The Key to Making Risky Career Decisions

A reader emailed me about a difficult exam he was facing. The test was for a prestigious civil service job in his country. Get one of those jobs, and you’re set for life.

Unfortunately, competition was also steep. About four hundred people compete, and only the best scorer on the test gets the spot. Applicants spend around two years studying full-time for one of these positions, many of whom have access to expensive test-preparation services.

What should he do?

My advice here may sound like a bummer, but I told him to seriously consider whether he even wants to apply for the spot. Why?

When Second-Best Isn’t Good Enough

Compare the situation faced by this reader from a seemingly similar situation: an American high-schooler looking to write the SAT. Say she wants to go to Harvard, which has an acceptance rate of around 4.5%.

Already, we can see a big difference. Getting into Harvard is, proportionally, about 20 times easier than getting the civil service spot. Admittedly, the competitive strength of the applicant pool may be different. However, this data point is still useful to scale your intuitions.

However, even if Harvard’s acceptance rate were identical — only 0.25% — the situations here would be…