Employment Focus: 'Career Jobs' vs 'Jobs just for now to make money'

Both of these two options seem pretty fruitless for poor old Cardamon at present, was wondering what people's experiences were, or if even dividing up job searching into these two groups is a good idea.

Bonus question, has anyone ever got anywhere by following any of the conflicting advice about getting a job you find online?

N.B. am aware of other jobs threads but haven't found one detailing this specific angle

i've never had the former, the latter's good enough tbh, it's only life and i wasn't doing anything with it anyway

the problem with the latter is that if you don't stay in them for long people assume you're not ready for the former, and if you do stay people assume they actually ARE the former and you find yourself stuck in a niche wondering how you ended up there

not that I ever sat down and thought "I would really like ___ to be my career" in the first place, for me "jobs for now..." were as much "...while I work out what I want to do" as "...to make money". I see that someone who had a grand master plan might have a more nuanced perspective

If you want to make money then it's probably best to have a specific skill that you focus on honing in a few respected places over time, in my experience there is a vanity to the kind of places that fling money at people, and they'll want you more if you're experienced in somewhere that has a dignity they lack.

It's hard to be more specific without knowing what you do for a living. There is definitely easy money out there though, especially in London.

I would say that the divide seems odd to me, IMO you'd do better if the career job and the moneymaker were in the same field, with the cash acting as compensation for compromising the former.

So ideally you'd know "what you want to do" (even if this isn't dream career) but where you did it would dictate whether it was a career job or just about the cash.

The two are never totally separate tho, a boring thing can still be improving your CV for a better thing.

When I started working 20 years ago, I didn't know that the working life was going to be so long. Most older people I was vaguely aware here in the UK seemed to retire in their mid-50s, especially the men.

Now that I'll be working to 67/68 or whatever, I wish I'd spent a bit more time thinking about finding a career that I actively enjoyed and thought useful. But you're encouraged to specialise so early for a career that could last almost 50 years.

Thanks guys, this is all clicking together for me.

FWIW, I am in the conventional unemployed graduate situation, getting turned down by professional roles in my career field (publishing, I go to all the things and watch all the relevant sites like a hawk but is v. difficult to get into) whilst also being called 'overqualified' for retail, administrative, etc, jobs. Somehow other people in my (not actually uncomfortable but booooooring position) seem to have managed to land a job in an office to pay bills with

For the first ten years after undergrad, I went with the "jobs just for now to make money," although I flirted with staying in some of those jobs as a career (I had a good job at a bank for awhile that I liked a lot, so thought maybe I would be In Banking, but realized I hated it, and really did want to be a tech writer, but got laid off and couldn't get another job in the field). Then I went to law school, which is kind of an automatic springboard into a career, which I realize now was part of the appeal. It turns out that I am unfortunately one of those people whose identity and self-worth is strongly tied up with my employment. Even though there's no formal legal specialization, lawyers end up specializing in something. I tried hard to make that labor and/or employment law (unions, employment discrimination, wage and hour, sexual harassment) but ended up in a workers comp/employee benefits, which is a sub-genre of labor and employment that I wouldn't have necessarily picked, but here I am. I like both of those areas of law from an academic standpoint, and I'm finding that becoming an expert in something very specific, after a lifetime of being a generalist, is interesting and satisfying, so all told, I'm pleased with how things turned out.

But, ultimately, I am really glad that I had that ten years of the latter kind of job. There's a freedom to remaining unspecialized and I ended up working in some pretty let's say interesting jobs and I'm really grateful for having had those experiences. I became career focused right around the time I was started to settle down in other areas of my life, so it seemed like a pretty natural progression. I guess the risk of not making employment decisions based on a singular goal is that you'll end up somewhere you never expected and maybe never exactly wanted, and also being 40 and only being 5 years into your settled career (which brings with it the delights of answering to hierarchical superiors who were in middle school when you graduated from college). But, you know, whatever. Those people will probably turn 40 and think, "Dammit, I should have taken a couple of years off to work in a restaurant and get wasted every night."

Clarification - I liked the job I had at the bank, but I took a promotion that would be the start of being a banker, and realized I just liked that one job (it was a second shift customer service job so it had all of the cleanliness and respectability and pay and benefits of a desk job, but with drunkard's hours) but hated banking as a career.

I think a lot of things that may still seem like simple and reliable career paths are not necessarily going to be in the longer term. if you start working in publishing in your 20s today you can't count on being there in your 50s. more and more its becoming about skills that can apply to various jobs. ie building people skills working at a restaurant might be 'better' than editing text alone at a desk. there are maybe a few safe white collar career paths that you can really count on, but it's really far fewer than we'd like.

That's a good point, and I was able to present my vocational dilettantism as a benefit to employers/educational institutions when I did start getting more career minded.

still stuck on the crappo job/career? situation, too. lucked out with my first job out of "college" writing ads and marketing shit in-house for a Fortune Global 50 corporation ... in retrospect I should've down some clawing up, but I thought the whole situation was boring... it was a bad first job to have in a way because it set my expectations way too high for what work environments can be. went to law school cuz I wanted a more serious job, but hated that, too, and now I'm back in the exciting world of in-house corporate writing. can't complain since it's good money and easy work, but as iatee said, jobs like these don't seem like they'll be huge growth fields for the long term.

i don't want to give myself a blow job here, but being good at a lot of different things makes it tough to figure out where you want to focus your skills development, plus the economy and job market are in a transition period, so it's hard to predict (at least for me) what fields to even go into ... that's where I'm at.

the other side of this tho is that w/ a dwindling quantity of middle income white collar jobs, the experience / resume expectations can/will continue to go up, so switching into a 'traditional career path' - as much as they will exist - becomes harder and harder late in the game.

been thinking of getting programming or similar skills and getting one of my very successful mates to hire me, tbph

i think it's too late for me to get a career but bollocks to a career, probly

So right now a place I'd *really* like to work is hiring for two positions:

- a Director position that I'm very fucking interested in as it lines up neatly with my longer term goals, but for which I'm underqualified
- a Coordinator position that seems to be 50% "What I'm Doing At My Job Right Now" and 50% "Scheduling Other People's Meetings and Phone Calls," admin-assistant style

I'm not at all interested in scheduling other people's meetings, and I'm not sure I want to tread water doing the same kind of work I'm doing now, BUT if it could be a foot in the door for upward movement with this organization, that would be a hell of a thing.

Taking the coordinator position would definitely be some time-biding--but then, even as I'm writing this, it's occurring to me how much I already neurotically schedule *my own work/life*, and that maybe the opportunity to get paid to do it neurotically for someone else would be a good way to start reorienting myself towards a more project management-style approach.

I sort of don't know what to do with this here. The coordinator job *does* feel like treading water, but it might be worth it?

I obviously don't know much about the specfics of this company or your situation, but I'd do some research into the company (glassdoor, whatever) to see what you can glean about the hiring practices. My wife, in digital markeing, has recently bumped into a lot of places that, almost as a rule, only hire for Director level positions from outside, for whatever half-assed reasons. I'd see what you can find out first, you don't want to tread water if the company policies/politics aren't going to let you move up anyway.

Good thinking! Hadn't even occurred to me.

The thing to remember is that interviews are a two-way street and you can interview there with the idea of feeling out whether it's a position you'd actually want. I've interviewed (and been interviewed) for positions where questions sussed out that it wasn't a great fit.

I mean, it's disappointing, but sometimes that leads to making good contacts who may alert you if something that better suits you comes along.