If you are a college student trying to figure out your first career, the goal isn’t just to find a job you can do. It’s to choose a career that won’t leave you burned out. Here is what I have learned about how to do that.
I have spent a few years in the college recruiting space, with the last three years of my life specifically dedicated to designing intern programs that prepare college students to enter the workforce. In my pursuit of the “secret formula” or “golden rule” for helping college students become full-time employees, I found that it isn’t always an exact science. I can’t force people into jobs that I feel are a good fit for them. So much of a career and the pursuit of happiness comes from an individual’s natural gifts, interests, and energy. It has nothing to do with what a company thinks is best for them and everything to do with a person choosing a career they truly desire.
Where Most People Make Mistakes
As companies, we are incentivized to fill empty positions with capable candidates. That is the reason most intern programs and college recruiting departments exist: to fill positions so that a company can continue to grow into the future.
As candidates, we often view a job opportunity strictly as an exchange of our skills for money. That is really the primary metric we know how to evaluate a job on. In job markets like the current one, we aren’t even particularly picky about the pay—any job offer is welcome. Consequently, candidates can be too quick to jump at the first opportunity that comes along.
That is how the majority of the job market operates - companies post jobs, candidates see an opportunity to get money, so they take said job. If we are honest with ourselves, the primary question companies and candidates are trying to answer is “Can this person do this job well?” We are all guilty of it. Anyone who has ever browsed job postings and thought “I’m capable of that” or “I could easily do that job” knows what I mean.
While being capable of doing a job is important, that should never be the primary reason a person dives headfirst into a career path. I think every person should be real with themselves: we are capable of a lot of things, including plenty we would never choose to do. Every person has a skill they are capable of but would HATE doing every single day. For me, that is cold calling people. While I am capable of it, I would never seek out a job where that is my main responsibility. For others, it may be public speaking, detail-oriented processes, customer service jobs, etc.
My point is that the primary starting place for our entire workforce revolves around capability. A common cause of burnout is people taking jobs they are capable of but that completely drain their energy. That brings us to a much better starting place: a person’s work energy.
A Better Starting Place
I am a firm believer that each person is given natural gifts and interests, and that these combine to form what I call work energies. Think of them as your built-in superpowers. When you complete tasks that fall within your positive work energies, you feel good! That is when you feel like you are operating at your best. That’s not to say it doesn’t feel like hard work, but you rarely feel overwhelmed doing this type of work.
On the flip side, we are all built with negative work energies too. Honestly, these are easier to spot early in your career. These are the types of tasks you DREAD doing, and after a day spent on them, you feel completely drained of all your energy.
Everyone should focus on their energies, because that is where you start to find the secret formula to your career. When you can identify your positive work energies and recognize your negative ones, you can start designing a career you truly desire. The idea is that through experience (trial and error), you will begin to make a list of what you want in your career and what you should stay away from. With more and more data points, you get a clearer picture of where you want to be.
How Do You Choose Your Next Job?
Each job on the market contains a wide range of tasks and responsibilities. However, it is also very common for a job to have one or two primary tasks that take up the majority of a person’s time. It is like how a salesperson and an IT analyst may both have aspects of their job that require the skill to interact with and positively influence people, but the salesperson would use that skill far more day to day.
The best thing you can do when looking for a job is to read the job description (and then listen during the later-stage interviews) for indications of the type of work you would spend the majority of your time doing. Now, realistically, you will not have a first job where you do tasks you love 100% of the time, but it would be ideal for at least one of your primary tasks to be something that gives you energy.
Liberty Index
People have been finding good careers through trial and error for years. It is a tried-and-true method, but it takes a lot of time and frustration along the way. We here at Liberty Summit Consulting designed a 15-minute career assessment that adds structure to this “work energies” concept, helps you understand where you fit into all of it, and gives you helpful tips on what to look for in your next job search. There is so much more to the personalized report, but that is the piece connected to this topic. Look for future articles covering other parts of building a career.
Final Takeaways
We all know people who have burned out in their jobs. I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy. Life is too short to take a job where you are constantly getting drained. When you are looking at jobs, start asking yourself, “Are these the types of tasks that bring me energy or drain my energy?” because that is a much better starting place for building a career. Good luck in your endeavors! My team and I are always here and ready to support you in any way we can.
