Career advice?

King Damager

King Damager

King Damager

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I'm waiting for the abuse to role in on this one... Saying that, I'm pretty sure that considering the huge readership of these forums there will be a pretty strong chance that someone who reads this will be working in the various fields I'm looking into.

Basically, I'm currently doing a degree in Economics, and am in the process of applying to various internships etc...

I am however still unsure of which careers to apply to, so really was just wondering what people's own experiences are in the various fields I'm looking into going into.

However bad it is, I'd also be interested in information on possible salaries, careers/salary progression, competition in the market for the jobs, and what kind of experience would people recommend.

This is the 'small' list of possible careers I'm considering:
  • Finance
  • Accounting
  • Environmental Economics
  • Journalism
  • Something IT/technology based, possibly linked into the Journalism theme above, or maybe a buyer for one of the large Computer sales companies - to be honest, something like OCUK would be a great company xD

Frankly, I'm not even sure some of them even exist as careers! xD

Anyway, thanks for the advice :)

To all the doubters, no I'm not going to make my sole decision on this, but I figured it would be an idea to get a first hand idea of peoples experiences in the various fields.

kd
 

King Damager

King Damager

King Damager

Soldato
OP
Joined
16 Nov 2010
Posts
16,498
Location
Swimming in a lake
semi-pro waster said:
Accountancy can be boring but then so can most careers I'd imagine - possible exceptions being lion taming and wing walking, especially if you combine the two...

I'm currently on a graduate programme training to be an accountant and I've found it to be interesting so far and reasonably challenging in places. The hardest thing for me (and I think for many) is trying to combine the studying with working full time, while I'm relatively lucky and get all days off for all my courses/exams etc there's still a definite shortfall in terms of time needed to study.

Salary-wise it will depend where you go, I'm public sector at the moment and it should cheer those who think that civil servants are massively overpaid to learn that we are not all paid a kings ransom. However there are compensations in terms of (often) a fairly good set of people and flexible working conditions to an extent. There are still opportunities for advancement pretty much wherever you are but that will come down to you demonstrating that you are good enough and salary progression can be reasonable although that depends where you are and to a degree how fortunate you are in gaining access to the right opportunities.

In terms of competition for jobs, the graduate programme I'm on had (apparently) a few thousand applicants initially with the testing sifting out most until there were about 300 who each went for a day long assessment centre, then there were approximately 60 jobs from what I recall. I believe it has subsequently become more competitive although I don't know any more recent figures relating to it.

I'm not sure what you mean by experience recommended here but if there's anything unclear let me know and I'll try to answer it.
Click to expand...

I was aware of the 'decreased' salary in the public sector as I have family working in the finance/accountancy field.

That doesn't seem actually too bad as competition (I've heard that about 50% of ''applications" tend to be pretty poor quality anyway...) I mean it's not fantastic but it could certainly be much worse.

For experience, I guess it would more be what do you think it was that made you stand out to get the job. Also out of interest if you don't mind, what degree did you do?/ did you feel it was particularly important? (Have heard a lot about degrees not needing to be relevant to the field you wanted to enter, and was wondering how true this is)

kd
 
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