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Some opportunities should
be missed
When opportunity knocks, open up
cautiously.
Maybe 2003 won't be a boom year, but pundits say we
won't stay in a recession forever. As the economy picks up, doors
will start opening for many of us. Beware of career opportunities
that look like quick fixes because often they are really career
derailments.
Figure out now what you want for your career so when
opportunities pop up, you can judge them in the context of long-term
goals you believe in.
Managing a career is a difficult process full of risks,
disappointments and feelings of hopelessness. People who stay on
track are people who trust themselves to know what will make them
happy and trust themselves to meet their goals.
Here are some examples of opportunities that derailed
careers:
The family-business derailment
Manny loved computers and spent 10 years as an information
technology consultant. Then he got laid off. He had never had to
look for a job in a bad economy. He sent out 20 resumes for IT jobs
and heard back from no one. He got frustrated and scared that no
one would ever hire him. His dad, on the other hand, wanted to retire
and sell his construction business. Manny saw a golden opportunity
to avoid a prolonged job hunt: He took over the family business.
But Manny never wanted to run a construction company. He says he
often finds himself fixing the company's computer network instead
of building the company's client network to drum up more business.
In hindsight, Manny says he could have suffered through a difficult
job hunt and remained in IT, but he can't dump his dad's business
now.
The grad-school derailment
As a college senior, my dad knew he wanted to be a history
teacher, but he took the LSAT because his father wanted him to be
a lawyer. My dad got a near-perfect score. So while he was applying
to Harvard's graduate program in history, he filled out the application
for law school, too. He got into a grad school for history, but
it wasn't Harvard. He did get into Harvard's law school, though.
And he thought, "Who passes up Harvard law?" So he went
there. He was hired by a top-tier law firm, but he never liked law,
and he was never good at it.
The gold-rush derailment
Harry was an economic development whiz. He turned run-down
cities into hipster destinations, and he had his eye on Los Angeles
for his next big job. But then he saw people making millions on
the Internet, and he wanted to make millions, too. So he decided
to dump his government-pay-scale field for the Internet. He hated
his Internet company: the manic pace, pretentious twenty-somethings
and waffling management. He suffered though months and months in
the name of making millions until the company went under. By then
the economy was a mess, and most cities had some form of a hiring
freeze. So the man who was a rising star in a field he loved is
unemployed after spending a year doing something that made him miserable.
These people knew what they wanted, but at a crucial
point diverged from the paths they set out for themselves.
An opportunity is only as good as its long-term effects
on your life. Career focus will help you tell the difference between
a good opportunity and a bad opportunity.
In 2003, trust yourself to set goals and meet
them. That way, when opportunity knocks, you won't budge for a quick
fix or a big sellout -- you'll focus on the path that is right for
you.
-- Posted: Dec. 30, 2002
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