How to Choose a Career at 30: Career Advice For Millennials.

As I sit down to write this article and reflect on career paths for 30-somethings, I realize that today marks one month until my own 30th birthday. 

The terrible twenties (that’s what people call them, right?) are wrapping up, and the new decade brings with it new interests that are begging to be adjusted in my priorities, such as owning property, having children or being able to comfortably enjoy the interests I want to pursue in life.

As a millennial, one of the messages I heard loud and clear growing up was that I can be anything I want to be in life. What I either didn’t hear or didn’t pay attention to were 2 key things: 

1. How to go about being anything I wanted to be (a key prerequisite for becoming an expert at something) 

2. Whether what I want to be is valuable to others (a key prerequisite for getting paid to do things)

While I’d love to have some company in the same boat, I can’t make the generalization that my experience is shared amongst all millennials. In my case, it was a great gift to have the freedom to explore my interests as a driving force--this freedom has helped me set a lot of goals in life and has saddled me with the helpful disposition that anything is possible. But I have also craved the structure of understanding how to reach my goals and how to prioritize them based on what brings the most value to myself and others. Otherwise--and I realize what a genuinely millennial thing this is to say--it’s like there’s too many choices at the ice cream parlor and I don’t know what to choose.

Now when it comes to thinking about my career--which I loosely define as the opportunities in life that contribute to my health and wealth--I consistently evaluate those 2 key things: How do I accomplish this? And, Does this bring value to others? 

Luckily, I’ve had the chance to befriend more experienced people who have made their livings in a variety of ways over the years, from owning profitable businesses to working in specialized fields to earning consistent income from their talents. Spending time in conversation with these friends has helped me understand my options, what I have to offer and how to move forward with good-fitting opportunities.

This article is dedicated to the 30-somethings who are also searching for how to choose a meaningful career--a career that amplifies our wealth, provides us time to enjoy the bounties of our efforts, and contributes to our overall sense of purpose in life. 

Let’s start with the basics. 

What’s Valuable to Me? 

By 30, we have enough life experience to make us attractive workers. We are skilled enough to lead teams and departments, experienced enough to be realistic with our expectations, and have enough energy and enthusiasm to rethink old systems that are no longer functional. In short, we are prime real estate, so it’s important for us to understand not only what we bring to the table, but also, which kinds of tables we are interested in sitting at.   

Money: 

• How much income do we need to live comfortably right now? 

• At what rate do we need our income to increase to accommodate changes to our lives in the future? 

• How many places do we want to pull income from? (i.e. one full-time job vs. several part-time jobs or independant contracts) 

• What’s my budget for additional trainings, certifications and/or supplies? 

Time: 

• What are our schedule needs? (Full time, part time, night shifts, remote work, overtime, etc.)

• What other activities beyond work do we want to fit into my life, and how much time does it take to enjoy them? (Early morning runs, weekend camping trips, evening family time with kids, week-long yoga retreats, etc.)

• Are we interested in salary or hourly positions? 

Purpose: 

• What industries have the potential to bring a genuine sense of purpose to our lives? (Healthcare, service, education, fitness, technology, etc.) 

• What working environments contribute to our sense of purpose? (Working in teams, having a strong mentor, working at home, being able to rise up in a company, etc.)

• What interests do we have that bring a sense of purpose to our lives? (Writing, painting, teaching yoga, etc.)

When we have an understanding of what is valuable to us, we are more likely to consider them when there is a job offer on the table. 

What’s Valuable to Society? 

Something I didn’t consider much growing up is: What’s actually needed in society? 

After I graduated college with a theatre degree, I quickly realized that society isn’t aching for more actors, and that if I pursued that field with my whole heart, I would probably never find myself actually solving somebody else’s problem with my contribution. 

(If you are an actor, I do not mean to imply that the same scenario is playing out in your life--you may have a deep sense that your contribution does genuinely impact others, and that’s probably why you’re still doing it and I’m not.) 

When I use the term society I don’t mean something scary looming over us, like big brother or authority figures or an unseen force that is determining our choices. To me, society represents our brothers and sisters, our friends and family, our heros and hopeless. And to understand what’s valuable to our sweet ones, we must ask ourselves: What would make our collective lives better? What problems do we have that I can help solve? 

A quick Google search for “most needed jobs 2018” draws up loads of information, as will surfing the open positions on jobs listing sites. We can also source this information from real-life scenarios, such as conversations with friends, personal observations about the world, our own consumer pain points, etc. 

Here is a short list of up-and-coming positions that I am personally very excited about to spark your imagination: 

• Construction & Craftsmen: Since we purchased our home two years ago we have been in the middle of one project after another and find ourselves working with construction professionals almost everyday. The first time we met our favorite contractor, he started talking about how much demand there is for construction workers (both commercial and residential), and how few new people are entering the field. Since most millennials went to college to get corporate jobs, trade jobs like construction have high demand and a shrinking workforce. 

• Future-Facing Technologies: Artificial intelligence, augmented reality, predictive analytics, virtual reality, SEO, data management and blockchain all have potential to gain huge market share over the coming decades. These are the fields that are currently reimagining how we experience our world, from developing communicative networks of self-driving cars to being able to send money virtually across the world in less than a second, the field of future-facing technologies has its best days ahead of it.   

• Project Management: Project managers are needed in almost all industries including marketing, healthcare, construction, financial services, education, etc. A project manager is responsible for communicating with stakeholders, developing project plans (including schedules, budgets, etc), and coordinating efforts between all people responsible for doing the work. A good PM is someone who can toggle between a status meeting with a CEO and a laser-focused team meeting to plan upcoming work. Because of this, PMs are well-prepped to step into other roles within organizations and have the unique ability to hop between industries over the course of their career, making them a gold chain that never goes out of style. 

• Small Business Ownership: The best small businesses are able to consistently and satisfactorily address their consumers’ pain points. With Yoga In Your Living Room, it took us a while to commit to our idea because we were looking for the consumer pain point: What problem do people have that Yoga In Your Living Room can help solve? After a bit, it became obvious: Happiness! Happiness (or rather, the lack thereof) is a big pain point for me and the consumers I’m targeting. If we can target a specific pain point and check in with the consumer regularly to ensure we are on the right track to solving it, small business ownership can be a great career option. 

Matching Our Values

As we learn more about our own values and what’s valuable to society, a clearer picture materializes of our options. After all, we are looking for something that affords us the wealth to support our interests, time to be able to enjoy them, and health because without that we have nothing. 

When it comes to choosing a career, we will naturally be interested in the options that are aligned with our values, and so our interest indicates to us a green light to move forward. In order to pursue something (you know, like a job), many balls need to be in play, and we may find ourselves considering the gaps in our knowledge and what steps are needed in order to move forward. 

In the course of settling into a new career, we might find ourselves pursuing more education or certifications to hop into a new role, determining our industry/position based on a need to work from home, or creating new targets and projections for the 6 side-gigs we currently have. 

The only thing I actually know is that whatever we end up doing in life, the point of it all is happiness, and that if we move from a place of happiness instead of towards it, there’s no other endpoint but success. 

In a sense, the how question is impossible to answer because we each carve a unique pathway through life. What I’ve given here is at most a mere yard stick in the road with a painted arrow on it. Safe travels to us all. 

Over To You: What careers do you see are needed by society right now and in the future? Do you have other advice not listed here? Comment below to join in the conversation, and sign-up for our Yoga In Your Living Room newsletter, always free, straight to your inbox once a month. It’s the best way to ensure you receive all our blog articles, videos and more on topics such as yoga, philosophy, and all of life’s pain points that are worth looking into. 

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