: You CAN Have It All, But You Will Have to Work for It
• About the Author
• Notes
• References
• Index
• Adpage
• Backcover