Looking back over her first ten years in her career field, Darlene felt as if she had approached it all wrong. She had entered her field in one role, quickly realized it was the wrong role, but took years to move into another role. And when Darlene did finally change roles within her same career field, she hadn’t made the right change. Within a year or two, she had discerned that she had made another error and needed to change again. But unfortunately she stuck it out once again, years longer than she should have, before finally moving into the role that she now knew she should have pursued from the start. Darlene only hoped that others didn’t have to go through all that she went through to find her home within her career field.
Structure
Career fields have their different structures. They’re not all the same, and within each field, roles can vary widely to fill the field’s full needs. Fields can vary in the employment or solo practice opportunities they require or offer, the part-time roles they permit or full-time commitment they demand, the flexible schedules they offer or inflexible schedules they impose, the sides they require or permit workers to take, the forums in which those workers perform, the size of entity for which employees work, their management and supervision requirements, their rainmaking requirements or opportunities, and their compensation terms and other rewards. If you want to choose the right career and better roles within that career, you might want to give some clear thought to these differences so that you can choose careers and roles to best suit your needs, personality, and preferences.
Employment
A first question you might consider asking about your favorite potential career field is whether it offers employment. That question doesn’t mean whether a market exists for the field’s services. Rather, it means whether the field fulfills that market through corporate entities or family businesses that hire workers as employees. You might think that of course your field offers employment because how else would the field supply its goods and services to those who need or desire them? Yet some fields just don’t offer much in the way of employment. The field’s participants serve as their own proprietors. Some of the most fun and fascinating fields, like hunting and fishing guiding, playwright or book author, and fine artist, can have that character where if you want to do it, you may have to set up shop on your own. If instead, you’re looking for a job that someone else provides, you might need to choose another field.
Practice
Some fields, including major and traditional fields like accounting, financial advising, law, medicine, and dentistry, can offer both employment positions and solo practice opportunities outside of direct employment. In those fields, you could go straight to work for an employer and remain employed for the rest of your career. Or you could start as an employee but sooner or later go out on your own in your own practice, by choice or of necessity. Or you could go straight into practice, working for yourself without ever working for another. Employment offers certain benefits and can offer a kind of collective security over individual practice. Sometimes you feed others in your firm, while other times they feed you. But practice without employment offers other benefits, like getting to keep all the reward your efforts earn. Practice without employment can also offer its own kind of security, relying primarily on yourself and not on the good or poor judgment of your employer. Consider which you prefer, employment or solo practice, and plan your career accordingly.
Time
Fields can also offer or require different time to which to devote to them. Some fields offer flexible part-time roles among other full-time roles. Some fields facilitate movements back and forth from part-time to full-time as a worker’s health, family, or other commitments and interests require. Real estate agents, working more or less at their own determination, can be a good example in some markets. Other fields, though, by their nature discourage part-time participation and instead demand one’s full time and attention. Project-oriented fields, and fields requiring travel to worksites, may fall in the latter category where you’re either all in or all out. Management and leadership roles within a field or organization can likewise be solely or primarily for full timers and long termers, who work without significant interruptions. Consider your ability to devote full time to your career and the likelihood of your abilities changing with changes in your health or family circumstances. Then choose and plan your career accordingly.
Schedule
The same is true for the schedules that fields require of their participants. Work schedules can also vary. Some fields are notorious for requiring frequent evening, night-time, weekend, and holiday hours. Law enforcement, emergency medicine, hospital nursing, commercial airline pilots, air-traffic controllers, and utility repair services are examples. Even employees with the seniority to pull the better schedules may have to work occasional weekends and holidays. Other fields may offer highly stable 8 to 5 or 9 to 5 weekday schedules with regular holiday and vacation time, around which one can plan family, travel, and other schedules. Teaching and retail banking can be examples. Consider your schedule interests, needs, and preferences, and choose and plan your career accordingly.
Sides
Fields can also have sides to them, with roles, employment opportunities, hours, schedules, compensation, and other factors all depending on the side you choose or to which your employer assigns you. Lawyers can work in prosecution or defense, represent insurers or claimants, or represent employees or employers, but generally not both sides, where conflicts would arise. Physicians can work primarily for patients or instead for employers or insurers in medical-review or managed-care relationships with patients. Agents can represent sellers or buyers. In unionized fields like teaching and government, you can work for management or as labor. In transportation and logistics, you can work inside or on the road. In trades, you can work in bidding and supervision or on the jobsite. In social work, you can work for the agency or the client. The field you seek in which you can choose sides, and which side you take within your field, can make all the difference in your work fitness, success, and satisfaction.
Forums
Fields also offer forums in which to work. Some of us are just better suited for certain forums. Some jobs require public speaking, for those of us who are better on the stage, while other jobs are entirely behind the scenes, for those of us who would rather not speak in public. Other jobs require supervising and directing, for those of us who are better at giving orders than taking them. Competition is the expectation in some forums, whether in sales or negotiation, while conciliation is the role in other forums, as in counseling and dispute resolution. Consensus building is the role in some forums, like project development and management, while advocacy is the role in other forums, like claims administration. Risk aversion is the goal in some roles, like insurance sales, ship piloting, and medicine, while risk taking is the goal in other roles, like investing, theater production, and adventure travel. Find a career and field that has the forum most suited to your personality, preferences, and talents, where you can be most confident, self-assured, natural, and successful.
Size
Fields also offer different sizes of enterprises within which and for which to work. Unless you’ve already worked for both big and small enterprises, you might not have thought that doing so makes much difference. And in some instances, the size of the enterprise for which you work may not make much difference. But in other instances and in general, the larger the enterprise, the more formal and rigid its systems, while the smaller the enterprise, the less formal and more flexible its systems. You may thrive on order, predictability, and consistency. Then work for a huge bank, where you and everyone else must do everything according to the manual. Or you may instead thrive on spontaneity and innovation. Then work on your own or for a small firm with barely any rules or systems. Fields with a lot of recent consolidation, like banking, healthcare, and communications, tend to offer employment only with larger firms. New fields or old fields with disrupting new entrants may offer more employment with smaller firms. Discern your personality and preference, and choose your career, field, and employer accordingly.
Management
Fields also have different degrees and styles of management. The more complex and highly regulated the field is, the more hierarchical and strict its management is likely to be, to integrate work, meet standards, and reduce regulatory risk. If you don’t mind a lot of oversight, then work in a financial or insurance field, pharmaceuticals, or precision manufacturing for the aerospace industry. If you prefer fewer levels of management and a greater degree of independence and self-sufficiency, then work in interior decorating or cosmetology where your only boss is your customer. The same is true for supervision. If you don’t mind having a senior worker answering all your questions and making sure you do things right, while taking responsibility when you don’t, then work in a field that requires close supervision, like laboratory work. If instead having someone looking over your shoulder all the time drives you crazy, then work in a field that requires little or no supervision, like landscaping. Choose your career and field accordingly.
Rainmaking
Fields also offer different opportunities for building your own portfolio of work, or what workers in some fields call rainmaking. Rainmaking means to bring in new business, whether you complete the new business yourself or leave it for other workers to do. Rainmaking generally requires relationship and communication skills of the kind that make people want to do business with you. Some of us have those skills, while others don’t, although you may be able to learn or improve rainmaking skills. The advantage rainmakers have tends to be that the high value of their skills results in greater rewards including compensation. If you want to be a rainmaker and receive a rainmaker’s rewards, then join a field like sales or law where firms depend on rainmakers. If instead you just want to do your work and not worry about having enough of it to do, then join a field like government or take a role like administration where you don’t have to exercise rainmaking skills.
Reward
Fields also offer different forms of reward and compensation. Some fields have high compensation but low non-monetary rewards, depending on how you view those non-monetary rewards. Coding and financial analysis might be two such fields. Other fields have lower monetary but higher non-monetary rewards, like teaching and farming in some cases. Daycare providers have a lot of love and hugs in their days but not so much compensation. Venture capitalists get no hugs but vast potential monetary rewards. You get the picture. Choose accordingly. But monetary compensation schemes also vary across fields and within fields as to their different roles. Some professionals, like plaintiffs’ lawyers, developers, and real estate agents, work on percentages. The more they win or sell, the better they do monetarily. Other professionals, like teachers and social workers, generally have fixed or scheduled salaries. They get paid the same on good days and bad days. Choose your field and role according to how entrepreneurial, competitive, and risk tolerant you are, and whether you prefer equal or equitable rewards.
Advancement
Fields also offer different opportunities for advancement. Some fields are relatively or entirely flat. You enter at one level, and forty years later you leave it at the same level. Your skills, experience, network, and income may grow, but you still have the same title, standing, and role that you did when you first started long ago. Family medicine, pediatrics, dentistry, and similar personal-service roles tend to be less hierarchical, offering fewer opportunities for advancement, which suits some providers just fine. Other fields are hierarchical. You enter in one role, gain skill and experience, and advance to the next role, and then further roles after that. Higher education can be that way, with professors starting in adjunct or assistant roles, advancing to associate and then full professor positions with tenure, and then taking on department chair, provost, assistant or associate dean, and finally vice president or president positions. Whether you look forward to advancing in rank, title, prominence, pay, privilege, and stature, or instead just want to exercise your career skills in relative obscurity for the good of humanity, choose your career and field accordingly.
Journal
Title My Place the next section of your Career Journal, after the section on Credentials. Evaluate the field or fields on which you’ve focused so far, for structural features. Does it offer employment, practice, or both employment and practice options? Does it offer the full-time or part-time work you need, and the fixed or flexible schedule? Can you find the forum within your field in which you are most skilled, natural, and comfortable? Discern whether you would do better in a large, formal enterprise or small, informal firm and whether your field offers your better option. Also, discern the hierarchical or non-hierarchical management, close or non-existent supervision, and advancement opportunities you would prefer, and whether your field offers your preferred options. Does your field require or offer rainmaking opportunities, to the degree you desire them? And is your field’s compensation and reward structure suited to your needs and preferences? If your reflections on your place within your preferred field leave you doubting that you have such a place, then consider re-evaluating your preferred field.
Key Points
Career fields have different structures with different features.
Fields can offer employment, solo practice, or an option of either.
Fields can require full-time work or offer part-time options.
Fields can offer stable weekday schedules or require rotating schedules.
Fields can permit choice of forum and side suiting your temperament.
Fields can offer hierarchical or non-hierarchical management.
Fields can require close supervision or offer greater independence.
Fields can require solicitation of work or just assign work.
Fields differ in reward and compensation structures.
Fields differ in advancement opportunities.