Ayeesha's job log: 2 | Prospects.ac.uk

My Prospects

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The revelation...

One mundane day of internet job searching I came across a job blog on this very website that said something that made my world come to a standstill. It said 'if I take on a job, I don’t necessarily have to turn it into a lifelong career.'

…What a simple, true and relieving idea! I felt so stupid for not having realised this profound concept earlier and having put myself under such ridiculous amounts of pressure for so long to find the one job that had to encapsulate my entire life’s happiness and tick all of my boxes. What is so wrong with doing something that is ‘alright for now’?

Why do 20 something’s believe that the moment they decide on what their first job will be, the rest of their life becomes set in stone with no room for spontaneity or excitement. It all starts to feel like the beginning of the end, but it doesn’t have to be that way.

Verification

With this revelation in mind I became obsessed and started talking to people older than me. My family, my friends, my friends' families, my family’s friends, everyone!

I became shocked to discover that none of them started out knowing exactly where they were going to end up. Try it, talk to people! More often than not you will find that during an entire lifetime, people change careers a few times and their whole lives don't fall apart because of it. People grow and change constantly and their jobs can adapt to them as easily as they can adapt to their jobs. Talking to people who have been through dramatic career changes can relieve a lot of pressure from someone who is just starting out, suddenly accepting a job you are 80% sure you want no longer feels like you are signing your life away.

CV blitz

So now, ready to accept any job that would get my ball rolling, I began my career quest by blasting my CV across cyberspace and applying for any and all jobs that I was qualified for. A wise tactic…I know! Having applied to millions of jobs to no avail (mainly jobs in admin, advertising, marketing or graduate recruitment for some reason), I began to feel like the universe wasn’t responding to my tiny cries for employment. Was I some kind of leper to employers? Why wouldn’t someone want me as an admin assistant/secretary? I’m organised, I can type, I know how to work a photocopier, I make great tea, I am very polite and I have a First Class degree! What's not to love?!

After a few irritating weeks with no responses I realised that my efforts had been wasted and that if I really wanted fate to start doing me some favours, it was time to seriously specify what I was looking for. But how?

Focus!....on what?

It occurred to me that whilst I was zapping applications off to various jobs I always tended to avoid the ones with long or boring job titles that I didn’t understand or had never heard of. You know which jobs I mean, the kind that when you’d tell people what you did for a living, they’d falsely smile and politely nod, but walk away not knowing. Not all job titles allow you to visualise what exactly that person does when they arrive at work every morning (or more importantly how much holiday time they get every year).

That’s when I discovered Prospects’ 'Explore types of jobs', this fabulous little section on this very website that explains (in layman’s terms) what different careers are and what they entail on a day-to-day basis. Brilliant! A piece of advice to anyone as confused as me… spend time looking at this! It tells you everything you have always wanted to know but have felt too stupid to ask.

The List

So I spent some time making a list, 'The List' if you will, of all my skills, qualifications and personality traits in one column and all the careers they could manifest into if I focused on them. E.g I have a BSc in Psychology and Social Anthropology, I love kids, I’m an artist and a people person therefore possible jobs for me right now (without further training of any kind) would include Tutor, Educational Assistant, Academic or Market Research Assistant, Customer Service Advisor etc. Then I crossed off all the ones I wouldn’t ever want to do and looked at what I was left with.

Once you finish a Social Science degree it’s easy to feel either like you are qualified for nothing and no one is going to hire you, or as though you are qualified for everything and you don’t know what you want to do. I felt the latter, so making this list helped me see that although there were A LOT of jobs I am currently eligible for, there are far fewer industries than I would have guessed. Most of my potential careers were in Education, Media, Publishing or Academia.

Finally having a realistic list of 'options' in hardcopy, which was strangely lighter than I thought it would be, gave me hope that somewhere inside, I must actually know what I want!

Read Ayeesha's previous job log:

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