[SERIOUS] How do you do figure out what job you want after high school?
This might not be the best community for this, but I don’t know what job I want after high school. I’m afraid of pursuing a job that I’ll end up hating. How do I figure out what job I want when I grow up?
If you decide to go to college, you have a couple years of general ed classes to get out of the way. Pick a wide variety of things you are interested in. If one clicks maybe it’s the career for you.
This. College is useful for trying out difference career paths and subjects. But hopefully you end up enjoying something that will pay off all the debt you just accrued.
Better yet: you’ll likely be FORCED to take a LOT of GE courses, especially in your first couple of years. Typically it’s like “you need to take x number of courses from these categories.” Categories include: arts, stem, history, humanities, etc… you’ll have a lot of choices.
Well, you either know or you don’t. Most people don’t. So you go and try something until it sticks. Going to university as the other commenter said is also a great idea.
And you can always change career path if something else is seems more interesting at a later time. I did at a relatively late age and know of plenty of other people who did the same. It’s never too late to try something else if the first thing doesn’t works out.
you pick something that you are competent at that pays the bills and keeps you alive and gives you enough free time to work on what you actually want to do
traditional boomer advice was to pick something you love, but after putting in endless hours of doing it over and over just to make enough to keep you fed and provide a place to sleep, you will grow to resent it with a passion – for your own mental health, you absolutely must maintain a separation between the job and your personal life
I agree - I loved art in high school and really wanted to be an illustrator. But I graduated in 08 (recession) and I didn’t have the confidence to try to make it as a freelancer or whatever.
I ended up choosing a really boring path in office work because I just wanted to make sure I was inside at a computer while I was working. At first it was so depressing - I had built my identity around my artwork. But I eventually found a new field that I loved and transitioned into that thanks to skills and resources from my boring office experience - I’m really happy with it all today and don’t regret anything.
I guess what I’m saying is that I’ve found happiness/success by disconnecting my identity from my occupation and focusing on the work environment I want instead of the content of the work.
I’m not sure if this is how you meant it, but I take competent in a bad connotation. I am competent in many skills, but some of them I would despise doing on a daily basis. I would base it on what you’re good at and what you wouldn’t mind doing daily.
You should pick something that pays the bills and gives you free time to do what you want, but it’s good for it to be something you find some enjoyment in. Not necessarily something you love. But something you can get some level of satisfaction from learning and doing.
Yea that seems about right. I wanna find a job that I’ll be content enough with doing for at least 5-10 years, but not necessarily something I love. Something that pays the bills is very important since it’s what you need to survive and I also don’t want to be stuck in a career where I’m struggling to survive or have room for my hobbies and free time.
If you can find something you love that pays okay, though, do that.
The saying that "if you're doing something you love you'll never work a single day" is true. I mean you're still working but it feels way better than doing something just for money.
When you're just working for money it feels like an imposition and like work is taking you away from life. But when you're in a job that you love, your whole day feels like part of your life, like you get to enjoy everything.
I lucked into a great job in my field, but I also figured out what I wanted to do by 15 IIRC. So I could make it happen when the luck struck.
There’s still “work stuff” like getting to meetings at a particular time I don’t love, and some tedious stuff too. There’s the HR training etc that’s annoying. But day to day I also get to ‘play’ with stuff I could never afford as a hobby.
Even if you find what you love, and get a job doing it doesn’t mean it’s a great job. Pay attention to others, do they stick around, or are they bailing ASAP? Is there a functional HR department (often not in small business and there are some stories there)? Do management seem to have a clue, or are they crap with unrealistic deadlines and budgets? Be ready to still change jobs inside whatever fields you like and get into.
Also, like somebody else said, try and figure out if you have to go to college for your field. Or if there’s an apprenticeship you need. The ‘try a bunch of different things’ isn’t bad advice, but while you can become a roofer pretty easily, you’re not trying out being a doctor…
I’m shocked people seem to agree with this so much. While there are certainly circumstances where you don’t have much choice, spending your life in a job/career that doesn’t give you meaning and fulfillment will probably depress everyone sooner or later.
Many people don’t find meaning and fulfillment through their jobs, and that’s okay. No one is saying go out and find a job you hate just to pay the bills, but the advice of finding something you love so much that you’ll feel like you’ve never worked a day in your life is inapplicable to most people. If you happen to be one of the few people in the world who love what you do, great. But the reality is that the vast majority of people do not make a career out of their passion, and that’s just fine.
To OP, find a job you don’t mind, one that gives you the right balance of money, time, and fulfillment in your life. Even if that fulfillment comes from things outside of work like hobbies, friends, family, or something else. And remember that the choices you make now are not set in stone. You can always change your mind later if you find you’re not happy.
You do you, but it would drain me too much to work a job just for the money if it doesn’t fulfill me in some way directly. I’d compare it to working a shit job your whole life with the goal to finally retire and enjoy life.
Only then, you’re too tired or have health problems, so you can’t enjoy life after all.
Are you working 80+ hours a week or something? If you have zero free time outside of work, I guess there’s no room in your life to find any kind of meaning or purpose outside your job. Then you’re left trying to find meaning in a shit job.
Trying to find a job that is “meaningful” that also pays the bills are few and far between. Most meaningful things in life don’t pay well or at all, or have very few job openings, or are extremely unstable (self employment or startups). Otherwise you’re left with your life “purpose” in a corporation, which only means “make more money”, which is pretty shallow at best.
Work-life balance is important, and I think keeping work and life separate is a huge part of that. Forcibly mixing the two only causes more stress, either from one adding to the other, or from severely limiting your job prospects overall. Making your job = life severely limits both.
This is certainly not an easy task! Hell, I am 46 years old and still figuring out life. 🤣 In all seriousness though, you will probably change careers 2-3x in your life or more. Maybe just figure out something that you could see yourself doing for the next 5-10 years and have a go at it? That would be my recommendation. Choose a career that will at least pay you enough so that you can live with a bit of comfort.
Yeah that’s probably the mindset I’m gonna have. A lot of people throughout the internet have been saying that you usually end up switching career paths a few times so I’ll probably try to look for something I can see myself doing for the next 5-10 years. Still gotta find that thing though!
It’s quite a challenge. Start with something that you think might interest you, look it up on the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) website. See what kind of education it requires and what the typical career progression is. Normally I don’t trust government websites but this is considered reliable and politically neutral.
When you start a career, you begin at what they call entry level. Then as you gain experience, you get promoted or you seek other opportunities in the same field that pay more money. Career progression is basically how you are advancing in the field.
Are you in Quebec? The CEGEP system there is specifically a great and cheap way to try out multiple career paths. It’s like a mix of trade school and the freshman year of every university faculty.
It’s still a system that sort of pushes you into university without any experience of what doing a real job is like, but it’s at least a good way to explore the academic side of a wide variety of subjects.
I heard somewhere that people on average will make 3 career changes during their lifetime. Which is not a hard fast rule of course but the point is to expect that your goals may change over time as you yourself will also likely change over time.
So in the meantime, I suggest pursuing stable work that gives you a comfortable standard living and maximizing the use of your free time to pursue enrichment in your life and not worrying too hard about trying to get satisfaction from your work.
Exactly! Who wants to do the same thing forever until they die? I'm not old but I'm getting there, and I've switched quite a few times. I started out in engineering, switched to PM, then banking, real estate, helped my wife with international trading, and in a couple years I'll probably drop that and buy a campground or something and run that until retirement. Don't overthink it, focus on yourself, your family, and your friends, and just do what seems fun at the time
I went to college for engineering, ended up switching to a math degree.
Figured out I liked computer science while taking CS classes for my math degree, minored in that and planned to be a software engineer.
Realized I don't want to code all day, got offered a sys engineer position.
Figured out DevOps existed a few years into working and now I do that
Most people don't know what they want to do and figure it out as they go. There are a lot of people that picked X for the money and stuck with it and hate their job.
Try stuff out! I ended up in a career very different than my major because I volunteered at an organization and ended up really enjoying what I did there.
I think community college is actually great for this because changing your major/exploring new coursework or opportunities is much cheaper than doing so at a regular college/University.
While Mike Rowe is kind of a piece of shit, he did say one right thing: “Stop looking for the “right” career, and start looking for a job. Any job. Forget about what you like. Focus on what’s available. Get yourself hired. Show up early. Stay late. Volunteer for the scut work. Become indispensable. You can always quit later, and be no worse off than you are today. But don’t waste another year looking for a career that doesn’t exist.”
There is no perfect job. There are jobs you make perfect for you. If the job you are in prevents that, you move on. Never wait too long for a promotion, as you can promote yourself by having the strength and will to find that promotion at a different company.
Honestly? You don’t. I was gonna try to be a sysadmin but I’m a product support engineer now. The point being shit doesn’t always work out the way you plan. Find something you are interested in, or think about what you truly enjoy doing. For me, it is quite simply the act of helping someone get something done, and fixing various software problems. No matter what job I have, if I can do one or both of those things and make a living I think I’ll be happy with it. Hope this helps.
You don’t. You’re highly likely going to go through some big psychological changes as you age that will probably cause perspective shifts about just who you are and what you want. And that’s biological. You’re going to experience other things that aren’t biological products that cause perspective shifts. You at 18 and you at 35 should be two fairly different people.
Hopefully you can find something that you continue to enjoy throughout life. If not it’s really not a big deal. Do what you have to, take opportunities given to you as they arise and you’ll probably end up somewhere you never expected. Work is work is work. Even if you love the field you can still hate work. It’s easier to make a change in career than to pigeonhole yourself into something that presents no way to diversify.
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