I Failed at Two Careers and Now Need Help
I have done so many different types of jobs that I have almost lost count. Now that the economy is terrible, I need to seriously sit down and figure what I can do with my life. When I first graduated from college, there was almost nothing special in finding a job. It was easy as cake. Everybody in my graduating class managed to find a job in their majors within a week or two after graduating. I personally found my first engineering job even before I got my bachelor’s degree. Man, those were the good old days.
In my engineering work, I managed to do all sorts of different tasks. I performed laboratory type research, which is what people usually associate with the engineering professoin. I wrote computer software that helped glue all the different branches of our organization together, which may surprise some people since I majored in mechanical engineering. And I also did a bit of managing, which is a bit more unorthodoxed when it comes to engineering majors. Most engineering majors are pretty technical minded, but lack the people skills to be good managers. I don’t mean to brag, but I am one of the few who can go from one field to another without any Career Coaching. The Career Transition just seems natural to me and I’ve always been able to adapt well to changes in circumstances, no matter how drastic. However, my second job made me doubt my own self-confidence quite a bit.
After displaying managerial capabilities at my old engineering job, I was recruited to work in a Wall Street hedge fund. They were looking for people who had strong math and analytical abilities, but who can also help secure some money from potential clients. And when I say “some money,” I mean a small fortune that can pay a king’s ransom. As you already know, hedge funds require clients to invest at a million dollars by law. So it was no trivial task to have enough people skills to get others to actually fork over that kind of cash. Not only that, but I also had to look over the technical side of the trades as well.
The hedge fund job required me to actually help with the statistical analysis that led to good trades, or rather, the statistical analysis that led to realizing good bets. We all wanted to believe that our math skills were the clincher that brought in all that money, but in hindsight it was all a delusional fantasy. As you already know, the economy has cratered since those golden days. So what did all of our fancy math do for us as the economy tanked for everybody else. Absolutely nothing. It turns out we didn’t have anything special in our tool belt after all. We were just like every other poor slob who needed work in a receding economy and, even worse, we were largely to blame for the collapse due to our derivatives based high frequency trading in the real estate sector. That doesn’t look good on one’s resume, to say the least.
So here I am, a failed Wall Street hedge fund worker who helped blow up the hedge fund as well as helped the economy tank. My old engineering job isn’t hiring at this point due to the economy. Nobody wants to associate with the Wall Street crowd at all given their role in this financial mess. It seems my second career has finally brought me to the point of requiring Career Coaching services in order to bring about a new Career Transition into something better. Frankly, I’ll take anything at this point.
Just exactly what difference does a