Being committed when it comes to career choices

It's a Wednesday night, and I have had a full day of modifying my resume and job searching. I have had to recently change my resume and implement the key words and experiences that would be related to my position. Since I have had ten jobs(three of which were internships), employers in recent interviews kept asking me why I had so many different experiences. I found it to be a strange question, because I thought having more professional experiences were more appealing than having consistent experience. What do I mean exactly?

In my work experience I have had technical, medical, educational, financial, and sales experience. When I would apply for an accounting position they would ask about why I had non-accounting experiences. If I applied for sales, they would ask why I bothered with accounting. It would appear that some fields are at odds. But most importantly employers don't like a resume with too many different experiences. It spells out "the candidate wasn't sure about what he wanted to pursue". I think to myself that's funny, I didn't realize I had to know exactly what I had to do since freshman year of college.

Honestly I feel that employers are just doing anything they can to "weed out" or filter applicants. That's fine with me because that is just apart of capitalism. We get more competitive during tough times. Whether the true winner ends up on top or not, we leave in conclusion with good faith. Some might disagree. But again this is not a political article, therefore we shall move on.

Today a long-time good friend of mine gave me a call from Texas A&M. We'll call him "Donatello". Since being isolated from my friends and everything I have ever known, I was extremely excited. Donatello is graduating with an engineering degree this semester and  called me to ask me for advice on whether he should take a pending job offer. How did I respond?

The day before I had reflected on a job offer I had last semester in Austin for a $42,000 as a Credit Analyst. I hadn't graduated yet, and thought that this offer was low for the average salary a mccombs accounting student was getting. Plus it wasn't the job I really wanted. If I had taken that job I would have always wondered if I could have done better without even knowing. I even told the recruiter I thought he was low-balling me. He said "considering the market, I don't think so". I realized now after three months of job searching that he was right. It wasn't a low offer.

So I responded to my Donatello and told him "it depends on what you want".  He wanted to live in Texas but the job might take him out-of-state. He was considering graduate school and or waiting it out to look for a job in Texas. I told him that few people get exactly what they want and that he would be better off taking the right job even if it wasn't in the right location.

"I've known engineering grads who didn't become engineers. They became the IT Business Analyst that is in demand today. And you know what? They will never be able to switch to engineering again (unless the go to graduate school). It's a loss of skills that they never get to apply"

The moral of this story? Companies don't like to see college grads who look like they don't know exactly what career they want to pursue. They would rather see you just one experience applicable to your job than one experiences accompanied by others. Employers want depth of knowledge rather than breadth of knowledge. College grads do not have the greatest reputation right now. Most of them are perceived as non-committal when it comes to a specific career.

If you have the opportunity to accept a position that would get you out of the college grad title, go for it. If you have the opportunity to find professional experience that contributes to what you want to do, make sure you would do it regardless of pay or location. Most importantly find out what you want to do before you graduate.

But if your anything like me and you prefer a breadth of knowledge, you prefer to be flexible and limitless, this is easier said than done. Without my plethora of different experiences, I would always wonder what would have happened if I went a different route. Personally I perceive some career choices to be a limiting. To me some choices made in life give you less freedom than others. One opportunity taken is another opportunity lost. More on this later...