You’re working your first or second job. Broadly, it’s okay. The salary is lower than you hoped, particularly considering the amount you pay on rent. The tasks have some purpose, though they are fairly monotonous and not quite making the most of your abilities or education. Progression opportunities are unclear. You are frustrated but don’t want to complain too much because you know plenty of other people who are trying desperately to catch their first break.
Does this sound familiar?
For many of us starting our careers, we have often had to overcome the grueling process of multiple job applications and assessments for months on end. Now that we have our ‘in’, we hope that through hard work and effort we can rise through the ranks and gain ever-greater responsibility. Unfortunately, the world of work is much more murky than we expect, and we quickly become disillusioned at the lack of opportunity. We then look for our next job, hoping for some improvement and greater responsibility. We find a similar role at slightly-better pay, and slightly-better responsibility. Unfortunately, this does not solve the underlying issue. Over time you resign yourself to understanding this as the world of work.
If this is something similar to what you are currently experiencing, Here are some questions to ask yourself:
- Were the expectations you had on the working world real?
Before starting our first job, we did a day or two of work experience and looked at the cool offices and think how exciting and fun this stuff must be. Before graduating, we red job adverts talking about jobs that are ‘dynamic’, ‘exciting’, with accompanying descriptions of glorious colleagues who you bond with over ping-pong tables and after-work socials.
We saw our parents, working in one job and slowly moving up the organisation through loyalty. We also studied, and studied to further honours than our parents and grandparents. We are often told that we will be the next Prime Minister or CEO. This does not consider that 42% of the working age population is a graduate in the UK.
All these experiences shape our expectations of work. In reality, the world of work is often an ongoing execution of tasks, week in, week out. At times it can be fun, but mostly it is rigid, boring and far less exciting than any job adviser will ever tell you. Whilst we expect that the world of work is meritocratic, it is often anything but. office politics, weird working cultures and dubious practices can be a real shock to the system, particularly when we work twice as hard as the person who gets that promotion.
The expectations that we had of the world of work were extremely different to the reality. It’s okay to be shocked by this. Give yourself time to reassess.
- What do you enjoy?
We start our job, wanting to impress. We take on whatever task we can to demonstrate our worth, no matter how menial. We hope that by showing our ability to deliver we will be given more responsibility. In reality, we soon become known as ‘printer-guy’ and look enviously at our more experienced colleague who has learnt to keep their head down when any new ‘opportunity’ comes up. We slowly learn to follow their lead.
Have you stopped to ask yourself what you actually enjoy? Perhaps there was that day the person in HR was sick so you had to handle the records. As it turned out you liked it much more than you expected. However, they returned a week later so in your job you’ll probably not get that opportunity again. Have you spent time exploring why you enjoyed it, and what this could mean for you and your career?
Give yourself time to genuinely reflect on the things you have enjoyed within work, even if it was different from what you expected before starting. For me, before starting my job the idea of HR sounded very boring, in the end I’ve gotten further involved and passionate about Diversity and Inclusion as I understood the importance of it to an organisation.
Remember, finding a job that you enjoy matters. For your own success and happiness.
- What do you really want to be doing?
Remember your conversation with your school or university job adviser? Back then, you perhaps dreamed of lofty jobs at the top of organisations,. Naturally your priorities have shifted since then, and the realities of the workplace are now pressing heavily upon you. Nonetheless, when was the last time you revisited what you truly wanted to do?
Remember that you are gathering really key data for yourself about the world of work which you did not have before. Having worked in a job, you may realise you don’t actually particularly like it, or more likely you may have found a new area of interest that you never heard of before.
Remember to regularly revisit what you want to be doing, and it is okay if this changes. In fact it probably will.Adapting your aims and ambitions to the reality of the workplace is the only way it can be realistic, and it is often what more and more people end up doing. For some, this means slightly tweaking their specialisation (e.g. moving from sales to marketing), for others it could be as grand as realising they much prefer helping people and running workshops, so they end up leaving their office job to become a yoga teacher. For the latter person, this certainly was not part of their conversation with their career counselor at school, however they are now much happier than in their office job
- What is actually most important to you?
We hold degrees at great expense, along with continuous messaging about ‘making a difference in the world’. Naturally, we expect our careers to be a crucial aspect to our lives. We presume we need to move to the big city, leave behind friends and family and put up with lower living standards to make it happen. Perhaps this leads us to take up a tiring job with a long commute, and we are often tired to meet with friends after work. We haven’t been to the gym in weeks.
Our lives are one big opportunity-cost. By pouring your effort particularly into your career, you are reducing your chance to put your energy into other things you enjoy. Some are willing to make the large sacrifice of career above all else. But for many, there are things that are more important than the job. Your task is to figure out what really is your priority in life. It is for you to figure this out, and no one can decide this for you.
You are not going to get everything you want in life, so it is better to put your efforts into the things that are most important for you, and live without the things that are less important.
If you made it this far, thank you for reading. I hope this article helps you.