A reader was kind enough to forward to me a helpful article published by the New York Times, guiding new graduates in the right direction as they take on their first real full-time job. Many graduates have had experience in the work force before, but it’s not until graduation when they can truly begin focusing on their careers and the benefits they provide.

While I wrote yesterday about general financial tips for college graduates, the New York Times article hones in on that first job so those in this position know what to expect and can make some of the right decisions about benefits.

In fact, health insurance ranks at the top of the importance ladder.

Health insurance is expensive. Employers generally pay for some or most of it, but usually not all. You’ll probably pay your share of the cost in at least two ways. First, your employer will probably take some money out of your paycheck regularly. This is called the premium. Then, there’s something called a deductible, where each year you have to pay at least the first couple of hundred dollars toward many kinds of medical expenses…

Thinking back to my first job, no information about insurance was explained to me with clarity. Like many others, I was able to determine the definition of terms like “premium” and “deductible” as I went along, but I could have benefited from some of this basic financial information at the outset.

The article also provides basic information about payroll taxes, or why you never seem to take home as much as you think you’re earning. PaycheckCity is a helpful website recommended by the editors that provides several basic calculators, a walk-through of the W-4 form, and some additional features if you’re willing to pay.

What about retirement? This is an issue that are far from the minds of many freshly minted graduates, but when you’re right out of college is the best time to start thinking about the distant future. Even in the face of bills the likes of which you’ve never dealt with before, the article suggests taking advantage of your company’s 401(k). The article suggests making this process easy:

...[C]onsider investing in something called a lifecycle or target-date fund, which is fast becoming a standard offering in retirement plans. These funds will have names like the 2050 fund, which correspond to the year when you’ll probably be thinking about retiring. Managers allocate the money (mostly in stock mutual funds now, though the investments get more conservative over time), and all you have to do is shovel more in.

Regardless of investment, the best thing about many 401(k) plans is the employer match, as I’ve mentioned earlier. Anyone fresh out of college should recognize the value of “free” money. (Sometimes there’s a catch, such as you have to work for the company a certain amount of years before the money actually becomes yours, but everyone knows that there’s no such thing as truly free money.)

A Primer for Young People Starting Their First Job, Ron Lieber, New York Times, June 14, 2008.

I’ve been at my current company for six years now. That’s quite an accomplishment as I intended to work for this company for a short time while seeking out something more meaningful. As I’ve stayed with the company while moving around to a variety of departments, I’ve accrued to privilege of taking an increasing number of vacation days.

Here is our policy, modified a little bit for sake of quasi-anonymity. Every third year of service, an employee receives three more days added to their pool, starting with the first full year of employment. During employment before the first full year, vacation days are awarded at a rate of 1 days per month for the last six months of the year and 1.5 days per month for the first six months. 6 “sick days” are added to these totals, but they’re similar to vacation days in all respects except one: Don’t take more than 6 unplanned sick days in any 12 month period.

Any unused vacation days can be carried over to the following year with a maximum of half the total allotted vacation days. I have 24 vacation days this year (not including 6 sick days), plus 4 carried over from last year.

Last year, I took 17 out of the 28 total vacation days available to me. I should take more, particularly due to the health benefits of two-week vacations. Several studies show that Americans take fewer vacation days than workers in other countries, and we are awarded fewer days than workers in Great Britain and France. In 137, paid vacation is mandated for employers, but not in the United States.

Do American workers have a responsibility to take as few vacation days as possible? How many vacation days, or how much of your “allotment” do you take?

Yes, irreplaceableness appears to be a legitimate word. Even if it weren’t, there’s a good chance you could infer its meaning without doubt. It wouldn’t matter if the word actually appears in a dictionary. Now that that’s out of the way…

My former boss was laid off last week. It had only been a matter of time. Some time after I left that department to work in my current location, her department was moved to another building to take advantage of efficiencies with another group that performed similar services for the company. The truth is that there was a lot of redundancy in this function around the entire company, and once the departments were combined, it made sense to streamline the management.

I feel horrible that someone I’ve known for many years has lost her job. The reason I left, however, was because she wasn’t a very good manager and I was not learning anything from her other than what not to do.

My current boss, K., gave me the news of the “rightsizing” of my former boss late last week. K. mentioned that this was a perfect example of how one must make one’s self irreplaceable. At first I agreed. Irreplaceableness means that one has job security. When times are tight for a company, and they must decide who to let go, they will start with anyone whose job is redundant, anyone who performs poorly, and anyone whose functions can be assumed somewhere else.

Some time after our initial conversation, I couldn’t get the idea of irreplaceableness out of my mind. Something didn’t sit right with me. I began thinking, and that can be dangerous. I contemplated how one must create the belief that one is irreplaceable.

To become irreplaceable one must drive against forces that help a team work efficiently and smoothly together. In my department, we cross-train as much as possible, so people are free to take vacations at almost any time. We work on enhancing our procedural documentation and process flowcharts so that at any time someone with moderate knowledge and training can step in and muddle through some of the more complex tasks (and so we can ensure the proper controls and quality reviews are in place). If someone were to disappear off the face of the planet, it might take some time, but the group would recover.

Here is one way I reduce my irreplaceableness for the benefit of the group. My skills with Microsoft Excel are above average in comparison to most of my coworkers. I was happy to present a few classes on some of the software’s more useful functions. These classes allowed my coworkers to rely on me less, reducing my irreplaceableness, yet this approach still seems like the right thing to do for my own worth.

To be irreplaceable in this environment would require keeping secrets about how I get my work done. Even if I’m quite good at my job, an expert with great personality and attitude, if I work as a team player I will always be replaceable. So will everyone I work with.

Recently, my company’s CEO, the head of this large corporation for the past couple of decades or so (and I realize I’m being ambiguous) decided to retire. His decision actually came several years ago, but it was more recently that he made specific plans and set an exit date. He was a well-admired and recognized CEO throughout our industry and led this company through some rough times (before I was an employee) and oversaw significant growth (after I became an employee, not that this fact is relevant). He succeeded with goals where previous CEOs of this company perhaps failed.

Yet, even he was replaceable. The Board of Directors decided the new CEO would be someone from within the company, and quickly put a succession plan into place for a smooth transition from one CEO to the next.

If even the CEO of a multi-billion dollar company can be replaced, it almost seems arrogant to think that I, or any other employee of this large company, could be irreplaceable. Even striving for such a goal would be antithetical to cultivating good working relationships with colleagues.

Photo credit: hagerman

By the time I was in third grade, I knew the answer to the age-old question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” The question is always formed this way, with these particular words. The object of this question is to determine not the philosophy of the individual, but the type of career that is most desirable. The presence of the word “be” in the question is worth noting. From an early age, children are trained through language to associate their career with their identity. Who you are is what you do and vice versa.

The very fact that the question is asked instills the importance of a job or career.

In Across the Universe, the character Max is eating Thanksgiving dinner in the late 1960s with his family in rural Massachusetts, at which point he announces his intention to drop out of his undergraduate studies at Princeton University.

His father asks him to get serious for once: “What are you going to do with your life?” He responds rebelliously, “Why is it always what will I do? Why isn’t the issue here who I am?” His uncle chimes in, “Because what you do defines who you are.” Max responds, “Who you are defines what you do,” and asks for confirmation from his new friend Jude from Liverpool. Jude replies with a different point of view: “Surely it’s not what you do, but the way that you do it.”

I loved being involved with music. I’ve known I’ve had musical talent and an enjoyment of the art since I was in kindergarten. In third grade, as I mentioned above, I knew what I wanted to be: a teacher. It should have come as no surprise to me when in high school I decided that my purpose (my being) was to become a music teacher. When I was studying in college to be a music educator, the piece of advice that stuck with me the most was uttered by a professor most likely while I was still a freshman: “If there’s any other career that would make you happy, choose that now. Continue down this path only if teaching music is the only thing that you can or want to do.”

This advice stuck with me for several reasons. First, music wasn’t my only talent or interest. I excelled in every subject at school (when I wasn’t bored). My interests ranged from computer programming to physics to languages to mathematics. I even liked history when I was learning on my own rather than within public school curriculum. The world was open to me, but I stuck with music.

Many years later, after some bad experiences, I left teaching and the arts. My current choice of a day job happened mostly by accident. I needed a job after leaving the arts, so I started as a temp in a financial company. I moved into accounting after that because the accounting department was nearby and they needed someone, and have switched jobs at the same company a few times since then. This job, which is unfortunately becoming a career, does not define who I am. It has nothing to do with the person I am, it’s only the result of a series of circumstances defined by others.

In the arts, I was a teacher and a leader. I earned the respect of my peers by being very good at what I did. I even taught others how to be leaders. I was a great motivator. Of course! Music is something that is exciting, invigorating, and essential for the soul. The arts are necessary for modern culture. In my current career choice, being a leader is a joke. It’s a world of middle-managers and meaningless tasks. Why should I get excited about any activity that is not directly changing the world for the better in a way that satisfies the ideals that are important to me? Sure, it’s important to someone that I make sure that one department of our company pays back another department of our company for whatever expense they happened to incur. But how is that changing the world, how is this meaningful or satisfying?

So I have Consumerism Commentary. That’s more fulfilling. I write, usually nonsense like this, and reach more people than I’ve reached in any other facet of my life. For someone who has been building communities and leading smaller groups of people for almost 20 years, that is definitely cool. But Consumerism Commentary is an accident like my current job, though it is a happy accident. I don’t believe I’m changing the world, but I’m happy if I help someone get to a piece of information faster, or on the rare occasion, make someone think about something, anything they’ve taken for granted. But I don’t even use my real name, so whatever I’m building with Consumerism Commentary doesn’t exist in the “real world.”

I don’t want to be defined by my role at my day job, and without sharing my real identity online, I can’t be defined by my blogging endeavors. If I were still teaching music or involved in the arts, I would agree that who you are defines what you do. But I’m not, at least not at the moment. So I’m resigned to agreeing with Jude for now.

Image credit: ^riza

Near the end of my college career there was a sort of “Psychic Fair” on campus. As I recall, nobody charged us anything, so I got a reading from a Numerologist.

She basically had me fill out a form with some information about myself. I remember “full name” and “birthdate”, for example. Multiple calculations later, the right side of the form had four numbers filled into boxes with labels like “Destiny” and “Soul Urge”. The Numerologist slowly removed her glasses and looked at me quizically before telling me that all four of these core numbers were the same: 8.

To summarize:

“The number 8 Destiny suggests that the direction of growth in your lifetime will be a move up the ladder of attainment in the material world, to achieve financial security, and status amongst your peers.” source: http://www.astrology-numerology.com/num-expression.html

She explained that apparently, the only reason I was here on Earth was to learn how to attain and manage wealth. So, more than ten years later, why do I still have a negative Net Worth? Even putting metaphysics aside, it’s still a valid question.

I think there are a few primary reasons:

Upbringing

Though I considered myself an independent thinker at a very young age, you can’t decide to disagree with something if it’s never presented to you. My parents didn’t take the time to teach me how to save money, though they always told the story of how my oldest sister learned to be stingy by age seven. We definitely had classes called “Home Economics” in school, but economy never came up. It was all cooking and sewing… very progressive, I know.

Not paying attention

I’ve been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder. For those that don’t have it: imagine that you’re watching TV, and the show gets less interesting. The channels automatically start changing, but you don’t notice the change until you end up back on the original program again. That’s what A.D.D. is like for me. The problem is that I didn’t know it was a treatable disorder until I was more than 30 years old.

I’m sure there were times in my life when someone was giving out some good advice about managing money, and I was happily daydreaming.

Funny story: the first four checks I wrote out to various utilities when I graduated from college all came back because I didn’t sign my name. It’d be funnier if they didn’t all charge me extra for the inconvenience.

Lack of ambition

I never had anything resembling a “career” until after I got engaged. As soon as I was responsible for someone other than myself, I suddenly felt a drive to improve myself, my brain, my prospects, etc.

So, now that I understand all of this, what am I going to do about it? Well, the ambition part has mostly taken care of itself. As for paying attention, I’ve turned money management into kind of a video game. Because everything is digital now (at least, it is for me, or I would probably lose it somewhere), I’ve got our Google Spreadsheet budget, and the bank Web site that I can have harmless obsessions over. In order to stay accountable to my goals, I’ve got you guys.

As for fixing my upbringing… well, I can’t. And since my wife and I don’t plan on having children, I can’t teach them the things I was denied. All I can do is urge you, gentle reader: if you have kids, set a good example and explain to them why you do what you do with the money.

So that covers my past. Next time I write I’ll explain all the things I’m still doing incorrectly. Here’s a hint: $595 car payment.

There are a few obvious ways the economy effects the job market. In times of recession, large companies often cut back on resources, offering fewer opportunities for movement. Smaller companies suffer as well, particularly those without the flexibility of large companies.

The economy has a psychological effect on careers, as well. While the economy is booming, there is an optimistic sentiment pervading the job market. People are encouraged to think about the possible. People entering the job market are encouraged to discover their talents and desires and find a creative way to turn them into careers.

During an economic downturn, career advisers encourage practicality. What jobs would provide the best chance for long-term stability? With the current recession (or possible recession according to the government who refuse to be definitive on the subject), people are more inclined to seek out jobs that aren’t affected by the economy.

Kiplinger targets several industries that are “recession-proof.” If the most important aspect of a career is financial security, then it may be wise to seek out jobs in these categories.

Health care

Doctors, nurses, and pharmacists will always be needed in our society. In fact, with an aging baby boomer population, I would predict that the next 20 years will see a strong demand for more people entering the health care profession. I do not agree, however, that this industry is immune to recession. Many hospitals are funded by states, and states will not hesitate to cut back their health care budget when funds run low. That’s the case right now in New Jersey, where budget cuts may cause some hospitals to shut down.

Education

Unless people in this country stop having children, there will always be an increasing demand for teachers in general. Tough economic times, however, cause policy makers to turn back to “the basics” in order to develop young adults who can compete in science and math with those from other countries with rigorous curricula. In these same times, when budgetary cuts are required, arts programs are often the first to be reduced or eliminated. My opinion is that “special education” will see the biggest expansion in the next 20 years, regardless of the state of the economy.

Security

Economic depression goes hand-in-hand with increased crime rates, so you can be sure that security jobs will remain strong regardless of the economy. Police officers and security guards will be in high demand

Environmental sciences

We’ve seen that as gas prices increase in this country beyond the point of demand elasticity, people buy fewer gas-guzzling vehicles and trend towards more practical modes of transportation. Car manufacturing companies are watching this trend in order to continue creating vehicles that consumers want. This is indicative of a trend towards the search for more environmentally-friendly solutions. The Bureau for Labor Statistics believes that jobs in the environmental industry, like ecologists and hydrologists, will see 25% growth over the next decade.

Government

These days, neither Democrats nor Republicans seem interested in reducing the size of the federal government. Whether or not you agree with this approach, it means that government jobs will remain fairly secure. Kiplinger makes a point of mentioning that it’s difficult to be fired by the government for poor performance. That’s good news for lazy people.

When I have children, I hope that I can guide them in a world in which they don’t have to worry about “security” when choosing what to do with their lives. The job security promised by the Kiplinger article is mostly exaggerated, and at worse, downright mythical. Working for someone else, regardless of industry and economy, puts one’s job security outside one’s control. While the industries listed above are better positioned to last in an economic downturn on average, any one individual can have a drastically different experience than the average. I hope I will be able to offer advice to my children similar to the philosophy I mentioned above as more popular during a thriving economy: Discover your talents and interests, and be passionate about them.

My advice would continue: If you must be worried about job security, learn how to be flexible and excel at many things in order to make quick changes to your career if necessary. Finally, aim for self-sufficiency. If you have a boss other than yourself, you don’t have job security.

Recession-Proof Careers [Kiplinger]

About the author: This article was written by Penelope Trunk, columnist at The Boston Globe and author of Brazen Careerist: The New Rules for Success. Penelope is the CEO of Brazen Careerist, an online career center for Generation Y and network of over 50 bloggers.

Maybe the recession is here, but do you want to know what the top worry is among chief financial officers? Recruiting. That’s right.

Dearth of talented, young, willing workers

Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu says the next 10 years will be an employee-driven market, because of a whole host of demographics issues, from boomers leaving the workforce to fewer Generation Yers being interested in corporate life. Its consulting group released a survey of firms this week that identified a shortage of skilled and talented workers as their greatest concern.

Young people are in such high demand right now that they start to look sort of savvy when sources such as MTV report only 17 percent of Generation Y is worried about the economy. Take Renee Glowacki. She has an entry level job in Boston, which can’t be easy given the cost of living in the city, but she is optimistic things will get better for her.

She’s at Patni Computer Systems, an IT company that does global outsourcing. Glowacki went to this firm because it’s growing and creating opportunities for employees. Certainly no recessionary situation. And she is making one of the most profound statements of economic optimism—spending money on expensive food. Yes, its Restaurant Week, so dining out is cheaper. But Glowacki’s attitude that you live for now and figure things out as you go is typical of her generation, and understandable given they are relatively immune from a recession.

Young people will not have a problem finding jobs.

Wanted: Generation Y

Some of you—those who read this with mouths wide open in disbelief—are saying that many industries are totally tanking and there is no way employers are hunting down young people like starving animals. But check out the National Association of Manufacturers campaign to recruit young people. The campaign is called “Dream it. Do it” and it cost $70 million. Manufacturing is no exception: there’s huge difficultly finding skilled young people for jobs.

Or how about real estate? Sure, your home prices are tanking, but many young people don’t own homes. And in terms of jobs in the real estate sector, many real estate agents are older. Given this demographic reality, you don’t need a great housing market to provide great career opportunities for young real estate agents.

How to take advantage

So there’s lots of chatter about how people can recession-proof their careers. But what should young people do, when their golden demographics make them recession proof already? Job hop, of course.

The best thing you can do early in your career is move around a lot so you can figure out what you’re good at and what you like. If you compare people who job hop with people who don’t, people who job hop build their network faster, build their skill set faster, and are more engaged in their work.

That’s right, before you start screaming about corporate loyalty, companies actually get more passionate work out of people who are in the first two years at a company than people who have been there a while and plan to stay longer. It makes sense: If you don’t need to get another job anytime soon, then you don’t need to perform well in the next six months. You can coast. Job hoppers don’t coast or their resume will look bad.

So, young people should take advantage of the fact that they are in high demand and make sure to leave a job as soon as their learning curve flattens. Older people – especially those who have lived through terrible job markets, which includes everyone older than Gen Y – will tell you to be cautious and grateful. These are not inherently bad traits, but they are bad if they instill complacency in a job market that is not demanding that of you.

Some of you will find yourselves gunning for jobs in areas hit particularly hard by the recession. Investment banking, for example, used to be very difficult to break in to, and now, with cutbacks for summer interns, investment banking is insanely difficult to get into.

But so what? What are you going to do with that investment banking experience? Leave, probably. Because the hours are terrible and the work is totally inflexible and driven (at all hours of the day and night) by the client. So you will leave banking to do something that sustains your goals for family and friends. Why not just leave now? It’s very competitive—no need to put up with that. Go to an equally interesting field that is not going to require you to take clients to strip clubs.

Tech is hot. Healthcare is hot. And you don’t need to be a software developer or changer of bed pans. In fact, any tech company or healthcare company needs sales people and marketing people, and accountants, and all the other types of people who could, possibly, get stuck in an underperforming company, but clearly have the ability to change sectors without dumping their expertise.

So figure out what your skills are, what you love to do, what you’re great at. Job hop until you are sure. Or as sure as someone can be at the beginning of his or her career. Then go to a sector that is booming, which is most sectors if you are blessed to be born to Gen Y.

If you enjoyed this article, visit Penelope Trunk’s blog or subscribe to the blog’s RSS feed for more insight on Generation Y and workplace issues of the 21st century. We would appreciate comments and reactions, so if you would like to contribute to the conversation, add your comment below.

Earlier this year, a new position opened up in my department when a co-worker left for a better job within the company. The open position is similar to my current one, with some added responsibilities, a higher “salary grade,” and the same reporting lines. I decided to put my hat in the ring for the new job, so I applied for the job and “interviewed” with my boss over a month ago.

Even though this position is with my current department, the company requires everything to be processed through its recruiting (“talent acquisition”) service. Unfortunately, no one I’ve ever spoken to has had good experiences with the company’s recruiting service. They are slow and unorganized. A few years ago, they sent me on an interview at another location, but the hiring manager wasn’t expecting me because the recruiter didn’t communicate the scheduled interview date. With an open position in the same department, at least I can speak directly with my boss, bypassing the recruiter when necessary.

The hiring process at my company is incredibly slow, but I was still beginning to wonder by the end of last week. Whenever I asked about progress, I received the response that they’d have an answer soon. Earlier this week, I finally received my answer—I got the job.

The good thing about the jump in salary grade is my bonus range has changed from 0%-9% to 0%-25%. It’s an “exempt” position, so I won’t receive payment for overtime. Our department is not permitted to work paid overtime, anyway, so there is nothing lost.

I’ll be starting on Monday with a raise of 6.8% following my recent raise of about 4.5%, so in total, I will receive an increase of 11.6% this year. My attempts at salary negotiation following the newest job offer faced a dead end and the new salary is not very competitive with outside companies. I’m not as concerned with this inequity as I used to be thanks to being in a working environment that I like and the fact that most of my income no longer comes from my day job anyway.

Still, the news of the “promotion” was a good birthday present.