Career Choices: Avoid Those Rookie Mistakes

If you’re one of the lucky ones, you’re on course for the career of your dreams. You wake up every morning excited to go to work. You love your job.

If you’re like most people, your job pays the bills, but you think you might be happier doing something else. You’re not at the salary or rank you’d like to be at and sometimes you wonder, “How did I get trapped here?”

The answers may be found in your early career choices. There are certain rookie mistakes that are often observed by the experts and can be vouched for by those who have stumbled or lost their way. Here are five of the most common errors made by people when they are starting out in the work force.

* Not having a plan.

Without a clear idea of what you want to do and where you want to be in the long term, you can end up far off the path, and in an unfulfilling job.

“You’ve got to find the stream you want to be swimming in early,” said John Challenger, chief executive of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a Chicago-based recruiting firm.

By the time they’re 30 to 35, most people have found the area they’re going to stay in, and it’s difficult to switch to something completely different after that point.

“Too many people take the first job that comes up in front of them, and it doesn’t work,” Challenger said.

This rings true for Brant Cunningham, a 38-year-old Hollywood resident. “There was no emphasis on adulthood or future in my family,” Cunningham said. Shortly after graduating from high school, he found he needed to quickly acquire a skill to pay the bills. He went to court-reporting school, hearing that the work paid well. He also completed the work required to be a legal secretary.

But after working as a legal secretary for many years, he finds it a far cry from the more artistic pursuits he’d like to follow such as interior design or acting.

“I didn’t know what I wanted to do when I was younger,” he said. “All I knew was that I had to get a job quickly.”

His situation is common.

“Most people don’t spend time to focus on what they enjoy and what they want to do,” said Barry Layne, president of Bernard Haldane Associates. “When you take a job for the sake of having a job, you lose control.”

* Taking time off before finding a job.

Don’t take the summer or the year off after college. A few months in summer can drag on into the fall. Soon, the time away robs you of momentum and makes it more difficult to return to work or school, Challenger said. Most senior executives had internships during school that related to their careers and they got started right away after graduation.

* Changing jobs too often.

“Job-hopping is death,” said Roger Gilmore, owner of Gilmore & Associates in Topanga. “If someone has skills that are extremely in demand, they can get away with it, but changing jobs every two years or less is a danger flag to most employers.”

Gilmore should know. While he now owns his own executive placement firm, he’s also been a dentist, a mortgage banker and a math tutor.

“I wish I’d been encouraged to follow what I wanted to do, instead of what was practical,” he said.

Although there is no strict rule for how many job changes are acceptable over a given period of time, employers like to see that their candidates have a pattern of sticking around for at least a few years.

“The ideal candidate is someone who has had a job for three to five years and is ambitious and eager,” Gilmore said.

* Failing to market yourself.

“People fail to take stock of who their competition is, inside and outside the company,” Layne said. “When we’re selling ourselves, we don’t always know what we’re competing against, and we should.”

Layne recommends asking yourself if you have comparable or better skills than others in your field. If you have areas of weakness, find out how you can overcome them.

Also, document your accomplishments. Concrete examples of successful projects can go a long way toward persuading future interviewers that you have a worthy track record.

Brian Heimerl, a Topanga resident, fell into this trap. In 1974, Heimerl landed a job as a salesman and associate producer with a small radio production company called Watermark, whose claim to fame was a radio program called “America’s Top 40.”

“I really thought this is what I’ll do for the rest of my life,” Heimerl said. Eight years later, when the company hit financial trouble, Heimerl believed his success in radio would translate to similar programs in film and television. He assumed too much.

“I put everything into it for my various employers, but lost sight of marketing myself,” he said. “Modesty is a wonderful thing, but you need to let people know that you can make a significant contribution to their company.”

* Making money is the most important thing.

Early in their careers, people often make choices based on money that are not good for the long term, said Challenger. In the beginning, it’s important to find a boss you respect and feel you can learn from, so you’ll have a formative experience. Most people don’t try hard enough to find that person and that job.

Cunningham originally looked to legal work because of the pay but, looking back now, he says he would have done it differently.

“If I could do it over again, I would have taken the financial hit when I was younger to try things I was really interested in,” he said.

Meanwhile, Heimerl recently quit a job producing special events in order to find something more fulfilling.

“I was producing a truck show out at the California Speedway. It was miserably cold and windy and I decided that I really wasn’t getting the most out of my background and knowledge,” he said.

While these are common pitfalls worth avoiding, experts say there is no single guaranteed route to career success. The most important thing, they say, is to find a career you’re genuinely passionate about.