A Door Closes; A Window Opens...

A Door Closes; A Window Opens…

     So, I just concluded my last position as an accountant and I am revving up my career search once again. It was an all too familiar tale; the role was supposed to be for a few weeks but ended up turning into a few months because instead of working just hard enough no to get yelled at, instead of taking advantage of my status as a “temporary” employee, I took the opportunity to set my desires aside and put my career into laser focus. For me, the goal is always to bolster the potential for better future positions and in order to do that I had to sacrifice a livable wage for an experience that might provide me with better opportunities in the future. This is something that needs to be done because if you don’t have a safety net to fall back on; if you don’t have parents to move back in with; if you don’t have the luxury of taking time off to figure out what you want to do with your life; then you have to choose a path and run full-steam towards the finish.

     A day after completing graduate school I left my parent’s house with $400 to my name and all my worldly possessions. I slept in my car in the bitter cold for a week, hustled my ass off to find a job by spending countless hours at the library, and when I found a shitty apartment for $200 a month surrounded by smokers and drug addicts I jumped on the opportunity. Within a week I found a temporary job assisting with AR and when the AP manager had to go out on medical leave I was an obvious choice by management to fill the gap and I did so at an efficiency almost up to par with the AP manager who had ten years and a much higher salary to figure things out.

     I was paid slightly above a minimum wage salary and as the acting AP manager when I eventually processed my own paycheck, I was not-so-shocked to learn that the company was paying the temp agency almost double what I was making per hour so they could avoid hiring a new employee. Nowadays if you want to get to the next level in your career you have to be willing to take low pay/high profile jobs so you can accumulate the ammunition necessary to fire back at the next employer who wants to fuck you and while the whole experience didn't make my wallet any fatter, it’s something that needs to be done in order to progress to the next level. This is a concept a lot of people in my life right now don’t seem to understand: Why sacrifice making money to waste time at a no-growth position? The answer is a bit more intangible than a stack of dollar bills.

     In today’s sanguinary job market employers are looking for the proverbial “purple squirrel.” An employee that provides high-level competency at the lowest salary possible. And it seems for my generation we either have to settle for a few years of this or face an indefinitely extended wallowing within the confines of the lower middle-class. For people between the ages 20 to 35 it is no longer possible to be lackadaisical with building your career. Taking time to start a family, pursue dreams, or soul search may end up constricting the possibility of obtaining a position that can actually provide for those things. For us, it’s much more difficult to get to a point where we can become economically viable because if you’re not constantly working towards stepping up your game with each new job, if you’re not relentlessly pushing towards advancement, then you are merely running in place and by the time you get going again it will be too late. Employers want the cream of the crop and they don’t want to pay for it so you can either push from job to job gaining experience along the way making yourself the best candidate possible, or you can settle for the safety of mediocrity. 

-NJF-