Career Advice to 20-Somethings: Create Value as a Mobile Creative
adUnit = document.getElementById("google-ads-aP6C");
google_ad_client = "ca-pub-1897954795849722";
adUnit = document.getElementById("google-ads-aP6C");
adWidth = adUnit.offsetWidth;
if ( adWidth >= 999999 ) {
/* GETTING THE FIRST IF OUT OF THE WAY */
} else {
google_ad_slot = "0";
adUnit.style.display = "none";
}
Finding work that fits who you are is rarely easy, especially if you don’t fit into the mainstream, and usually it requires a lot of compromises, hard work and dead-ends. But that’s the process.
Establishing a satisfying career is difficult in today’s economy, doubly so for those who find life within hierarchical institutions (corporate America and government) unrewarding, and triply so for those burdened with student loan debt and college educations/diplomas of uncertain market value or those re-entering the job market with skills that have been marginalized.
Given that I wrote a book entitled Get a Job, Build a Real Career, and Defy a Bewildering Economy, it’s unsurprising that I get emails from young people asking for career advice.
I’ve also written essays of friendly advice such as A Teachable Moment: to the Young Person Who Complained About Her Job/Pay at Yelp and Was Promptly Fired.
Here is my response to a recent email from a 20-something in a familiar place: burdened with student loan debt, aware that the self-serving institutional shuck-and-jive is false (get a college degree and your future is secure), and uncertain how to proceed.
Here is my correspondent’s email:
I wish my faith in our conventional institutions had faded sooner, but I borrowed a lot of money in my early 20s only to find out that most of what I was learning was utterly useless.
But I can’t go back. Only forward. So with thousands of dollars in debt aside, and limited experience in the professional world (food service, retail, and industrial construction), where in the hell can I start? I get a lot of the concepts you are proposing. I get the need to create value for people. I’ve just never really seen it done in a “professional” environment. I’ve scrubbed floors, calibrated thermometers, bent tubing and made coffee. But intellectually this is obviously not satisfying.
I want to create value, I want to solve problems. Not just for altruistic reasons, but because it is the only thing that seems challenging.
So what would you tell a late 20 something, who’s not used to wearing a suit and tie, starting from the bottom, with the intellectual capacity to do more than scrub floors? Because I guarantee you… there are plenty of us waiting in the shadows to exercise our inalienable human right to achievement, collaboration, and freedom.
A lot of us just resent the monstrosity that centralized thinking has created. But we need to put that bitterness aside and come out of the shadows to contribute.
Extremely well said. Here is my response:
You’re right–there’s often very little value created in “professional” environments, which is partly why so many people are dissatisfied/frustrated with their jobs/ work life.
My book Get a Job, Build a Real Career has some suggestions, which I will summarize here.
1. Lower your cost basis (cost of living) so you can live a satisfying life while earning comparatively little money. This starts with the usual drill: cook all your own food, waste nothing, etc. The first bit of advice a successful artist tells people is “get accustomed to poverty.” But low income doesn’t have to mean unhappiness/destitution.
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-1470694951173-5'); });
(deployads = window.deployads || ).push({});