I met up with some friends of mine last week for a drink in downtown Seattle. I hadn’t seen them for years and had a great time catching up. They are all quite successful in the Information Technology field and have faired well through this economic downturn. As we talked, late in to the evening, I marveled at how fortunate we had all been to have graduated from college during one of the most prosperous times in the history of our country. We all joined the workforce at the height of the dot com frenzy and were all very fortunate to get in to the field of Information Technology even though we held degrees in political science, history and German. As we talked, I pointed out this fact and we all nodded in agreement that we were indeed quite fortunate. Had we graduated from college with these degrees today, we’d all be living in our parent’s basements desperately looking for any opportunity to start our careers.
At the time we entered the workforce the only thing that really mattered was whether you had a college degree, and in fact, that didn’t even matter all that much if you had a little bit of technology experience. There was such a surplus of jobs in the technology field that just about anyone could break in to it. As an IT Manager in the late 90’s I recall reading many resumes that, today, would be tossed aside without a second thought. I hired a number of people that didn’t have technical degrees and they turned out to be the best workers I’ve ever hired. Unfortunately, today, they wouldn’t have a chance to get a similar job. Now, we have a surplus of workers and it has tightened the standards so much that the majority of people getting jobs now are the ones that hold technical degrees in computing, engineering or other similar degrees.
I’ve often wondered what I would be doing as a career if I hadn’t been fortunate to join the workforce during such a prosperous time. I think it’s likely that I would have gone in to some sort of sales job, as that does suit my personality better than most other careers. Are you working in a career that has nothing to do with your education? Is it a technical field?