I am a 23 year old who graduated from college with a BA in Political Science and I am doing outside sales for a health insurance company.
I drive to tons of corporate accounts, talk to the owner, do presentations in front of their employees, and get the owners to sign off on rates for next year. I also do a ton of problem solving for my accounts during the year.
I guess I just feel empty about what I am doing. I make around 35k+bonus, and I have this annoying habit of comparing myself to others and what they do and always feel as though I am going to waste my life hehe.
My question:
Can I do lots of different things with outside sales experience? I know I can do sales, but can I do other things too? I just feel as though I will not have any skills to offer future employers and my ambitious confused as to what it wants to do mind gets me so depressed.
I feel as though this first job is my final job, or that jobs like it are all I am going to get now and i’m screwed (hehe).
Any perspective on people turning a little first job after college into something more satisfying would be appreciated. My father tries to tell me to just “DO IT FOR THE EXPERIENCE” but has little advice other than that
Do you hate sales or are you just not into selling health insurance? If you think you could like sales, maybe some other product would be more interesting for you – software, medical devices, etc.
I just want to be sure that I can do lots of challenging things and that I havent dug myself into a hole by choosing sales and having a fairly blah degree
There’s nothing blah about either sales or political science. You just graduated, there hasn’t been enough time to dig yourself into a hole!!! Maybe you just need to give it a chance instead of being so worried about it. Or if it’s something you really don’t enjoy then switch to something else.
Well, let’s see… I’m almost 50 and work for a health insurance company, so maybe I’m not the right person to ask.
But I’m not in sales (although I’ve had a sales VP report to me). My experience has been that some sales people, if they’re good, can get into really decent money, especially when they move up in the organization and start getting overrides on the subordinates’ sales too.
But I agree with ratatoskK - someone with really good sales skills can probably do well in a lot of industries. You could also couple your powers of persuasion with your degree and get into a lobbying firm…
Also: unless you’re working for a noble charity or creating something, you may run into the same feelings of emptiness in any of a variety of careers. That’s why they have to pay us to do them.
I guess my concern stems from where I live. I live in Buffalo NY, where there are not many company headquarters, so it seems as though the sales positions are as far as you can go without moving, and I have someone in my life who has a great job here.
I just want to be sure that getting the kind of sales experience I am getting is something valuable and can be used to get other types of jobs if I spot them as I gain experience.
I am fairly technical so part of my problem might be I just feel the organization I work for does not know how to put people who are a little more into technology and things into different positions. The VP of sales and the director had me working on techy side jobs for them and I made something to train the sales team that was adopted.
It’ll sound good I think when I go somewhere else, but I guess I just am afraid there’s not a ton out there for someone so focused on sales.
I spent some time working in health insurance. A combination of a PoliSci degree and an understanding of the health insurance industry could move you into government affairs for a health insurance corporation. Health insurers do a LOT of lobbying work, they need to understand government regulations, they sit on government commissions about Universal Health Care. Granted, Hillary Clinton isn’t going to appoint you to a presidential commission in 2010 (you need patience - and probably grad school) but there is a lot of other kinds of work that moves you that direction.
Do a little googling around about Lois Quam or Sheila Leatherman.
Can you market sales as good experience for other business roles that ask for for example marketing experience or project management experience?
It just seems as though most jobs out there require experience doing the same role before. I am just wondering if there are exceptions if you have a good background in sales or something else?
My wife has an undergraduate degree in Poli Sci. When she graduated from college she spent a few years at loose ends, working temp office jobs in New York and hating it.
So she went back to grad school in Musiciology! Now she’s a professor of medieval music at UCLA.
You can totally change careers at 23. You’re not locked into anything. The first thing you should do is think about is what sort of work you would love. Don’t start with “What can I do with my current skills?” Start with “What job would make me the happiest?”, then start figuring out how to make THAT happen.
Sure. In fact lots of top executives start in sales. Sales gives you a lot of exposure to an industry, to marketing, to the product, to what customers value, to what its going to cost to give it to them and what they are willing to pay.
But you aren’t finding these jobs looking on Monster and waiting for one to fall in your lap. These are the roles you grow into or network into. If someone is looking for an “experienced marketer” they aren’t going to look at your blind resume if all it has on it is sales. If someone is looking for an experienced marketer and hasn’t had a lot of luck, and knows you from a professional organizations, and knows you are bright and flexible and interested, they ask you if you might want to interview. Or if your sales resume includes working with marketing to develop a marketing program - now its not the resume of someone who has only done sales.
You can do what this guy did and try a different job each week for a year.
I work with guys from Buffalo, NY. They elected to take jobs in Manhattan where there are a lot more opportunities. You may also have to move our of your area.
What’s “wrong” with you is that you are finding that most corporate jobs kind of suck ass.
The good news is that you are not tied to any specific career. In ten years, my career migrated from civil engineering to a manager in a management consulting firms computer forensics group. Ironically, my firm has a group that deals with construction related litigation, however I didn’t join that group.
One of my friends started off as an accountant in New York, went to business school to sell some sort of produce related goods in Florida and now works for J Crew’s corporate offices.
Anyhow, the point is that if you keep learning and developing yourself professionally, there are plenty of directions your career can go.
My friend’s Ivy League educated wife found her charity work experience very empty while they were living in Florida. Her coworkers and boss were not particularly smart or sophisticated and there was a great deal of mindless beurocracy. The people she was trying to help were often resentfull, bitter or simply poor white trash looking for free shit. Just because you’re helping people doesn’t mean you will find it fullfilling.
Technical and sales - you should look for a sales job in the software industry. Not just selling the latest copy of adblocker, but get into enterprise level sales where you need to a) figure out what the company does b) figure out how your solution could make the company better c) find the right decision maker with money d) close the deal. You don’t need to really understand the software - you do need to understand how to explain it to people that don’t understand software while remaining credible with those that do. It’s a helluva lot more interesting and lucrative than selling insurance…
If you can sell and enjoy it, there are any number of jobs.
I can’t really offer the career advice other people have (still kinda working that out for myself), but you commented that you have a habit of comparing yourself to others. One word of advice there: Don’t.
No matter what barometer you use, there will always be someone more than you. More wealthy, more powerful, more philanthropic, whatever. Do whatever satisfies you, and if it keeps a roof over your head, then so much the better.
You’re still young (you lucky bastard, get off my lawn!), so as long as you keep your finances in decent shape, you can try all the jobs/industries you want for a while until something sticks. (I don’t know about one a week, but it’s an option…kinda.)
Good luck. The road to a self-satisfying job is a long and bumpy one, but I’m sure it’s satisfying once you get there. (Right, guys?)
I think most kids in Buffalo just out of College at 23 would be thrilled to be making 35K plus bonuses. The median income is about 26K.
So, I don’t think you need to worry that future employers in the area will look at you like you have been working fast food. Even if you don’t have exact experience.
I think , really, you should figure out what you want to do and see how your credentials and experience line up. Generally - and it depends on what you want to go into - I see you in the catbird seat & in general answer to your broad question: a college degree and a high current salary can go a long way toward getting your foot in the door for a lower level entry management job, even if you don’t have direct experience, if that is the direction you want to go.
I dunno - good question. I went with median - because he must be way better off than most people there. Wiki seems to bear out the median number that the realtor’s are using but wiki shows that there is an ungodly amount of people below the poverty line and that the median income of males is almost 31K so maybe that is the wrong number to use for our purposes.
Not just college degree but polysci majors in Buffalo would be a more exact answer.
Still, to me the overall thing is he shows up wanting to be a Project Manger at the Dreamjob Corp. Having a degree and making good-for-the-area money, probably more or at least about what everyone else applying for the job will be currently making, will shout "winner "- not “loser” - to the hiring official - as his question seems to partially be about.
Isn’t it horrible - it hasn’t changed. I “got out” (not graduating) in 1988 - and I’m finally graduating in another two weeks - being exposed to starting salaries with an Accounting degree as all my classmates start getting hired (I’m employed - at a salary way more than what I’d make as an entry level accountant) and I’m saying “wow, that isn’t much more than what they were paying 20 years ago!”
