Career advice: How did you find your path?

[Peter]

Currently job hunting and looking to make a career pivot. Sick of being underpaid for doing work I "love," and need to turn my fine arts background into something more lucrative and local (Madison, WI area). Wondering how others here have navigated similar transitions. Did your education lead you straight to your current career or have you made pivots? Would love to hear stories and advice. Thanks!

 

[clonefreek]

Currently job hunting and looking to make a career pivot. Sick of being underpaid for doing work I "love," and need to turn my fine arts background into something more lucrative and local (Madison, WI area). Wondering how others here have navigated similar transitions. Did your education lead you straight to your current career or have you made pivots? Would love to hear stories and advice. Thanks!

So you have a degree in fine arts? What is your degree in? What are you doing now? Are you just looking to make more money or is there some other thing in mind you wanted to do?

 

[thatguy]

Hear onlyfans.com is profitable.

Hated making money for other people, aligned myself with smarter people than I am, their bottom is my top, it has worked so far. Don't let the fear of striking out keep you from swinging or whatever Babe Ruth said.

 

[clonefreek]

There is zero money in the fine arts, that is a pretty known fact around the world unless you are in the top .1%. Instead of making a pivot I would change directions completely. Plenty of money to be made without a degree.

 

[SpokaneCY]

Currently job hunting and looking to make a career pivot. Sick of being underpaid for doing work I "love," and need to turn my fine arts background into something more lucrative and local (Madison, WI area). Wondering how others here have navigated similar transitions. Did your education lead you straight to your current career or have you made pivots? Would love to hear stories and advice. Thanks!

I was a CPA and internal finance/auditing for years because that's what i trained in (because they made money, had nice lifestyle, multiple golf club memberships, all bad reasons). I'm also raging ADD. I was reading some accounting pronouncement 13-ish years ago and broke down in tears because I couldn't get through the simple reading. It's because my mind wouldn't let me. It was SO dull to me I couldn't command my brain to pay attention.

Saw a professional, diagnosed the ADD then did lots of reading on what makes ME tick. Lucky to find a gig at my current company that allowed me to work like my hair was on fire - the way I like it. Happens to be in the natural gas business and I'd never even THINK of that line of work but for the tasks and responsibilities that come with it...

So find out what makes YOU tick and look for ways to scratch that itch. Understand your work style, find out what you absolutely CAN'T do and avoid it. Find out what you LOVE to do and find avenues to accentuate it. I'd offer don't look for a job, but look for the work styles you like and be open to the "job" surrounding it.

Do the personality tests (lots of versions) and take them with a grain of salt. But useful info if you can look inward and honestly evaluate yourself and your blind spots.

I've also been lucky where I found the job that best suited me and the money followed. I've never had to lead with the money side. But like I said - I've been lucky.

Best of luck - this can be a really rewarding time of self discovery. It can also be stressful as hell...

Last thing - my education just provided a skill set. My degree (I realized later) didn't require me to be an accountant or STAY as an accountant.

 

[BWRhasnoAC]

Currently job hunting and looking to make a career pivot. Sick of being underpaid for doing work I "love," and need to turn my fine arts background into something more lucrative and local (Madison, WI area). Wondering how others here have navigated similar transitions. Did your education lead you straight to your current career or have you made pivots? Would love to hear stories and advice. Thanks!

I went away from my engineering back ground and got into construction. It was hard but my intelligence set me apart from the others and after being totally green 5 years later I was running government jobs for a general contractor. Now I make more than my friends in engineering do.

 

[mywayorcyway]

I was reading some accounting pronouncement 13-ish years ago and broke down in tears because I couldn't get through the simple reading. It's because my mind wouldn't let me. It was SO dull to me I couldn't command my brain to pay attention.

Yikes. This happens to me often. Should open my eyes to it.

 

[BCClone]

I have landed every job and business by who I knew. Attach to the right people and paths get easier. Jobs are out and 100k is possible for anybody who doesn’t have a disability that would hold them back. It comes down to choices and priorities. Where do you allow yourself to live, how much time are you willing to spend working, are you willing to go back to school to gain more degrees or certifications.

Many people I know say they make more in the knew job after they were let go from a previous one. Work the connections you have. whatever service club you were in is your best connection. Rotary have me two of my three jobs I had while employed for someone else.

 

[BCClone]

Yikes. This happens to me often. Should open my eyes to it.

Why I don’t read books, I get bored and daydream after 4-5 pages.

 

[brianhos]

Hear onlyfans.com is profitable.

.... their bottom is my top....

 

[throwittoblythe]

Still working on finding mine. Got a BS and MS in Civil Engineering from ISU. Started work for one of the biggest construction companies in America. Loved the work, saw some of the biggest construction projects around, traveled to edges of the continent, etc, etc.

Got tired of that when kids came along, so decided to switch to a regional engineering firm for more stability. Was there 2 months before I realized it wasn't going to work. Sitting in a cube all day just drove me nuts.

After 10 months at that job, I was recruited away by another big contractor and took it just to get out. This new job was in business development, so didn't really use my degrees at all, just my general knowledge of the construction world. Was a good gig, but not challenging at all. Job was $100k+ and only required about 6 hours of real work each week. I couldn't handle that amount of boredom (more cubicles, too). So, after about 14 months there, I took another gig with my current company.

Still working for a contractor, but much smaller than any other company I've worked at. Work is still in business development and proposals. I really loved it at first, helped win some big/key projects for my company so I'm viewed very favorably. Been here 3 years, but I've reached the point of boredom again and started looking. Recently accepted a position with a similar size company that will take me back to my engineering roots. Job is 100% WFH, but with travel a few days every other week. Will be nice to get back into the field, as well. In 1-2 years, they expect me to be running a whole region of the country for them, so much more leadership in that role.

As you can see, I've gone toward and away from my degrees, but always stayed in the same industry (civil engineering/construction). However, I've learned quite a bit about myself: 1) I have to stay busy all the time at work, I cannot stand sitting idle and watching the day crawl by, 2) I have to feel like my work is important and valued by my boss/company, I cannot handle doing menial tasks, even if I'm paid well to do it, and 3) I have to have something I'm working toward, whether that's a promotion, a project goal, or a bonus, I have to have a longer term goal I'm striving toward or a I tend to spin my wheels.

My advice:

1. There idea of a "dream job" is very rare. Most people just find a job that is good enough 80% of the time to allow you to put up with the 20% of BS.
2. You'll never really know if you will like some jobs until you try them. Finding your way is about iterating. Try something, if it doesn't work, then shift gears, etc, etc. You can't be a job hopper, but trying a job for a few years then realizing it's not for you is totally normal.
3. Seek out mentors to help in your decision making. In each of my job switches, I've reached out to multiple mentors of mine (this includes friends, not just old dudes) to help me see things from multiple perspectives.

Good luck. PM me if you want to dive deeper.

 

[cycloner29]

I quit my first job with no back up plan. My boss wanted me to stay on as long as I could. I turned in my resume to the Ag Placement office with Roger Bruene. He told me that the place I had interned at was looking to hire someone. I went and interviewed a week later and got the job. I was living in Nebraska and my girlfriend, now wife, was still going to ISU.

Over my years in the ag industry, I learned two major things 1) Be honest to people you get a lot more respect for it and people remember that. 2) never burn any bridges.

It must have worked as I got noticed for what I did and was asked if I thought about changing jobs out of the blue one day. I had nothing to lose. I told my boss at the time that I was approached about a job, the honesty thing. She didn't want to lose me but her hands were tied in any kind of a promotion/raise situation. Interviewed for the job and was offered a sales job and I took it. That was working well until the ag economy and all the mergers in the seed industry started to happen. Things got tough, no raises, working more hours, being put under a microscope. Went to a trade show and ran into a guy I used to work with. He was going to retire in a year, the don't burn any bridges thing here, and told him I wasn't real happy in my position anymore. He brought his boss over and we talked. A couple months later he wanted to interview me and they would find a spot for me. Interview was informal and at Hickory Park. We made me an offer a couple days later, I counter offered, he accepted it and I am very happy with were I am at today.

 

[AuH2O]

Hear onlyfans.com is profitable.

Hated making money for other people, aligned myself with smarter people than I am, their bottom is my top, it has worked so far. Don't let the fear of striking out keep you from swinging or whatever Babe Ruth said.

I think Babe Ruth said “You gonna eat that?”, “You gonna smoke that?”, “You gonna drink that?”, and “Why does it burn when I pee?”

 

[SpokaneCY]

Why I don’t read books, I get bored and daydream after 4-5 pages.

Picture books. With pop up things.

 

[Cyched]

Currently job hunting and looking to make a career pivot. Sick of being underpaid for doing work I "love," and need to turn my fine arts background into something more lucrative and local (Madison, WI area). Wondering how others here have navigated similar transitions. Did your education lead you straight to your current career or have you made pivots? Would love to hear stories and advice. Thanks!

Theres always the option of becoming a gigolo. Or maybe a juggalo if you remain unemployed.

 

[ISUCyclones2015]

(There's a TL;DR at the end)

I've found my passion early on and set myself up during that with various decision points.

The biggest one was back in high school. My high school was part of a system that had opportunities to go to a career center for half the day instead of high school full time starting junior year. It had several programs like Graphic Design, EMS, Nursing, Horticulture, Auto Mechanics etc. Lots of them included college credit.

Mine was in Network Computer Technology. I knew I enjoyed computers a lot, I knew I was a nerd with computers having built one when I was 11 years old. But I didn't know if I would actually enjoy it as a career more than a hobby. So after a lot of discussions with my Dad about what would be best for me, I decided to go to the Career Center since it was free and I would kind of treat it like a freshman year in college. If I didn't like my "major then hey, I didn't waste a year's worth of tuition at least.

It turns out I really enjoyed it and the beauty of the career center was that if you could find a job/internship related to your program then instead of going to school, you could go to work instead of school. I found an internship at the local health department in their IT department. So my senior year of high school, I went to school for 2 classes and then went to work for 5-6 hours getting paid $16 an hour. I was living like a king at 17.

During that time I knew I wanted to do a major involving computers and was trying to decide between an engineering focused one or business/IT combo. I decided on the business/IT combo with MIS because it would give me more options and I hated the math involved in engineering anyway.

I made it a goal to do a totally different type of internship each year so I could get an understanding of the different roles in IT. First year I had an internship about upgrading computers to Windows 7 from XP. Second year I did an IT Project Management internship. Third year I did a network engineering internship. Each year I re-assessed what I did and what I wanted to do. Going into senior year I decided I kind of.... liked it all? Maybe I just enjoyed doing nerdy **** too much.

Anyway after discussing with my favorite professors and some other mentors from my internships. I decided I would shoot for a consulting type of job but apply for anything and everything. I applied to over 200 jobs my senior year. I went to every single booth at the business and engineering career fairs (that were hiring Computer people). I was determined to get a good job that I would enjoy. I eventually got several job offers from companies that I wanted and made a decision along with some deliberation with tons of people I trusted... I decided on a consulting job that wasn't the highest paying but provided me tons of intangibles like being able to help on different projects with different customers with different problems with the latest and greatest technology. Plus I got to travel all over the country and world and it checked a lot of boxes for me.

I'm still with that company today and have been enjoying my job almost every day.

TL;DR
I knew what I wanted to do all along but there were several potential pivot points within my career area of focus.
I talked with people I trusted every step of the way to see if I was on the right track and to see if they had a point of view I wasn't thinking of.
I kept my area of expertise broad enough to pivot as needed.
I went for a job that helped keep me sane with intangibles like not working with the same company/people/project all day every day for 30 years, travel, and latest and greatest technology.

 

[Rabbuk]

ayahuasca

 

[3GenClone]

My degree at ISU was in Broadcast Journalism. My on-campus job was with the AudioVisual department installing projectors and speakers over the summers. When I graduated I quickly realized that everyone in broadcast had 20+ years more experience than me, and the only way to break in was to move somewhere else for little pay. After spending a summer freelancing, drinking every night and crashing in parents basement I found an AV integration company 3-blocks away from my parents house. I applied there and got to do installs all over the Midwest. My broadcast background helped me understanding signal flow, but I wasn't very handy until I got that job. The smartest guys I worked with went to technical schools and knew way more (and made way more) than me, and I was working alongside guys whose previous experience ranged from setting up radios with the National Guard to hanging gutters. I moved on from that integrator to what I thought was going to be my dream job and after 5 years I moved on to a job that challenges me every day and where I can be seen as a leader. I may not be here forever, but what I do know is that I have found my career and I'll pursue this as long as I can.

 

[Peter]

thanks everyone. It’s great hearing all these different stories. And the advice is great.

 

[cyclone4L]

Started at ISU with the intent of becoming an engineering professor.
Freshman year Cumulative GPA: 4.00
Sophomore year Cumulative GPA: 3.84
Junior: 3.61
Senior 3.4
My advising professor told me to not go into academia (great advice).

Got an engineering job. 6 months later: fired.
Got another. 1 year: fired.
Got another. fired.
Another. fired.
Turns out if you don't have a passion, the will to try is low.

I knew I needed to find something I liked to do.
Joined a startup software company. Worked 18 hour days for less money than the previous 8 hour days and I learned the value of pursuing what I LOVED and not what people told me I should do.
I later left to start my own project... and here we are today.