career decision

Read all that follows below that I have written in topics with headings rather than narrative format, it is what I know, how I developed a range of skills and all that you will ever need for educated lifelong education to employment transition, or job to job decisions.

First and foremost, what is work? Work is a job a person does to earn money where everyone be native or fresh of the boat, that is, recently arrived immigrant yet to assimilate has a responsibility to seek out not an entitlement, that is, something that everyone has a right to do or have locally.
A person who has a useful regular job and sufficient pay to cover basic needs is classed as being in gainful employment.

Jobs come from the labour market, the labour market like any market has two sides, employers as sellers and jobseekers as buyers. A job vacancy is a derived demand, it can be brand new or vacated post. Jobseekers compete to fill job vacancies.

1. Wages - Unless, wages are frozen across the board, people tend to move and stay put with employers offering more.
2. Geographical mobility of labour - the degree to which people are able and willing to switch to related jobs horizontally that is within the same knowledge and skills level geographically.
   Example:
   A formulation scientist leaves his/her current employer to join a competitor as a formulation scientist locally, nationaly or internationally.
3. Occupational mobility of labour - the degree to which people are able and willing to switch to unrelated jobs by choice, promotion or demotion anywhere.
   Example:
   An accountant becomes a plumber, on the shop floor worker becomes a manager, a detective becomes officer on the beat.

Professions and highly skilled occupations tend to have higher wages, low occupational mobility due to the curse of higher skills requirements but high geographical; elementary occupations tend to have low wages, both high geographical and occupational mobility, the blessing of low skills requirements.

Irreversible globalization and constant technological advances are agents that accelerate significant changes in labour mobility and no one is protected or exempted from their effects, where globalization allows for little or no restriction of movement of labour across international borders, the ease of moving jobs to other countries, technology wipes out some jobs, by wholly making specialized knowledge and skills obsolete, that is useful but no longer required, changes some jobs due to additional specialized knowledge and skills requirement and creates others with completely new specialized knowledge and skills requirements; together they eliminate job security, that is, job for life in most sectors and confine local to geography, local jobs for local people and study-work-retire model to history.

The reality is, all employers are more or less the same as:

1. They operate according to similar norms that do not hold particular knowledge and skills an employee has gained whilst in education or training in the same regard as teachers do neither do they promise the greatest success for the brightest and most deserving!
2. They are bureaucratic as they share in common:
   1. system of rules - authoritative, complex, predominantly take it or leave it principles or instructions that control employees actions as expressed on employment contracts.
   2. impersonality - lack of emotional involvement.
   3. hierarchy of authority - low, middle, top tiers of management.
   4. specialization - every employee sticking to doing one tiny thing as per job description.

Employer culture is simply how things are done within it. There exists many cultures and there is always conflict between individual employees and employers' culture. You have to learn to live and resolve conflict at work. Where there exists individualistic culture, that is, a way of doing things where employees are fiercely competitive and territorial, there tend to be less the togetherness, to survive, you have to stand your ground. If it happens you are a person of faith, just remember these proverbs 'When in Rome, Do as the Romans Do', follow your employer's culture and 'Serve the infidel to gain your objective', you are hired to do the job not to be a righteous police!

I bet you have heard the idiom, never take it with a heavy negative connotation as the fact is 'every employee self or otherwise is an important cog that is playing its part to keep the wheels turning'.

1. What do you call a professional principal seller, an entrepreneur.
2. What do you call a professional healer, a doctor or physician.
3. What do you call a professional apothecary, a pharmacist or chemist.
4. What do you call a professional tight fist, an accountant.
5. What do you call a professional gambler, a stockbroker or trader.
6. What do you call a professional cook, a chef.
7. What do you call a professional chief household servant, a butler.
8. What do you call a professional coffee maker and server, a barista.
9. What do you call a professional wine steward, a sommelier.
10. What do you call rich or important people professional driver, a chauffeur.

The list goes on. The point is, all these titles sound posh but irrespective of perceived prestige, each and everyone of these people serves the master(s) whoever that be and as to what they do daily, most is repetitive and at times boring, a consequence of specialization. As for earnings, believe it or not, there are butlers, sommeliers, chauffeurs, chefs and so forth that earn more money than doctors!

Specialization creates an imbalance between those with superior domain-specific (subject/field) experience, knowledge or hard skills in one words experts and those without or novices respectively and thus justifies the exclusion of the later.

1. Orthopaedic surgeon is for prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of disorders of the bones, joints, ligaments, tendons and muscles.
2. Plastic surgeon is for repair and reconstruction of missing or damaged tissue and skin.
3. Neurosurgeon is for disorders of the central and peripheral nervous system.

1. If you want to make a career out of something, you must have to become a master of it as being a jack of all trades and a master of none will not get you far.
2. At some point whilst in education or seeking employment when you come across a tenure/chair professor of this or that, a consultant physician/doctor of this or that and so forth with unhinged sense of self-entitlement,do not be intimaded by his/her deep expertise, his/her knowledge is only domain specific and his/her elevated performance in relevant narrow field is due to exploitation of familiar tasks that he/she has intensely practiced regularly for a long time, meaning, sky's the limit, you can achieve expertise in any field if you put your mind to it.

There exist occupational stereotyping by age, race, gender, ethnicity, locals vs. immigrants and so forth, the point is, all these widely held but fixed and oversimplified images of a particular type of people doing certain jobs are nothing more than false and hollow beliefs, the fact is, as permitted by law, all occupations are open to everyone.

Perspective changes everything! As you have read on occupational prestige above, 'an employee self or otherwise, serves the master(s) whoever that be'. Satisfaction comes from serving in a way that shows you are good at what you do, period.
Imagine you are a football striker on lucrative contract but you don't score goals, fans will give you stick, chanting 'you don't know what you are doing' and constantly boo, say you are a doctor on good salary but cannot treat patients, there will be flood of complaints, you surely won't get any job satisfaction if you were the aforementioned striker or doctor, would you?

Horizontal career progression is to hierarchy of knowledge or skills. You progress horizontally and accordingly command more compensation in pay package or wages for acquired knowledge and skills.
example:
Natural career progression of a doctor, a doctor starts as a medical student, then supervised junior doctor after graduation, unsupervised senior doctor after on the job training and ultimately if one wants to can take the continuous training general or specialist route as General Practitioner (GP) or consultant or Staff grade and Associate Specialist (SAS) doctor respectively.

Vertical career progression is to hierarchy of authority. You are promoted and accordingly command more compensation in pay package or wages for span of control, that is, the number of people you supervise or for retention purposes. Believe it or not when it comes to promotion, exposure and image are well ahead of performance! You have to be seen and market yourself as promotion material, actually, the best perfoming people rarely get promoted, who in his/her right mind promotes the irrepleceable team member?!

If you are undecided on what career to pursue or considering a career change, get a stopgap job, it could be a stepping stone for your next career, a way to avoid unnecessary gaps in employment that you have to explain to would-be employers later and ultimately it will keep you off the dole, living on means tested benefits.

The difference between an employee and the self-employed is the former is contracted for regular work and compensation by the employer while the latter is not, regular work and compensation is the biggest challenge for the self- employed.

What you get from every completed phase of Education or Training is qualifications.
Qualifications when they strictly refer to knowledge, to be precise the accurate, appropriate and sufficient pertinent background knowledge of general or specific nature where anyone who is deficient in it will fail to grasp the full meaning of variety of things and also struggle to unlock new ideas and experiences that lie ahead and hard skills - the teachable and measurable abilities respectively not certificates with grades to show one has completed required schooling or training from an officially recognized or authorized institution, serve as absolutely necessary minimum entry requirement to most jobs.

Compulsory education serves two purposes, one, to teach children absolutely necessary introductory simple facts of subjects that matters most in life, namely, reading, writing and Arithmetic, two, to build a foundation for succeeding intermediate and advanced learning in further and higher education.

According to broadly accurate guide based on my experience, the following are essential subjects and topics, wider universal skills you should be good at preferably before the end of compulsory education, they are more than enough for a lifetime!

1. Mathematics - understanding arithmetic (the fundamental of mathematics - addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, fractions, decimals and percentages, ratios and proportions), geometry (distance, shape, size, and relative position of figures), logic - connection and combination, basic probability (chance) and statistics (data handling and interpretation).
2. Laboratory science - understanding methods that employs empirical experimentation to draw conclusions - in Biology (living matter), Chemistry (composition and behaviour of matter) and Physics (matter in relation to energy).
3. Use of Information and Communications Technology - word processors, email, databases, spreadsheets, reprographics, video conferencing, the internet and world wide web and so forth .
4. Written And Verbal Communication - understanding the primary building blocks of reading and writing, composition and grammar, literature, the ability to argue properly and avoid argumentum ad hominem - a situation that occurs when an arguer attacks the person that they are engaged in an argument with, rather than the validity of the person's arguments through debate sessions.
5. Civics - understanding freedom is responsibility.
6. Geography - Understanding the environment, sustainable development, proximity and trade.
7. History - understanding of events that have affected the course of history and the modern world, namely, slavery, colonialism, WW1 and WW2, trade liberalisation, the common market and so forth.
8. Religion - Understanding comparative religion nothing to do with converts or devoutness.

Algebra - letters and symbols in place of a number, unless you intend to pursue advanced Mathematics, Physics and subsequently a career in engineering, economics, modelling and so forth, algebra is not essential, you can live without.
Besides, you won't be alone, most people never master algebra!

Only 7% of UK population is privately educated using own economic capital; yet they account for more than half of the top level of most professions, meaning, the remaining 93% that attend mostly non-selective state schools compete for the remainder, if you are one of the 7%, lucky you, if otherwise, tough, you have to work harder, 'if you can't beat them, join them', the 7% won't lower their standards to accommodate you, you have to up your game to or above their level, win-win, you cannot rely on impossible to implement quotas, win-lose Robin Hood effect social policies to take the opportunities from the affluent students and give them to the disadvantaged.

If you are one of the 93% that is stuck in a relatively under resourced, non selective school, cannot buy the best textbooks or afford extra tuition, reach out to your better-off peers that are willing to share knowledge, ask them to share with you their school or extra tuition materials, compare and contrast what you are learning, add what you are missing, it will enrich your learning experiences greatly.

Explicit formal education at all levels suffers two problems: first, intensity of focus, students across the board concentrate on subject topics that are required to make up the grades on standardized tests and exams, second, homogeneity, that is, we all study the same or similar courses, attend the same or similar classes, attend the same or similar schools, colleges or universities, read the same or similar assigned or recommended books and so forth.

Even with teachers' best efforts, explicit taught knowledge alone is never enough to make you a well rounded human being capable of holding conversations and understanding of topics beyond your specialization. For anything you are not taught in the classroom, offset by implicitly teaching yourself through other sources namely books, exhibitions, forums, magazines, newspapers, journals and so forth. Besides, self-taught knowledge is what gives you originality and differentiates you from everyone else!

Wider universal skills apply everywhere, everyday. They are not taught but gained through observation and experiences used and re-used until they become second nature, activities such as culture and language, community, media, military, social activism, individual and team sports, group discussions and so forth, do enhance wider universal skills.

1. Communication - putting grammar and vocabulary into practice.
2. Work ethic - can do attitude, work does not have to be a chore.
3. Flexibility - priorities change, the willingness to accommodate changes.
4. Adaptability - world of work is constantly changing, change with it or wither and die.
5. leadership - stepping up and taking the lead when needed.
6. teamwork - Working together in harmony to achieve a common goal efficiently and effectively.
7. personal motivation - intrinsically, there is that little annoying or pleasant person inside everyone of us that is nudging and nagging us to get or do something.
8. organization - without organization, you have chaos, the more organized the better.
9. Time management - punctuality, prioritization of tasks, you cannot do everything, you have to rank tasks.
10. cultural awareness - we live and work in a multicultural society, you must appreciate cultural differences.
11. commercial awareness (business acumen, business/client focus) - the understanding of an enterprise's activities in the context of wider environment surrounding it.

Further education is the intermediate education, normally taking place between the ages of 16 and 18, apart from 'A' levels or equivalent Scottish Highers, Welsh and Scottish Baccalaureates, International Baccalaureates whose purpose is to prepare students for entry into higher levels of specialized study at higher education institutions, unless, hard skills are taught as in vocational, apprenticeship training and so forth, the remainder of further education is like a middle child suffering from identity crisis as it has no clearly recognised and shared core purpose and thus not worth pursuing at all.

The purpose of a bachelor degree also known as an undergraduate degree or equivalent is to give students deep domain specific knowledge and skills.
A degree in a particular field the common terms used are major or specialization often form the basis of an individual's career.

Where the quality of individual alumni, that is, graduates from the same university knowledge and skills is open for debate, the power of alumni as social capital in an institutionalized form is settled. Rank matters! Attending a top research university open you up to opportunities to mingle with affluent, well-connected teaching staff, home and international students, a priceless network.

University is where you do self-directed learning a skill you are assumed to have developed through supplementary home or library self study whilst in earlier phases of education.

There is neither general agreement among higher education institutions on how academic subjects should be classified nor proper criteria for organizing knowledge into disciplines, however, if you look carefully all knowledge acquisition involves either learning theoretical liberal arts for the sake of it or learning liberal arts with application in mind. Every course on offer is merely liberal arts combinational derivative taught through e-learning, projects, lectures, lab and practical, supervisions, field-trips, seminars, classes and so forth

STEM - Science namely natural sciences Biology, Chemistry, Physics and Mathematics alone are pure subjects when you change them into applied form as in applied Biology, Chemistry, Physics and Mathematics, blend them together, they bear Engineering and Technology. By grouping, education does not feel so confusing, does it?

A broadly accurate principle based on my experience are one, choose a university degree course only if there are no acceptable vocational and apprenticeship equivalents and two, choose a course that will give you not only the sort of knowledge and skills that people are willing to pay you for but also a reasonable return on your investment, as university education is a big investment.

When choosing a university to attend the only thing we tend to consider is the easy bit, that is, getting to a campus, however, we tend to overlook the most important proximity to internships, work experience or industrial placements that are essential to the development of relevant hard skills as university courses are predominantly theory based, or even if lab work is involved, it is a known fact lab never match the real world demands, think of yourself as a car that has passed standardized lab testing with flying colours but guarantees no matching real world on road performance.

1. East Anglia, the South-East, the East Midlands and Yorkshire are agricultural heartlands.
2. The West Midlands is the industrial heartland.
3. The South East is distinctive for its service industries such as insurance, banking and shipping.

Meaning, you have to explore which sector and divisions of industry your chosen major/specialization is in, namely primary, secondary or tertiary because they will determine geographically where and how close to your university most opportunities are as well as the nature of work, that is, desk job, a job that involves working mostly at a desk in an office and non-desk, that is, field, shop, factory, laboratory job and so forth. You can learn more about where, types of jobs available at present and in the future, locally, regionally, nationwide and internationally through Labour Market Information (LMI).

Never rely too much on Labour market information as it is statistical information with margin of error, besides, often things don't turn out the way people predict due to unforeseen events!

It is best to use a bachelor's degree to get employed first as employers do set aside a budget for training and development where depending on your role and level you can choose or be advised to pursue a Masters degree or professional equivalent as part of your Continuous Personal Development (CPD) and they will foot part or the whole of the bill and very likely top-up your wages and promotion post-completion.

Unless you are planning to become an academic or a researcher both primarily a preserve of universities; it is not worth pursuing a doctorate degree at all!