This article from today’s NY Times puts a positive spin on job searching in the current economic climate, pointing out how the lack of traditional Wall St. jobs for business school grads has in a sense given many of them “permission” to pursue other jobs, such as teaching, managing a jazz club, applying for the foreign service or going to rabbinical school when they might otherwise have felt pressured to go for a high-paying, high-status Wall Street job.
Dakedo, if you read between the lines, what this means is a more competitive job market for everyone including JET alums. Now, when you apply for the foreign service or Teach for America or anything else, you’re competing against MBA students and other highly-qualified people for these positions.
Sore de, it’s more important than ever to take a proactive approach to the notion of career and job search. The ground is shifting underneath us, which is scary, but also means there are new opportunities. It’s no longer enough to think of jobs as familiar fixed categories for which you send your resume and wait for a company or organization to “give” you a job. This is the time to look around, figure out what needs are out there and create your own job and your own value, especially given the tools available out there to everyone such as blogs, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Etsy.com, eBay and many others. While you may or may not succeed in creating your own job or business, going through the process will open doors, teach you new skills, give you more confidence and be more likely over time to lead to new opportunities and new jobs.
In other words, we all now have permission to take risks. Ganbatte kudasai!
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