Jaejung Lee
Oct.19, 2007
Gen-V. R/W
Some people say financial gain should be the most important factor in choosing a career. This seems to make sense because money is the first thing that springs to our mind whenever we consider possible careers, but is money really all that our jobs are about? I do not think so. The first thing that comes into one’s head is not always the most important factor or the determinant. People evaluate many factors in selecting their careers, and money is only one of those factors considered during the decision-making process. In my opinion, one should think over the opportunities for realizing one’s full potential, developing human relationships, and contributing to one’s community before choosing his or her career.
People think of their careers as important opportunities for realizing their potential through their whole lives. A career is a life-long activity; therefore, people usually carry out self-assessments of their own interests, strengths and weaknesses, and ambitions before making the final decision about their careers. Through that process people come to know more about their potential and look for the fields or companies which are suitable for them. In other words, they try to seek the career which can provide the opportunity to realize their full potential. Steve Jobs, a founder of Apple Inc., is a good example. If he had only wanted good financial gain, he might have lived a different life with a totally different career. He figured out the potential of his ideas and new technologies and started up a venture in his father’s garage in 1974. That venture may not have been the best choice in terms of making money because he had to spend more than two years creating his first Apple computer without substantial financial gain. He invested his early career in setting up the venture, and the reason for his choice can be explained not by the pursuit of financial gain but by the desire for self-realization.
Human relationships are another important factor in choosing a career. If we extend the meaning of choosing a career to include the changing of jobs, the importance of human relationships will become clear. According to Vitalsmarts, a corporate training and organizational performance consulting firm in the United States, fifty percent of American workers who have ever quit a job blamed stressful and bad relationships with superiors or coworkers as their reason for leaving. On the other hand, only nine percent pointed out low salaries. There is another survey conducted by the Korean Ministry of Labor in 2005. The survey showed that sixty percent of married women who replied resigned from their jobs in order to devote themselves to the care of their children. Human relationships influenced people not only to change their careers, but also to give up their jobs because people believed that their coworkers and families were more critical or valuable than money.
Al Gore, the forty-fifth Vice President of the United States, changed his political career dramatically to that of an environmentalist. He was successful in bringing the problem of global warming to the attention of Americans with his documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. He also succeeded in directing our attention to the notion that a career as an opportunity for contributing to one’s community is one of the important factors in selecting a career. We have another example in Muhammad Yunus. This former university professor of economics was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for his successful application of microcredit in Bangladesh, the extension of small loans to entrepreneurs who were too poor to qualify for traditional bank loans, and for his efforts to improve economic and social development. He also showed us that something beyond money can encourage people to choose their careers. Messrs Gore and Yunus demonstrate that some people have devoted their careers to the improvement of their communities regardless of financial rewards.
Money is not enough to explain the reasons that Steve Jobs started up his own venture, that a lot of Korean moms gave up their careers for their children, and that Messrs Gore and Yunus dedicated themselves to their new careers. Financial gain may capture our attention at the beginning of the process of evaluating possible careers. We, however, make a final decision about our careers in terms of the realization of our potential, our value on human relationships, and our prospective contributions to our communities. Godfrey Golzen, the British business writer who wrote Smart Moves, said that the highest offer in money terms only makes sense in the context of one’s overall factors for career contentment. That makes sense, doesn’t it?