Career choices are important. Your career will cause to spend in it almost half of your waking hours. If your career choice is not right, that is a lot of time to be unhappy.
You might be a young person who is pondering what career to pursue. You might be a mature worker thinking about a mid-career shift or an encore job. This article will help you to choose a good career.
Career values are important to both the job applicant and to the company that the job applicant is considering. If the values of the applicant and company are too discrepant, the applicant probably will not be hired, or, if hired, will not be happy or successful in the company.
This article is not trying to convince you that you must love your job. There should, however, be some significant alignment of the values in this job with your values.
Hopefully, career values will be consistent with good moral values. As an example, consider a wealthy, aggressive divorce lawyer who sleeps with his female clients. Matthew 19:6 reads, “What God has joined together let no man separate.” Conversely, some lawyers do pro bono work for the poor.
My book goes into more detail about choosing and working well in a career that is right for you.
Hopefully also, career values will accommodate family values. Having quality time for family members is important because you will spend over half of your waking hours with them. During unemployment, the time spent with family members is even more.
Too many people put too much emphasis on money as a factor in career choice. Money is an important factor, but it should not be emphasized to the detriment of other career values. Most people will not work up to the day of their death. Paul Tsongas, who once was a presidential candidate. said, “No one on his deathbed ever said, ‘I wish I had spent more time at the office.’”
