As a child you were asked the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Maybe you replied that you wanted to be a ballerina, doctor or even an astronaut. Then, as you got older, teachers, counselors, and parents asked what you wanted to major in and do for a career. You may be one of the lucky few who has known exactly what you want to do – but if you’re in the vast majority that has no idea, don’t sweat it.
It’s important to remember that you’re not “stuck” in any one career and post-grad life isn’t perfectly linear. Just because your first job might be in marketing, for example, doesn’t mean you can’t later switch careers to data analytics or finance.
If you’re looking for a place to start, though, consider your personal strengths and likes; then consider what careers might align with them. Ask yourself, “if I could spend 8 hours per day (more time than I spend with family or friends), what would I do?” In our experience working with thousands of college students each year, answering this practical question is much easier than the feared “what do you want to do when you graduate” question from grandpa. One of our partner startup hosts, Haley Darden at Invisible Technologies, refers to this process as “finding your verbs.” Literally, what do you want to do each day, if you could script your job.
If you’re…
A strong communicator with a creative side. You love communicating in different ways – writing, designing and telling stories.
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Content Development: You can create various forms of content to support an organization’s strategic goals – blogs, white papers, video, graphic, etc.
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Marketing: You can go the route of being a generalist and have your hand in all different aspects or you can specialize in one area like email marketing, influencer marketing, or social media.
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Design: Graphic Design is focused on creating visuals that align with the brand identity and support a strategy. UI/UX design focuses on improving user experience for products – for example, identifying and developing solutions for customer pain points.
Personable and love collaborating with others. You are an extrovert. You like to solve problems, and maybe even have an interest in selling.
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Account Management: Account Managers help existing customers troubleshoot issues, answer any questions, and focus on renewals and upsells.
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Sales/Business Development encompasses the process of researching potential customers and prospecting them with the ultimate goal of making them a customer by solving a problem for them.
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Customer Success roles focus on helping customers achieve specific goals and ensure they are optimizing the capabilities of the product/service. It emphasizes building long-term relationships and building loyalty.
Analytical and numbers-driven. You like math, research and/or analyzing data.
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Data Analytics centers on inspecting, organizing, and modeling data in order to provide information and draw conclusions in order to support decision-making.
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Finance has many different roles within it. Individuals in financial planning, for example, analyze an organization’s current financial standings, identify opportunities and create budgets. Other options include roles focused on investing, risk assessment and management, and more.
Innovative and love creating solutions to problems. You like to build things, like websites or products.
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Software Developers create software; you can either be a generalist and code in various programs or specialize in one.
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Engineering: There are hundreds of types of engineers, from the broader, more traditional roles you would think of like Mechanical or Electrical Engineers to more specific roles such as back end software engineering.
While this is by no means an exhaustive list, hopefully it gives you a starting point to research your career options. The key takeaway here should be that you can align your personal skills and what you like with your career. If you love what you do, you’re more likely to find success.
