Is career planning really useful in finding a job?

A simplified answer to this question:

1. Although the first job is important, it is not important enough to determine your entire career. Even if we make the wrong choice, it is normal, but we must know how to correct our decisions in a timely manner.

2. The important thing about your first job is: choose a job that suits you as early as possible. This will shorten your trial-and-error cycle, reduce your trial-and-error cost, and provide high continuity of career development. You will have more time to accumulate in the same industry than others and become an industry expert earlier.

3. You also need to know that the career itself is non-linear, the career is long, and the environment changes rapidly, so you need to adjust your career development strategy at any time according to changes in the environment and your own situation. There is no hard-and-fast, one-and-done career plan.

4. Work is only a part of life, and life is final.

5. The earlier you make career planning, the better. You need to know how to choose an industry, company and position, as well as understand yourself.

ps: If you don’t understand a certain item, you can read the extended answer below

Extended answer to this question: (about 5k words, reading takes 8 minutes)

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01

When I saw this question, I suddenly remembered an example given by teacher Xue Zhaofeng in an issue of "Qi Pa Shuo Season 5".

There is a saying in the economics circle that he considers to be the most golden saying, said by economist Irving Fisher: "Investment is balanced consumption in the time dimension."

Different professions, different lifestyles, have different income rhythms.

If the income rhythm is simply divided into three types, it can be divided into:

Mediocre type: Some people work in their youth and retire in their later years, with basically no change in income. Relatively stable;

Young and successful type: The income of teenagers is very high, but it suddenly drops sharply;

Late bloomer: When you are young, life is quite hard, but after middle age, your income is low. start to increase.

Tell us that no one is the best. What we want to pursue is the maximization of lifetime income during the life cycle. What we are looking for is the maximum area under the curve.

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Based on the above theory, we can draw at least three conclusions:

1. "Career type" determines "income rhythm";

2. We must pursue the maximization of life income, not the immediate income;

3. Only by long life can we achieve the maximum. So no matter what, maintaining good health is the first priority, whether you are young or not. (Unless you are lucky enough to choose a "young man's success" type of job, but unfortunately it is very short-lived...so I don't know whether this is "lucky" or "unfortunate")

Of course, these three types of The pace of income does not cover all career types, but at least one thing we can know is:

Our career development is "non-linear."

Nonlinear means that the career development of most people may take two steps forward, one step back, three steps forward, and two steps back.

So our expectations for career development have become more reasonable: it is difficult for a job to directly affect the direction of your entire career development.

For example, I know a friend who graduated with an undergraduate degree in English. After graduation, he joined a foreign company in Shanghai and lived a "petty bourgeoisie" life of "9 to 5". The work content is simple and repetitive department assistant work, that is, processing various orders, reports, and translating some documents every day.

The monthly salary is 6,000, and the salary change is a fixed salary increase of 5-10% every year. Foreign companies have relatively good welfare benefits. Every carrot is a pit, very stable, and there is basically no hope of promotion.

After working for two years, I changed jobs again. However, because I had not accumulated "core skills" in the past few years, the jobs I found were similar to assistant jobs and "highly alternative" odd jobs. Work.

There are even some jobs that "anyone can do" and do not show any personal value at all. After working for another year, the salary will remain at 8K and cannot be raised again.

Later, after being recommended by a friend, I accidentally entered a marketing job in the game industry, and found that I liked this job, could do it well, and could bring benefits to the company.

In the blink of an eye, two years later, I have now become the head of a department, and my monthly salary has increased from 5K when I first joined, to 15K, and I can look forward to the future.

It can be said that her career in the five years before graduation was not smooth sailing. She went through a long period of exploration and shock before she found a development direction that suited her.

Now, let’s go back and look at the first half of this question: “How important is the choice of the first job?” If you understand that “everyone’s career development is non-linear”, You know that although your first job is important, it is not important enough to determine your entire career.

When many large companies are recruiting, they have clear regulations on the frequency of resignations for people who have graduated five years ago: they cannot change three jobs within five years, and the average working time per job is not less than two years, or One job lasts for more than three years, and the first job for a fresh graduate can last no more than two years.

It can be seen that even large companies have a high tolerance for short working hours in their first job.

For my high school classmate, so many years have been wasted in vain. If someone had told her earlier, how to choose an industry, how to find a position, or how to "organize trial and error", She will have continued to accumulate in this industry for a longer period of time and will develop better.

If you just rely on "good luck" and keep changing jobs to find a job that suits you, it will not only consume time, but you will be middle-aged in a blink of an eye and will not be able to compete with young people. Qualified for "junior position".

So, we need to know the following conclusions about how important the first job is:

(Yes, the five at the beginning)

1. Although your first job is important, it is not so important that it determines your entire career. Even if we make the wrong choice, it is normal, but we need to know how to correct our decisions in a timely manner.

2. The important thing about your first job is: choose a job that suits you as early as possible.

It will shorten your trial and error cycle, reduce your trial and error cost, and have high continuity of career development. You will have more time to accumulate in the same industry than others and become an industry expert earlier. .

3. The career itself is non-linear, the career is long, and the environment changes rapidly, so you need to adjust your career development strategy at any time according to changes in the environment and your own situation. There is no hard-and-fast, one-and-done career plan.

4. Work is only a part of life, and life is final.

5. The earlier you make career planning, the better. You need to know how to choose an industry, company and position, as well as understand yourself.