By Heather Stone, President of
myjobsearch.com
Have you ever worked in a job you didn't like? Ever wondered how you ended up there? Surely you didn't accept the job, knowing you would hate it. However, it is sometimes hard to tell BEFORE you take a job exactly what you're getting in to. Will you like the job? Will you like the people you work with? This unpredictability going in the door is a major factor in why so many of us have changed jobs every year or two throughout our careers. How do you balance your need to do something you love with your family's desire for you to have something stable that you can stick with for awhile?
One of the best ways to ensure the job you get is the job you thought you were getting is to analyze the position in minute detail before you ever say yes. And probably the most-often-overlooked things to analyze is Industry Fit. Is the job in a good industry for you?
Industry Fit
What's the big deal about Industry, you might be asking? I want to be a Information Systems Specialist--I don't care whose technology I take care of, as long as they give me some autonomy and they pay me well. After all, an information specialist is an information specialist. It's pretty straightforward. Or is it?
Is there a difference in work environment for an I/S technician at a university history department lab and an I/S technician at an investment brokerage? In both cases, you would troubleshoot computers and train people on their use. However, the pace you would be expected to work at the investment brokerage is likely to be much faster than at the university. What you would wear to work is likely to be much different. The age, personality, and education level of the people you would associate with every day is likely to be much different. The university lab may place a higher value on learning and therefore might reward you for learning exactly what went wrong whenever a computer problem occurred. The investment brokerage may be very results-focused and not care that you know exactly what went wrong-they may even prefer you to call in a consultant to fix it rather than fixing it yourself-as long as you get the problem fixed fast. Two very different jobs. Same job function. Different industry.
Choice of industry determines work environment and work rewards. Work environment includes such things as the pace of your job, the type of customer or colleague that you associate with, what you wear to work, the type of office or desk you have, sometimes even how much you are paid. People doing a teaching job in the corporate offices of IBM are likely to be paid more than people doing a teaching job in the halls of the local high-school. They may even have the same skills, years of experience, and job function.
Work rewards are the less-tangible, emotional or social rewards you get from doing your job. For example, industry often determines how much your job matters to you and how much your work affects other people and society as a whole. If you wake up one morning and say, "This job doesn't mean anything to anybody. I don't make a difference in the world" it very well may be your choice of industry that's off. Perhaps it is time to take your computer skills and become an Information Systems Specialist in the life-support unit of a hospital?
Industry also determines what people think of your work and how much prestige you are accorded. I have a friend who was a Human Resources Manager for an investment bank. When asked what he did for a living, he always replied that he worked for an investment bank. If you then asked him what he did for the investment bank, he told you that he worked with the Financial Services Division. In his mind, investment banking had more prestige than human resources. His long term career goal was to get into the financial analysis side of investment banking, which is why he took the job in the first place. The industry gave him the prestige he wanted, and was therefore far more important to him than his job title. If the job had been Human Resources in a less visible industry, such as social work, he probably wouldn't have taken it, because that wouldn't have provided him one of the important work reward of prestige.
Most of the emotions, both positive and negative, that we feel for our job have something to do with industry. Our passion for helping others or our embarrassment at what we do both have their roots in industry choice. Sometimes when I hire people who are used to working in very well-educated industries, such as chemical engineering, they have not enjoyed working with-and even looked down on--clients who work in other industries where education is not as valued.
Every other factor can be the same and people will like their job better in one industry than another. So take a moment to analyze your choice of industry and what it will mean for you to become part of that industry and all it represents.
Written by Heather Stone, President of
myjobsearch.com, the jobseekers supersite! Heather is president of
myjobsearch.com, the company behind the jobseeker's supersite of the same name. She frequently consults with employers on hiring practices and with jobseekers on the Internet job search process. She has spoken at computer and employment industry conferences, and she was recently recognized by Utah Business Magazine for owning one of the "Top 25 Woman Owned Businesses" in the state of Utah. She is a member of Young Entrepreneur's Organization (YEO), an international organization for company owners under the age of 40.
