Dream Career Essay Example

When considering my dream career there were a number of things I wanted to take into account beyond the job itself. While the work is important to me there are other benefits that I value. I wanted to find a job that allowed me to have the type of life I want; there are certain jobs that would provide me a substantial amount of money but would suck the joy out of my life in other ways. It won’t matter how much money I make if I spend a significant amount of time feeling miserable. That being said, the type of work and the salary do matter to me. It is a balancing act between values, interests, personality, salary, commute, schedule and the work itself. It is also important to me to work with people who think in a similar way as me and share a similar approach to work. I have held jobs in which the people I worked with who had radically different world views and work ethics from me and it didn’t turn out well, I found myself growing increasingly frustrated and alienated and finally wound up quitting. Taking all these things into account I narrowed my list of potential dream careers down and used the Bureau of Labor Statistics and monster.com to do some research. I researched careers in welding, plumbing and chemical engineering.
I found many positive attributes to a career in welding. I wouldn’t have to deal with people very much, it would provide a lot of variety and I could work outside at times. Based on my prior work experience pursuing a career in which my contact with others was limited appealed to me. Plus I found a number of job listing that were within my determined range of travel and the hours were suitable to me. The disadvantages are that is can be dangerous, it doesn’t make quite as much as I would like and future growth is less than other career options. I decided to research plumbing as my next option.
A career in plumbing shares some similar traits with welding. It would provide me the ability to work on my own, I would get to work with my hands and I would be able to be my own boss. There is a lot of potential variety as there are all sorts of structures that need plumbing. Plumbing has a better employment growth than welding and on average plumbers make more money than welders. The job postings I found were a little discouraging, there were no jobs available within my predetermined travel distance and the schedule was not conducive to the schedule I am hoping for as I would need to work on weekends. I wasn’t sold on welding or plumbing as a career so I moved on to chemical engineering.
I immediately felt excited about working in chemical engineering because I would work with science and math. Working in the chemical engineering field would differ greatly from welding or plumbing, it would require working in a lab or an office rather than in the field and it would be white collar rather than blue collar. It would require more teamwork which is not necessarily something I am interested in but it would also make almost three times more money than welding or plumbing. The job listings I found were very encouraging as there were a number of available jobs in my area, the schedules offered met my needs and one of them even provided the opportunity to work from home.
After researching three possible dream careers I made my decision by doing a cost/benefit analysis for each potential path. I used the used the Bureau of Labor Statistics and monster.com to do some research to better explore each career and collect more information which led me to redefine and adapt my search to fit my needs such as location and potential schedules. I learned that welding and plumbing were very similar and would be reasonable options if I preferred trade school to receiving a degree but working in chemical engineering would make far more money. This challenged me to create a potential budget to better understand how much money I would need to make to have the quality of life I want and I realized that welding or plumbing would not make enough. I am now confident that my dream career is chemical engineering. The skills and knowledge I developed during this process can be used when it is time for me to find my dream job in my dream career, I will use a similar approach by doing research and creating a cost/benefit analysis of each possible job. The new questions I need to answer are if I want to work in a lab or in an office, if I want the ability to work from home and how much travel I will be comfortable with. This exercise helped me tremendously!

References

(May 2013). “Welding, Soldering, and Brazing Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders”.
Bureau of Labor Statistics. Retrieved from http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes514122.htm
(May 2013). “Plumbers, Pipefitters, and Steamfitters”. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Retrieved from http://www.bls.gov/ooh/construction-and-extraction/plumbers-pipefitters-and-steamfitters.htm
(May 2013). “Chemical Engineers”. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Retrieved from http://www.bls.gov/ooh/architecture-and-engineering/chemical-engineers.htm
(3/1/2015). “Job Listings”. Monster.com. Retrieved from http://www.monster.com