Posted by Brian McCullough
People are nervous out there.
One of the reasons I know this is because I’ve been getting an inordinate amount of Ask Brian emails that boil down to: “I’m in industry X. Do you think this is a good industry to be in or should I try another career?”
I have written a couple of posts on what careers look good going forward through the rest of this decade. But answering these questions individually isn’t helpful to anyone.
The bottom line is this: anyone can make a go of any career at any time. But not everyone can make a go of any career at any time.
My advice to all of you with trepidation about your job search in light of the current state of the economy:
Follow Your Heart And Do What You Love; The Rest Will Work Itself Out
The job market might ebb and flow. But if you truly have a passion for what you do, you CAN and probably will make a good living at it. Even in the tough times.
I’ll give you a good example of some logic behind this using a timely example.
A couple of years ago, people were literally flooding into real estate, for reasons we now understand all to well. And these days, in contrast, people are flooding out of real estate. If we polled our writers at ResumeWriters.com, I’m sure the number one career change category they’re dealing with this year is: Mortgage Broker/Real Estate agent.
So, here you have a whole bunch of people who jumped into real estate because it was hot and they could make a lot of money. Now they are jumping ship because the opposite is true.
But what if you truly love real estate? I mean, really, really have a love and a passion for it. In that case, you should probably stick it out.
The next couple of years should see a lot of turmoil and a lot of bloodletting in your industry. But when things finally turn around (and they WILL turn around eventually) the people who stuck it out and are still standing will probably find themselves in a greatly enhanced position.
The market will have consolidated. Like the Warren Buffetts of the world know, it’s in the tough times that you make your play and stake your claim. When things turn around, you could be the one holding the market in your hand.
Here’s another example:
Regular readers of this blog will know I have used this example before. But it’s a good one, so I’ll use it again.
We founded ResumeWriters.com at the height of the dot com bubble. And so we were there for the nuclear winter when the bubble burst. At one point, fully 1/3 of our clients were out of work techies.
Some of them got out of tech and moved on to another career path.
But I can say this with certainty: the tech folks that stuck with their career path are now doing very well. And the two clients we helped get hired at Google in early 2003? They’re multimillionaires now. Even in a nuclear winter, there are opportunities for the future; somewhere out there, good people are hiring.
I know this is the most Hallmark Card/Oprah-ish/Paula Abdul-on-American-Idol sort of feel-good advice I can offer, but when it comes to your career (and for most things in life) you should always follow your heart. If you’re doing what you love, everything else will fall into place. And just because the career that you love might be facing a challenging environment now, doesn’t mean it will be like that forever.
Today’s burst bubble career field is tomorrow’s growth industry 2.0.
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