Career

Yesterday, I went to the beach with a few colleagues and we talked about work and our own life aspirations. It was amazing how different we all were even though we all graduated with the same Business and Marketing degrees.

The gal is living at home and wants to buy a house in a few years and rent a room out to her parents. She got a corporation job right out of college and she is very unhappy with how she is being treated and paid. But I see she buys all of these expensive items like: Couch purse, Yves Saint Laurent sun glasses and Lactose polos.

The guy is living in a nice yuppie apartment community with another one of our college friends. He worked his way up to this corporation job and is not happy with his management or the way the business treats his division. Since he doesn’t have to pay off college loans he has a lot of disposable income that he just seems to spend on gadgets and seasonal outdoor equipment.

Me, on the on the other hand, rents a small condo right across the street from my work and rents the second bedroom to a fun chick. I work in a small start up business and I really enjoy my work and the culture there. I am very easily discouraged by all of the loans I have to pay off while I’m getting paid the least, but I still manage to save up some money for traveling.

With this small comparison, I would like to think that I am better off because I am happy with my job. Since that is 1/3rd of my life, shouldn’t that be worth more than the amount of money I make or the stuff that I buy? What do you think? I am obviously a bit biased but I’d like to hear what you think.

-Jess

If you follow me on Twitter, you will know that I have been promoted from hourly intern to salary full-time at my work.

To Backtrack: I have been working there for 7 months and every time I asked, work said there was no full-time positions open. So rightfully, I stopped waiting and started applying to new internet marketing positions in other businesses. As soon as I start getting interview requests my current job pulls me in to surprise me with a promotion to a full-time salary position.

Now I’m very confused. My mind was set on this whole order of occurrences that laid out my next year of life:

• leaving this business
• possibly moving again
• saving money for a puppy
• telling my co-worker that he’s cute
• going out on numerous dates (with different guys)

The reason why this is such a big deal for me to even blog about, is the feeling of “loss of control”. As a young adult, I try to stay in control as much as possible. When work would not let me control my commitment to them, I salvaged what I could and thought of a new plan to believe in. Now I have to transition into a new plan.

I know that being confident in myself has made me more of an easy going and open minded person. Since I’m not constantly worrying about every mundane aspect of my life I have more time to enjoy it! Do you find yourself feeling overwhelmingly helpless when major life-changing unexpected things happen?

Many people who just meet me or who have regained contact with me ask me about my career. Really it’s kind of hard to explain to them what I do. Just last Thanksgiving I was explaining to a family member that a small part of online marketing is SEM and what I do.

Search Engine Marketing is the task of marketing/advertising a business on search engines to people who are looking for solutions or answers to their query. Then they will hopefully see an ad, read it, feel compelled to click it and land on a page that will hopefully result in a conversion of some sorts. SEM is the task of writing ads, placing those ads with bids and relevant keywords, plus some sort of desired goal or conversion that will ultimately help the business make money.

I was absolutely humbled by the lack of knowledge he had. Asking me “so you buy words that already exist?” That just made me smile to know that I know something that he didn’t. But then that conversation also made me realize that my specialty and passion is within a niche. I honestly believe online marketing is my career path because I enjoy the theory, the practice and sitting back to analyze the whole task for trends and possibilities for improvement. Not to mention, I can do this job from home if I really wanted to.