List of Everyday Career Enemies
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 This Week's Feature Article On Career Enemies

How Choosing the Wrong Career Can Affect Your Career
 

You may have spent years in school and thousands of dollars on an education to work in a career you hate. You are miserable, your student loans have piled up, and you don’t know if you are ever going to enjoy your job. Choosing the wrong career is not the end of the world, although it may feel like it when you wake up every morning to go to work. It can negatively affect your career, though, so before you change careers again, consider your situation carefully.

First, if you choose the wrong career, you simply are unhappy in your work. This can affect your work performance, which, in turn, can affect your chances to get promotions into a new position that you might actually like. Spending eight or more hours a day in a job you don’t like can also just make you feel miserable about life in general. You may be short with your colleagues, who may not particularly enjoy being around you. Souring relationships with colleagues is not a good way to get reference letters when you move to a new career.

In addition, you waste a lot of time and money preparing for a job you despise if you choose the wrong career. Loans, time spent in college, and other resources your poured into finding a job on this particular career path are all wasted if you end up doing a job you don’t like.

Finally, working in the wrong career wastes valuable time that you could have spent working in another field gaining expertise. You could have been promoted three or four times in a career field you like if you had not been working in the wrong career field to begin with.

However, remember that it’s not too late to start over. Start a new business in the field in which you’re interested. Go back to college to learn how to do a new job. Volunteer in the field to get your feet wet to see if you would really like the new career you’re thinking about entering. Talk to others in the field to see what their impressions of it are and of your working in it.