How to find your calling?
How long did it take you to find your calling?
A lot of people make career changes into positions that are very different to what they had before. It is only with hindsight that they can see that this was the right move. What advice do you have to young adults starting their careers? How did you realize a job/industry was not right for you?
I’m honestly new to this. But my advice would be to go broad at the beginning of your career. For example, if you like finance and investing, but don’t know if you like real estate or hedge funds or PE, then don’t force yourself to make that decision in college. Instead, do banking , get a taste for a few diff industries , and then slowly narrow in. With each job, continue narrowing in.
This is why it is important to do internships while you're young and to not hyper-focus your entire life around one career path. While you're in college and high school it is important to get exposure to a lot of industries and jobs to confirm what job function you would like: finance, marketing, accounting, IT, skilled labor (carpenter, electrician, plumber, etc.), medical field. Once you know that you really like investing and making money, or you really like building stuff from scratch, or you really like whatever, you would then look at possible fields you could do this in. Since we are on an RE forum I'll take CRE as an example...
If you are really interested in finance and making money through investing and all that you would look at potential ways to do that right? There are ways to do it through public stocks/ bonds and some people really love that and go to Mutual Funds, Asset Managers, Hedge Funds, trading desks at investment banks, etc.. You could also look at private markets and see that the options are corporate PE, infrastructure and energy PE, private credit, and real estate PE (I know REITs are a public company, but I'm lumping it in here for simplicity). Once you realize all the options for your career in just investing you can look at what asset and investment strategy is most appealing to you (this is obviously subject to change since markets change rather often and some investment strategies become more appealing over time). If you choose that real estate is what you want to invest in, you can look at the millions of roles that accompany that industry like acquisitions, asset management, investor relations/capital markets, debt-fund, etc..
What you might really love at 18 years old might be the acquisitions and everything that accompanies buying a building, but by the time you're 22 and graduating you might have done an internship or 2 and realize that asset management was much more fun for you and pivot when looking for a full time job. Then when you're 25 with actual work experience you might realize that you don't actually like real estate as much as you thought and would rather do something else and get really into stocks/bonds/corporate PE. Or, you might be 25 and realize that you like RE more that you thought you would and be perfectly happy staying in the industry and current job function.
There's never a time in life that it's too late to change careers since interests change constantly throughout your life. When I was in high school and early college I was like every finance bro and only wanted to go into IB and live in NYC/Chicago/LA. I did an internship in IB during college and realized that I just didn't like the work and the next semester I had a real estate finance class and loved it so I went to a RE internship and realized that RE was the career path I wanted. For me, it only took one summer to realize that I didn't like an industry, but for some the luster might only wear off a couple years in, both are perfectly valid. I'm now quite a few years into my career and looking back don't regret my decision to go into RE over corporate PE or IB at all.
Young professionals are also going to have to realize that through the years there are always going to be days/weeks/year that you could look at an experienced CRE broker make their money and live charmed lives in terms of WLB and wish you could quit and do that, or brokers might see a REPE executive pull in carry and massive salaries with lots of financial security. It's more important to look at your own job and see are you content with your job functions and putting your life into perspective (the classic grass is always greener trope). Last thing...it's never too late to change career paths and you're never locked into one job for 40-50 years, so don't put too much pressure on yourself to make millions by 25 and have the absolute perfect WLB while making sure that everyone you talk to is awed by how important your job is or anything like that.
This is a GREAT question.... I think it is really easy to fall in love with an idea of an "ideal pathway" early on (like literally while still in UG), and then stay all committed to it despite indications its not the "ideal" path for you or in the face of alternative paths that may be equally good if not better. So, my first general thought is to always be curious about various fields, industries, and roles (even outside of CRE). Like talk/network with all sorts, and ask questions like "why did you go the route you went", or "what do you like/dislike about it". You can do this well into your career, but its super easy to ask such questions while young (at least it probably feels easier to do).
My personal path involved being sort of "discovered" by a senior person at a firm I worked at right after MBA. They strongly advised I move into research/strategy and away from D/E placement production, and they went all the way to give me such assignments. This wasn't the direction I had planned on, or ever really thought of, but it led me down a path that 100% accelerated the hell out of career. So, taking the advice of a mentor (boss) was essentially the "how to" of my story. I can't say that will happen universally to everyone, but you should hopefully have mentor types at your actual firm and out in the industry who you can ask.... "what do you think I'd be best at doing" and they be able/honest to tell you based on knowing you and the market/opportunity AND be honest enough to say if they think your current path may not be best.
Clearly, a lot of luck in that, but if you seek the feedback, more apt to get it. BUT, the decision and final call is yours, and only yours! I guess the same could happen and it be shitty advice in the rear view mirror. Since I can't rewind and play it differently, I'll never really know!
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