5 Myths of Career Building

As I analyze the numerous career books and advice guides I've read over my own career, there's a lot of ideas that just don't fly in today's economy. Maybe taking the advice is better than ignoring it in some cases, but for the most part I've found that these cornerstones of career building are a load of crap.

In later posts, and perhaps your comments, we can try to revise these, throw more away, or parse new pillars of career advice. But this post is dedicated to exposing the existing parables as worthless as WorldCom stock.

1. Do what you love:
Well, I love mountain biking and it costs me a lot of money. I'm too old and not really built to race competetively, and there is no money in owning a bike shop, unless you have money to invest. So I'm not sure what they're talking about here. Unless you're an engineer, or a pot dealer, (Missy Giove - champion DHiller just got arrested for this), I don't think you're making much money in mountain biking.

Work is not play. That's why they call it work. It requires effort and is often not fun. Accept that and you will go a long way toward being successful. Success if fun. Maybe that's where the confusion comes into play.

2. The Money Will Follow: Okay what if you love landscaping. The market is so competative and there's so many people willing to do about 80% of the detail work for next to nothing, the market cannot bear what you would like to charge. If you are a businessperson you can make good money in landscaping hiring talented lanscapers for a song. But that is not the same as being a good landscaper. If you learn to work hard at sales, you can make a lot of money to spend on good products, plants and equipment, spend your free time landscaping your own yard and really enjoy it.

3. Experience Counts: Fact is that the majority of unemployed people are 40 and over. Many are in Mid-career positions. So in this market at least, experience may be a liability. An entry-level, to 5 years experience resume may open more doors than a full career portfolio. This thought was reinforced recently, when I submitted my resume to Monster.com for review. They told me to delete any reference to anything over 10 years back.

4. You will be paid what you are worth: In Connecticut, where a tradition of Yankee frugality prevails, means that many hiring managers still subscribe to the theory that they should try to get the skillset they need at the lowest salary possible. I have been to quite a few interviews to companies who try to talk you down, and say they can get equal talent at a much lower price, but those are the companies who always seem to be hiring for the same exact position. Nobody will stay at a position like that, unless it is the only position they can get, or have more authority than they could get somewhere else. Additionally, the companies that profess this often, and ironically have "Beware The Lowest Bidder" quote in their lobby.

5. Some careers cannot be offshored
Working on the web, I was surpised when I walked in as a consultant to my first day at a fortun 100 company to see perhaps 70% of the employees were from a far away land. Soon I noticed when I called support lines, the people on the other end had accents that were increasingly hard to parse. Recently I read an article in Wired magazine that the writer himself was not far from being offshored. Let me first say that I love most people from India I have met. Once you get to know them, they are passionate, love to laugh, have a big culture, progressive view of religion and even admit themselves that there are so many Indians working in American jobs it cannot be good for America in the long run. If you concede that you will have to compete with foriegn workers in any job you apply for, you'll be more competative from the start. I'm hoping, that without sounding xenophobic, this fact will someday change.