Find Yourself, Find a Paycheck

For me, preparing to enter the corporate world was a lot like being reborn. At the end of my senior year of college, I felt the same sense of discomfort that a baby must feel when leaving the safety of his mother's womb. I freaked out about being unemployed and having to move back home, so I stormed my university's career center and wreaked havoc on every job catalog and database I could get my hands on. I needed a job ASAP, and I was willing to take anything I could get, regardless of whether or not I was interested in the occupation. After all, it was only my first job, right? The media reinforced my belief that because I was 22, I wasn't supposed to have a clue. Alexandra Robbins and Abby Wilner, authors of Quarterlife Crisis: The Unique Challenges of Life in Your Twenties, define a quarterlife crisis as the “overwhelming instability, self-doubt, and sense of panicked helplessness faced by twenty-somethings as a result of constant change and too many choices.” I became complacent, thinking that because I'd inevitably change my mind a million times, I might as well put off the soul-searching.

Even if this approach seems perfectly legitimate to you, I don't recommend it. First of all, prospective employers don't like unfocused candidates; they want to believe that you've been preparing to work for them forever. Also, switching careers multiple times just for the hell of it sounds like a lot of work to me. You need a lot of training and experience to become proficient in a career, and once you have a family to support, will you be able to afford to pursue the job you love at a $30,000 entry-level salary? Along those same lines, your 20s is the best time to get to a respectable level on the corporate ladder. During these years, you don't have competing responsibilities, and you are accountable to no one but yourself.

Given these factors, wouldn't it be much easier to make the smartest career choice you can now? Now don't get me wrong—discovering your true calling is not an exact science, and it's impossible to know what you will want to do 10 or 20 years from now. Some futurists even predict that people in their 20s will have several careers in their lifetimes that haven't been invented yet. Therefore, all of the self-reflection in the world will probably not result in a bulletproof career plan for the rest of your life. It's also possible that you will try a field you've researched and think is interesting, but will realize you hate it after a few months on the job. However, by doing a complete self-assessment while you're still in school or shortly thereafter, you will be able to decide on a path that provides the core skills and experience you will need to take you wherever you want to go in the future.