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Getting that first job

Which opportunities should I pursue?

written by Michael Schmitz

I had about 12 different work experiences before I graduated.

Apart from delivering newspapers and teaching English, I also worked as a secretary for a school, produced light bulbs in a factory, packaged sweets in a warehouse, trained children and adults in Taekwondo, was the night manager for a hotel, sold website design services, earned money doing data entry for the pharmaceutical industry, had an internship as a translator, worked in sales selling software licenses and did some consulting for a startup.

And all of these experiences helped me in understanding the kind of challenges that employees and companies meet when trying to be successful in that industry.

Going back to the earlier article about happiness, you already know a bit about certain industries, and are probably fairly clueless about many others.

This is perfectly fine. There are thousands of options, and it’s impossible to know everything.

But if you want to find a great, well-paying job, then the first thing you might want to do is expand your knowledge base and understanding the existing industry is a key part of that task.

Evaluate your options before you start applying.

A good application takes a bit of time, and after thinking about question one you should have multiple paths, roles and industries open to you – you certainly don’t want to waste time sending applications for jobs that are not worth your time.

To make things easier, we can classify industries by their maturity.

Are they growing, mature and stable or in decline?

Let’s look at growing industries first.

These hot and sexy industries are often centered around information, bio- and energy technology that require a certain skill set (currently highly in demand) from each applicant.

These industries are highly appealing even if you do not belong to the group of engineers that design and build the products, but instead you could provide valuable services that help these companies become more successful.

Whether you are an educator (run their kindergarten or support the management division), have studied psychology (metrics-based HR) or design (User interface design, layouts, process knowledge), your skills are in demand if you can adapt your current knowledge to the relevant requirements in that industry.

Companies in this sector have the steepest learning curves – you will quickly learn about HTML, RNA and Betz CP values, and quite often there are many new concepts that are not even defined yet.

The biggest advantage for you, career wise, lies in the freedom and the growth that is common in these industries.

Freedom in terms of how to perform certain tasks - nobody else did it before - is coupled with rapid personal and financial growth if you succeed in providing value for the company.

Quite often, salary schemes will be flexible and coupled to stock options, which might result in a lower base salary, but a higher chance to profit when the company grows.

In addition, your chance to advance internally and within the industry is higher in growing fields, as turnover is generally higher and demand for skilled candidates large – not even including the fact that your success is to a large part dependent on your personal contribution.

Startups and small- and medium sized enterprises can move quickly depending on market needs and your ideas, which is something that is much more difficult in larger companies.

If you are looking for a higher-risk, higher-reward relationship to your job, join a startup in a hot field.

You might even want to accept a lower salary initially to receive the chance to create your own role and position inside the organization – and to benefit further down the line when that company grows.

Stable and mature industries tend to be less exciting, but are a safer bet.

Organizations active in them often have organized unions, regular work hours and a good or at least predictable entry salary and career progression attached.

If you want stability for your family, then look for opportunities in these fields.

Whether it is banking, chemistry, pharmacy, education (not sure whether that one will stay stable, especially at the university level), accounting, tax advice or certain types of engineering, you can expect a regular amount of turnover and opportunity.

Most university courses and classes are tailored to provide you with insight into these kinds of positions and your qualifications should match their demands well.

The largest disadvantage here is the size of the companies and the amount of bureaucracy and politics attached.

If you feel happy working in a regulated and predictable environment with limited freedoms, then this is not a problem – but please note that your career progression might depend more on the fact that someone above you is leaving than your own personal achievements.

This leaves the declining industries.

Don’t let yourself be fooled by the attractiveness of the hot and sexy growth industries – even if an industry might be in decline, your personal opportunity might still lie there.

It can be very profitable to become a specialist in a slowly shrinking industry – especially if many people retire and few people are qualified to replace them.

These industries are generally easy to recognize, especially if you have studied something related to that field: You might have been one of a select few students in your courses – a friend of mine studied in a course with just one other student, prompting the professor to change the lectures to cup-of-coffee talks in his office.

However, you need to be careful to not end up with a skill-set that is not transferable when that industry shuts down completely.

You might also be surprised by the speed of the final decline, especially if you intend to work in a highly unpopular industry whose fate is largely decided by politics, such as nuclear energy, pharmaceutical or space technology (NASA/ESA come to mind).

If that declining industry is profitable, then you might still earn a good or even very good salary – but as the market is shrinking, the opportunities for advancement will become smaller and smaller.

And don’t even think about rocking the boat – once an organization is dedicated to providing a certain kind of service (especially if it’s highly regulated as well), then your opportunities to be creative and to build your own path are extremely limited.

Still, if you have a certain liking for older technologies or think you found an opportunity, then I can only suggest that you at least check out the options.

At the very least, you will gain valuable experience and can always try to improve your transferable skill set (which we will discuss in another article) while you are on the job.

You should analyze for yourself whether the industries accessible to you are growing, mature or in decline and whether entering one of them is worth your time and effort.

Sure, you could earn money in all of them, but investing years of your life without growing personally and becoming more valuable doesn’t seem smart.

Choose wisely and try to learn as much as possible.

Ideally, you create a list of open questions which should be answered for all industries and opportunities.

You can then start finding answers to these questions by following the easy road: Look at the company websites, read industry reports and job reviews, and try to find additional information on the internet.

An even smarter approach requires a bit more effort, but will yield much larger rewards: Speaking with the experts.

If you are interested in an industry where your knowledge is limited, then informing yourself first via the existing sources and then moving into personal interviews is one of the best paths to take.

Sort all the information you have, then write down additional questions that are only answerable by someone who works or worked in that industry or role.

Once you have a list of 10-15 good questions, start looking for people in your network (see the network article) and reach out to them.

Whether you speak with your parents, grandmother or your neighbors’ grandmother doesn’t matter, as long as your get to connect with someone who really knows the industry and is willing to help.

And you will find that many people are willing to answer your questions if you are prepared, polite and focused on what you want to find out.

Build yourself a list of contacts that could help you out, then write or call them.

Simply ask for 10-15 minutes of their time to listen to their advice regarding your career choices.

Even better, invite them for lunch (at their work or at a restaurant close to it) and meet them in person.

If you are lucky, they might bring a colleague and you can build your connections within that company even further.

You are going to work for the next 40 years or more, so investing a few weeks in this kind of information gathering won’t hurt – especially if it results in a great job offer and a happy and rewarding position afterwards.

If you do this correctly, you will quickly have a good insight into the industry and roles that are available to you – which brings you to your next step: What are your limitations?