Lesson 1 - Know your competition

Coaching for College Students

Lesson 1 – “Know your competition”

While your fellow college students are NOT directly your competition, it does help to have knowledge of your fellow students, in the United States and world-wide.

I am using the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook (see: http://www.bls.gov/ooh/)

 So, maybe you are thinking about accounting.  USA Today College says that accounting is the 7^th most popular major (see: http://college.usatoday.com/2014/10/26/same-as-it-ever-was-top-10-most-popular-college-majors/).  The average starting salary according to this analysis is about $44,500 with an average mid-career salary of about $75,000.  The U.S. Department of Labor suggests a median salary of $67,000 (see: http://www.bls.gov/ooh/business-and-financial/home.htm)

But, many of these jobs can be outsourced.

“In what might be an underestimate, a University of California study concludes that 14 million white-collar jobs are vulnerable to being outsourced offshore. These are not only call-center operators, customer service and back-office jobs, but also information technology, accounting, architecture, advanced engineering design, news reporting, stock analysis, and medical and legal services. The authors note that these are the jobs of the American Dream, the jobs of upward mobility that generate the bulk of the tax revenues that fund our education, health, infrastructure, and social security systems.”  (taken from: http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-offshore-outsourcing-of-american-jobs-a-greater-threat-than-terrorism/18725) – article from 2010.

So, your great accounting job (just using accounting as an example) could be outsourced to one of those smart millions of college students world-wide. 

Staying with accounting as the example, what if you REALLY want to be an accountant?  How can you overcome the odds against you? 

Homework for Lesson 1:

1)      Who are you?  What do you want to be in ten years; thirty years?

2)      What are you thinking about for a major?  Double major?

3)      Research the Occupational Outlook Handbook.  What is the forecast for jobs in your field / major?

4)      Research the worldwide number of students in that field / major.  How does it look? 

5)      Start thinking of how you can increase your value and your marketability.