Your career is your most valuable financial asset. By getting a college degree and managing your career to its full potential, you can earn millions of dollars in extra income throughout your lifetime. A key to this is getting a good job from the start.
Here's a list from CareerBuilder that lists the 10 jobs hiring the most 2006 graduates as well as the average starting salary for each. Their list:
- Accounting (private) -- $45,817
- Management trainee -- $38,482
- Financial/Treasury Analysis -- $46,335
- Sales -- $38,830
- Project Engineering -- $50,365
- Consulting -- $50,120
- Design/Construction Engineering -- $48,109
- Accounting (Public) -- $44,668
- Teaching -- $30,377
- Field Engineering -- $50,812
Other than "pick something you'll love doing," my only advice is to look at total earning potential when selecting a career. While it's great to start out at a high salary, it's not that great if the salary levels off fairly quickly and hits a ceiling. Engineering is notorious for starting out with an above-average salary, but then advancing much slower and ultimately being surpassed by other professions. Many of my grad school friends were engineers who had hit a salary cap, wanted more, and as such came back to school to earn their MBA.
Good point on picking something that has upward mobility. I was sucked into the pharmacists job about seven years ago. GREAT starting pay (retail), but zero upward mobility in retail. I wouldn't say I've hit a ceiling, but what scares me is that new grads out of pharmacy school are only making about $5K less than me, and I've been here for seven years already.
Good post.
Posted by: Jerry | June 09, 2006 at 10:13 AM