Career selection algorithm

[Bereno]

There was a thread recently that was asking about medicine or dentistry and which was better. Many on there were using salary as a standard of comparison, and understandably so; its the easiest to use. That gave me the idea to post this thread to show the algorithm I now use. Any and all feedback is welcome.

It took me 7 years to complete my undergraduate degree because I had no clue "what I wanted to do". The guidance counselors at my high school did not know either. Essentially, after those 7 years, I came up with this basic algorithm for "valuing" a job. It is a very imperfect system, but at least it can give some stratification to start your look. If you are reading this, then it is likely that you are considering dentistry. Play around with it and see what you come up with. Here is the job algorithm I use:

Income. Fairly self explanatory, but this is meant to include salary plus any benefits the job would normally hold. These would include things such as medical, dental, paid time off, etc. Don't worry about exact numbers, just try to get a ballpark figure here.

AEL: Annual Education Loan payment. Includes the total annual cost of your education after you graduate. Looked at another way, it is the sum of your monthly payments to your loan provider(s). I know that this depends on the duration of your loans, but that is a variable that I am willing to write off. Let me know if you want to know more about why.

ABL: Annual Business Loan payment. Dentistry is a great example as to why this is here. To own your own practice is a large cost that will eat away from your salary. The higher this cost, the less you are actually making. Same as before though, this depends on your loan duration. If you can inherit a practice, the more power to you.

ARJE: Annual Required Job Expenses. Lets say you are a photographer, so your required job expenses are cameras, lenses, lights, etc. If you are a construction worker it is going to be tools. If you are a medical professional, it will include malpractice insurance. I think you get the idea here. This includes the risks of job pay, scarcity, and overall stability.

YE: Years of Education. The idea here is that you are losing years of working for years of education, and we only have a set number of years to live... Not to mention, most of these years in education are in our twenties, so I feel (you could disagree) that every year of education "lost" should increase the monetary value of the job in question. For example, would I pick a job that required 30 years of school if it payed millions a year? Probably not since I would be so old by the time I get done. This is an extreme example, but not too far off from some super specialties in the medical field.

Si: Stability index - ranges from 0% - 100%. This is an arbitrary value, and usually set to 1. If you are a stock broker or a real estate agent, then this will likely be a bit lower than, say, an accountant. The idea is that a job should pay you more or cost you less if it is a riskier job.

JSi: Job Satisfaction index - ranges from 0% - 100%. This is the real make or break variable IMO. If you found the perfect job, but you would be unhappy doing it, then you would put a fatty zero here and the overall value would fall to nothing. However, if you love what the day to day would hold, then drop in a nice 90% or so. This includes things like schedule, the job enjoyment, location, working environment, etc.


Honestly, this covers most of the key points in a job, without getting too detailed. Granted, the number you get is a rough/approximate/arbitrary number, but at least it gives some sort of standard of comparison other than gut feeling or hearsay. I spent a long time trying to find the career that fit me, and I wish that I had something like this to at least get guide me a little. This is what I will be using with my kids someday when they are looking into a career. Let me know what you guy and gals think - I would love to get some feedback on additions, corrections, assumptions, whathaveyou.

Any and all feedback are welcome.

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[Ionz]

Noice.

 

[Blake1e]

Says best career for me would be an Independent Television Set Tester that no company knows about and just lays on the couch all day watching one on the taxpayer's dime. Loljk I dont watch tv.

On a serious note: nice post I wish they had something like this back when I was a freshman, and it came with a list of potential jobs you can get for every major. That wouldve saved me from having to deal with the same problems you had. In my school no one knew the career center had a list like this. When I found it senior year by accidental clicking I thought "sweet!" until I actually read it and saw very little effort was put into it and it was terribly inconvenient to use and lacked so much info that essentially it was of no use, probably explaining why they never told students about it.

A list like that that contained details such as:
-general path for getting certain job and if applicable range of potential cost for any further education required
-avg or median hours/wk and salary
-brief description of daily tasks

That wouldve been excellent. Problem for most students is we just dont know about the kinds of jobs out there. Only careers we know of are doctor and lawyer thanks to tv. With a list like this a student can find a job they like with the major theyve already chosen, or they could work backwards and find a job they like and from there pick a major.

Your equation comes in when a student inevitably gets stuck b/w choosing the 2-5 careers they liked most.

 

[Bereno]

Your equation comes in when a student inevitably gets stuck b/w choosing the 2-5 careers they liked most.

You know, you bring up a good point that may not be obvious here. This algorithm is not meant to filter out all possible jobs, but to be used as a tool to compare a few jobs as you have mentioned. One of these days I will plug some example numbers in and post them here for kicks and giggles haha.

 

[steiner2]

My friend, monkey, you should take some biostats classes. Those models will probably interest you a lot. Stratification has a totally different meaning too in that world. Personally, I think whenever dental or med students want to do anything to compare the two it's because they have egos or have an inferiority complex somewhere that is higher than they are willing to admit or place a real number on. Another thing, a doctor who works in the rich side of town and have patients who pay with cash or with good reimbursing insurances will most likely have higher "value" than the doctor in the poor side stuck with getting medicaid payments or none at all, no matter what specialty they are in or how long it took them to get there. A Harvard grad stuck on medicaid patients will be less happy than the community college grad who got a lucky break and has a thriving practice in Beverly Hills after waiting tables at Olive Garden for 6 years to pay for night school. It's cool that you are being original at least but kind of foolhardy to think that it can be useful in choosing a career.

 

[Bereno]

My friend, monkey, you should take some biostats classes. Those models will probably interest you a lot. Stratification has a totally different meaning too in that world. Personally, I think whenever dental or med students want to do anything to compare the two it's because they have egos or have an inferiority complex somewhere that is higher than they are willing to admit or place a real number on. Another thing, a doctor who works in the rich side of town and have patients who pay with cash or with good reimbursing insurances will most likely have higher "value" than the doctor in the poor side stuck with getting medicaid payments or none at all, no matter what specialty they are in or how long it took them to get there. A Harvard grad stuck on medicaid patients will be less happy than the community college grad who got a lucky break and has a thriving practice in Beverly Hills after waiting tables at Olive Garden for 6 years to pay for night school. It's cool that you are being original at least but kind of foolhardy to think that it can be useful in choosing a career.

I appreciate the gesture of originality, but I doubt that I am the first to do this lol. Also, I have taken my fair share of stats classes, including biostats

To the bolded statement: I disagree here. I think that once you have a set of career prospects that you are looking at like so many high-schoolers and college students do, it is a useful tool to try and place a value on the time spent in school, income, job security, lifestyle, etc. I see where you are going saying that income is variable, but I still think this approach applies. The fact is, before you enter a career, you are most likely to earn the average income based on your area. True you might end up in beverly hills, but that chance applies equally to everyone entering that field. This still gives a better idea of the value of a job over nothing. I honestly would have jumped all over this had I been provided it when I was in high-school lol. I am likely going to add a little more to it (not the equation part) to make it a little more applicable. Let me know what you think.

 

[steiner2]

Yeah, I cant even begin how to model this using stats models. Then again, I hated biostats classes. I will prob prefer to use more descriptive stats in the future instead of quant.

Why is Si even needed? Should be set to 1 or removed. Risk is built into the pay, as in hazard pay. Hence cops and firefighters get paid more because they are "heroes" when they do their job whereas we are lowly samaritans when we do something nice or courageous (it's debatable to me how heroic it is saving a cat from a sewer drain or tree though).

JSi seems extra. If they are still in school, how do they know what enjoyment or value the job is until they are actually working that job now? Shouldnt it be a different constant that you find and set after you go about surveying enough sample of the pop to get a figure decent enough to be used as a constant for different professions?

Where's expenses like food, rent, car payments, living expenses, medical insurance, entertainment spending, etc? Even a virtual gf on NintendoDS requires expensive batteries to keep it going (I was going to say inflatable companion and rubber cement but that might just be in bad taste to the rubber inflatable companions).

Most people think dentists commit the most suicides so students will prob plug in a big zero for JSi due to ignorance. Which brings us to 0 for the equation and a lot of time I could've spent scratching my butt instead of entering numbers to come up with Bereno's value. Haha j/k. I am supposed to be working on research papers and here I am wasting time.

 

[Bereno]

My reasoning for Si: You mentioned how risk was built into pay, and this is as a generalization, true. However, the problem is that by not including Si, the risky jobs would present with the higher pay, but there would be nothing to show that these are risky jobs. The Si measurement is used here to balance that out.

JSi is not a constant. It is to be used to see how much you would be satisfied with what that career offers, be it time off, low stress, fun job, prestige, etc. Arguably, this is the most important variable IMO. For example, who would like to be a an investment banker? Sure, they can make a lot of money, but they would likely (not for everyone) have a low job satisfaction index because of the high stress, long working hours, and high burnout rate. The JSi would compensate for the high salary. The trick here is to be as honest as you can when determining the value of JSi. I know it is a crude approach thus far, do you have any recommendations for improving it?

Expenses like food, rent, insurance, car payments, etc should not be included in this because it has no relevance to what career you choose. Just about every job out there will require you to eat...