SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA JOB MARKET : PART TWO: MAKING THE BREAK : Switching Gears : Workers Willing to Take Career Risks in Pursuit of Job Satisfaction
Patricia G. Walter was an audiologist, helping rehabilitate the hearing impaired, before she became a vice president and financial consultant at Shearson Lehman Hutton in Chicago.
Robert L. Bowker was an accountant in the oil business before he started a fast-food restaurant in Hermosa Beach.
Darryl A. McDuel is an engineer at Southern California Gas Co. who is going to law school to pursue a new career as a lawyer.
Count these three among the thousands of Americans changing professions in search of the ultimate in job satisfaction and personal growth.
“What we see today is people are making more and more changes,” said Susan Geifman, director of the career development center at John F. Kennedy University in Orinda, Calif., where the average age of students is 37 and most are returning to school to enhance or change careers. “What’s happened in the workplace is that companies are in so much flux. Employers cannot guarantee lifetime employment any more. People need to be aware of what they want and how they can find it. From my standpoint, job security begins with yourself.”
Not long ago, job security and money were the key factors in changing jobs. Today, workers rank job satisfaction as their No. 1 employment concern, according to a 1988 survey of employees at 100 companies by Personnel Journal, a Costa Mesa trade publication. Job security ranked second, followed by more money, better benefits, new challenges and opportunities for promotion.
The shift in attitudes reflects rising expectations among today’s workers, who increasingly see their jobs as a source of personal fulfillment, social relationships and community responsibility, according to career counselors.
“There’s more support for not putting up with the intolerable or a nonsatisfying option,” explained Lesah Beckhusen, a career counselor at Square One Career Services in Oakland who specializes in identifying career options.
“More people have a sense that they can do something about their jobs, that ‘I don’t need to stay 10 years.’ . . . It’s much more acceptable for people to make radical changes,” Beckhusen said. One of her clients, a lawyer, gave it all up to become a massage therapist. “With new-age consciousness, people are not as willing to compromise their values. It’s difficult for people to accept collective viewpoints: the 9-to-5 job, making lots of money, doing things harmful to the environment,” Beckhusen said.
Bowker, for example, made a major decision not to stay with Unocal after 15 years when the company moved its Denver subsidiary to Midland, Tex. He stayed in Denver and then moved to Los Angeles in 1978, but found himself bouncing between accounting jobs at various oil companies.
“At that time, little oil companies were being gobbled up, merging, going bankrupt, going out of business. There were no jobs in the oil business,” he said. Because he needed to keep working, Bowker, now 68, opened Wings of the West fast-food outlet in 1986 with his son, who had experience in the restaurant business.
A decision to make a career change should not be made hastily, career counselors caution. Merely feeling dissatisfied is perhaps the worst reason to leave a job. “People tend to think it (dissatisfaction) is in this job, where it may not be the job but new working conditions or a new boss,” Beckhusen explained. The discontent may stem from overwork or not having enough time with the family.
“You need to clarify what’s not working and what do you need to feel satisfied,” Beckhusen said.
“The starting place is yourself,” said Geifman at John F. Kennedy University. “Who are you? What do you like to do? What do you know of your skills and abilities? What kind of work environment do you want to be in? Here at the center when we get someone who doesn’t know, we do self-assessment and look at values. What is important to you at this point in your life? . . . Is the dissatisfaction with what you’re doing, or would a change within the work situation help or alleviate your situation? You may not need a complete career change; maybe you need to change to a different department, different tasks. When you look at your present situation and more or less determine that you’re not satisfied, it’s time to look out there.”
Three years ago, McDuel began studying his options. Seeking “a combination of job satisfaction and having more control,” he decided to attend Glendale School of Law part time.
The 38-year-old, who has a master’s degree in mechanical engineering, is the pipeline safety regulatory administrator at Southern California Gas Co. But he felt his opportunities at the company had topped out. “After 15 years, job opportunities that I wished I had had didn’t happen for me. . . . It’s a good feeling to know there are still opportunities to gain with education.”
Although the gas company subsidizes some of his law school tuition, McDuel may be looking for a law job elsewhere because, he said, employees who have earned law degrees rarely have been hired for the company’s legal staff. But McDuel is confident that his marketability will be enhanced by his combination of technical and legal skills.
“The next three years will be sacrifices but the opportunity around the door is what I’m looking for,” he said.
It is easier to go from one job to another than find a new one when unemployed. “The longer you’re out of a job, the more difficult it is” said Joseph J. Carideo, a partner in the management consulting firm of Thorndike Deland Associates in New York. Another rule of thumb is the higher your current earnings, the longer it will take to find a job with equivalent pay, if that is important.
It also is unwise to freely discuss a search for more career satisfaction. One of Beckhusen’s clients who was taking a career workshop talked about her experiences at work. Although the woman had no plans to actually change jobs, her boss thought otherwise, and fired her.
Carideo cautioned: “Don’t make a move merely to get out of an unpleasant situation. Negative motivation seldom pays off.” Meanwhile, he advised, be aware of some signals, such as a change in reporting responsibilities or being passed over for promotions at least twice, which indicate that it’s time to take stock of a job situation.
Even with careful planning, a job change involves financial and emotional risks. One sunny day, Walter’s private practice as an audiologist came crashing down. A physician group that provided 45% of her business said it was going to stop the referrals and become her competitor.
Instead of rebuilding her business, she sold it. She had always entertained a notion of having a second career in the brokerage business, so the newly married Walter became what she calls a “baby broker” in a training program at Shearson Lehman.
“I made the decision because basically I’m a survivor. If it had not been for Bill (her husband), it would have been much worse. He had to prop me up emotionally when my ego was under the rug somewhere. It was difficult when at 34 I was on the top of it all with my own business to go to the bottom. As a baby broker I was cold-calling (strangers) to get clients. I went from a six-figure income to zero. . . . It was horrible, I don’t know if I have the strength to do it again.”
Some nights, she said, “I went home hysterical, saying ‘I can’t do this. Nobody likes me.’ ” She stuck with it and within three years was again earning a six-figure salary. But today as then, she works 15-hour days.
It took Bowker about three years to get on his feet with his fast-food business. “In our plans it sounded rosy,” Bowker recalled, but real life proved otherwise. When his son left the business, Bowker worked seven days a week handling all aspects of the business.
“Man it was tough. We just about went under,” he recalled. “I was selling some personal belongings,” including a gun collection and his wife’s and mother-in-law’s quilt collection, “just to keep our heads above the water . . . all my credit cards were spent to the limit.”
“It was not a relaxing time. It was a very tense time. I was just on the edge all the time.” But by the third year, Wings of the West was making a profit and Bowker received a buyout offer. He sold his labor of love in July.
For those who make a major career change and find success, there comes an immense sense of satisfaction and some advice. “You have to be really sold on yourself, that you can do something,” Bowker said. “You have to have confidence in yourself, hold yourself upright and go after it.”
