Career Questions Students Ask The Most (Part 4)

(or Should I Really Become a Tattoo Artist?)

By Michael T. Robinson
President and Chief Career Counselor
CareerPlanner.com Inc

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12) I'm a Junior in high school. Is it okay if I don’t know what I want to major in yet?

Here is the perfect career planning sequence:

8th grade - you take a few career tests, come up with your top 3 career choices and start researching them

9th grade - based on your top 3 career choices you decide if you are headed towards college, or a vocational school

You also start to "shadow" people who are already working in your top career choices.

Shadowing means that you follow them around for 2-3 days in their own work environment.

So if you want to be an accountant, you spend 2-3 days volunteering in an accountant office. Even if you just bring them coffee and donuts and take out the trash it's the best thing you can do to figure out if a career is right for you.

10th grade - you do more shadowing to firm up your decision

11th grade - you try to narrow down your choices from 3 to 1 and you start to visit schools

12th grade - you apply to schools

So even if you have not done all this, start now. It is never too late to do this.

I even have 40 year old clients who I put through this process.

13) Should a Recent Grad Work for a Large Company or a Small Company?

I strongly believe that you should go to work for a large company right after graduating.

It's a huge mistake to start your career and have your first job working in a small company, and I say this from experience.

Large Companies can offer these benefits:

• There will be people there who can train you
• Large companies frequently have internal training programs for recent grads
• Large companies will be able to offer you more opportunities than small companies
• Large companies will be able to offer more opportunities for promotion and advancement
• Large companies can usually offer more international opportunities

My recommendation is that after graduating from college you should join a large, fast growing company, that has lots of cash in the bank and has hot products or services that are people want so bad they will wait in line for. Think Apple and it's iPhone/iPad products where people wait in line in freezing weather just to get one.

When you join a large fast moving company, they will be needing new people for new positions. Many of these will get filled internally. You could join a large company and change jobs within that company every 2 years. Then after 5-6 years, you can move to a smaller company, taking all your experience with you.

I started in a large, international company yo may have heard of, Motorola. They probably had over 10,000 people working there. Unfortunately at that time, they were not growing rapidly. So I learned a lot from the "old timers" there. But I could see that no body was being promoted. My cubical mates had been there for over 10 years and they were not going anywhere.

After 5 1/2 years, I joined another large company of 4000 people. They had just invented a product that everyone wanted. We could not hire enough people to fill all the opportunities. I was actually traveling around to schools hiring grads as fast as I could. I started as an engineer and within a few years I was a Vice President. All due to the growth caused by this hot product.

Later, I was CEO of a small start-up company. Before I got there, they had hired a couple of recent grads. I felt so bad for these guys. We had very few experienced people around to give them the training they needed. The had to work 6 and 7 days a week and long hours in order to get our new products out the door. I wanted to tell them they should go work for a larger company where they could learn more and be exposed to new opportunities. But I could not tell them that because we needed them.

There is a natural sequence to this.

1) Graduate from college
2) Join a large fast growing company
3) Learn everything you can - get lots of experience
4) Take your skills and talents to a smaller company that will pay you more

Long story short, recent grads should look for fast growing companies with hot products and they should avoid small firms that just use them up.

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