<p>does anyone know if there’s a list of the business jobs with the highest satisfaction?</p>
<p>Depends upon the person:</p>
<p>Very outgoing and extroverted–probably Marketing
Very creative–Advertising
Figuring out how things work–Operations Management
Inwardly focused and bit of a loner–or prefer to work alone–Accounting
Nerd/geek, but work in groups–Computer Technology
Have to be in charge–Entrepreneurship
Art of the Deal–Finance or Real Estate Finance
Good of the Community–Public Administration and Public Management
Mix of finance/accounting and outgoing–Business Law
General, normal everyday person–regular management
Money is my life (my only life)–Investment Banking</p>
<p>and the person who wants to tell everyone else what to do–please stay out of the business field–because everyone who works for you will hate you while you try to climb over them to your top position–and you won’t be good at your job and even though it seems like everything is going fine, you’ll ultimately be found out and fail–so go into Politics instead–thanks,</p>
<p>If you want a great book to help you decide what you want to do with your life, read “Working” by Studs Terkel. It used to be required reading for the first semester of UCLA’s MBA program. (If nothing else, just read the first and last chapters–they are the best ones). It’s over 30 years old, but just as applicable today as then. The Wall Street Journal called it “remarkable” and the LA Times called it “a masterpiece”.</p>
<p>To quote from one review of the book:
"Working profiles the working lives of scores of Americans. From fireman to chief executive, coal mine worker to major league ballplayer- a myriad of professions are covered. The book reads like a documentary (which it is). Terkel has included the most interesting aspects of each case study’s working life, and ultimately you see why each continues to pursue their career in that chosen field- or at least what satisfaction they get from showing up everyday. It’s a great book to pick up and spend 5 to 10 minutes or so reading about how someone else’s working life has parallels to your own. The interviews were conducted mostly during the late 60’s and early 70’s but while it is slightly dated, even that fact makes for an interesting historical perspective. "</p>
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<p>Considering accounting firms heavily focus their hiring decisions on fit, I would have to say this false. You work on a team, how does that = loner. If your doing a/r, a/p, bookkeeping, tax work for family businesses etc, then yes it can be quite solitary, but that is the nature for nearly all small time business that are not comprised of large employee bases or networks.</p>
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The majority of what he posted is arguably false, although it’s not really his fault–primarily because you can’t pigeon-hole professions or say what’s specifically going to be enjoyable for this or that subset of people. Most marketers and advertisers get little control over the content they’re creating, in-house creative teams at major companies generally forward what they want to advertising firms for the creation process. Copywriters can be some of the dullest, least creative people on Earth. The creative side of boutiques takes years and years of work to get into because it’s the job everyone in advertising wants.</p>
<p>The “art of the deal” means someone who’s a natural talker and a “deal maker” I presume, and finance is way off from that. Real estate is way off from that. Basically everything but M&A, a cold-calling stockbroker or IPO work is real off from that. Maybe it can be tied to being an “entrepreneur,” but what classifies an entrepreneur is a whole other discussion. There are so many facets to finance (notably analysis) that have almost nothing to do with the actual sale-side work that it’s basically saying 10% of a profession = that profession. Operations management is closer to supply chain management than “figuring out how things work” in most situations–it’s not industrial design and product creation (although that can be a facet of it), it’s efficacy work. Entrepreneurship has little to do with having to “be in charge,” many of the more successful entrepreneurs I’ve seen either have expertise to bring to the table in an investment or they put their own managerial team into place, do what they want to the business they’ve started or acquired and move on to the next thing.</p>
<p>The problem is that business is too big a field to point (probably 2/3 the people in the workforce could say they work in business) to any one job title and try to do some kind of mass survey of job satisfaction. One person may have the title of senior manager of x and the reality is that they’re working less as a manager but more as an internal auditor, or as HR, or as payroll, or performing the duties of a CTO, or whatever. It’s not like asking 200 oncologists about oncology and how they like the profession–job titles in business are often meaningless and that makes it impossible to get any real, relevant numbers on a large scale.</p>
<p>There are tests one can take, such as CareerLeader, which can give you a much more comprehensive idea of the types of jobs which will provide satisfacation (as opposed to just linking 1 quality to each job). The key to those tests is to not allow your results to be affected by your own personal biases regarding how you think you should answer.</p>
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<p>He didn’t say that wanting to be in charge would lead to success in entrepreneurship. He was simply stating jobs which would generally give high satisfaction to people with those qualities. I must agree with him (somewhat) that if you are the type of person that needs to be in charge you will probably be most satisfied by a role in management or even moreso by starting your own business. However, that’s not to say that you would be good at either.</p>
<p>Of course I generalized–how else can you tell someone what to go into? Everyone is different and what is one person’s fun is another person’s agony. </p>
<p>I’ll totally agree with Tetrishead when he says that it is difficult to generalize and accurately describe everyone’s experience in each field–but that was my effort–since it was what the OP asked for.</p>
<p>As Tetrishead points out, there are many parts to finance and many don’t involve dealing, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t many deals going on in certain areas. For example, as a Treasurer I’m making many more finance deals than the the average person. Yet, when a different finance person is working on SOX (Sarbanes-Oxley), they will be completely unconcerned with deals and working only on compliance and governance issues. </p>
<p>In Real Estate, deals are the key–in fact the “Art of the Deal” comment came from Donald Trump’s book of the same name, where he argues that being good at dealing with people daily is what determines your success.</p>
<p>As far as Operations, yes, Supply chain is big and may not involve “figuring out how things work”–but many operations management majors go into process management which does involve this–as does information technology as it applies to operations.</p>
<p>And as for accounting–even those working for big firms (Deloitte, E&Y, etc.) are usually doing audits–meaning that most people there spend at least 6 1/2 out their 9 hour days on their computers comparing actual results to expected and doing writeups. How exactly is that a job that requires a lot of interactions with others? The only time the interactions occur is when the senior presents the overall results to the company’s managment or audit committee–usually about 14 hours per month is spent doing this, I’m guessing. And don’t get me started on the “lonliness” of tax work.</p>
<p>Look, I generalized–okay–but based upon my 15 years working as a CPA for gigantic Fortune 500 companies, my time spent running my own technology consulting firm (8 years) and my current work as a Director of Corporate Treasury for a publicly traded small start-up here in the Silicon Valley, so I do have at least a little idea about each of these fields; --and I really don’t think my generalizations are that far off base.</p>
<p>So as a CPA, what do you say about being an accountant in general?</p>
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<p>You are with your team for those hours, you are not by yourself. And there is a lot of contact between yourself and the clientThat is where fit comes in. you dont want to be working in a team with someone that you do no get along with because the team is the primary subsect of the institution, it is not the individual. I cannot comment on except that it is supposedly supposed to be more team oriented since the departments have been growing so fast the last few years. How is it more team oriented - dunno.</p>
<p>Southpasadena,</p>
<p>If you have worked in those conditions, you know that about half the time you are in a conference room with other members of the team and about half the time you are by yourself. Also, whether you are in a room or not, the work is all designed such that you are working essentially alone on the computer for most of the time–but just trading a few fun comments back and forth to break the monotony of it.</p>
<p>The work with the client mostly consists of walkthroughs and summary reviews–or picking out audit samples to be used in the internal control testing;–hardly what I would call brainstorming–or a real working team.</p>
<p>Like I said, most accounting–unless you are in a financial planning position or a treasury job–tends to be fairly “solitary” until you make audit senior or audit manager–and even then it is mostly done without large-scale teamwork. This is quite a bit different than most other positions–such as program management, production, production planning, procurement, facilities, human resources, marketing, or even info system work, the last of which is solitary only when the program coding and preliminary testing is being done.</p>
<p>Here’s a link to a site at Emory which gives some good info about different career paths.</p>
<p>Look in the "C"s on this site, and then under “Career” to see most of the career guides.</p>
<p>[Information</a> Guides – Goizueta Business Library](<a href=“http://business.library.emory.edu/info/index.html#course]Information”>http://business.library.emory.edu/info/index.html#course)</p>
<p>half the time in a conference room yes, half by yourself…no. Stimulating contact or not, you make it what it is. The level and the kind of contact you have with your team and/or client can also be dependent on the size of the firm. I have yet to talk with one audit staff that has said they work a considerable amount of time alone. And these are not people recruiting, they are merely friends at the bottom of the bucket in terms of stature at a variety of firms from PWC to GT and GHJ, etc. Want more personal contact, work at a smaller family oriented firm. You will get your own desk, you will know everyone in the office, you will spend the majority of your time at the office except for the rare occasion when you are auditing one of your few large clients. You can choose the environment you want.</p>
<p>Well, I agree with that–which is why it’s always a risk to generalize on these things. As you say, how much contact you do or don’t have with others is largely what you make of it–that is, it usually depends upon how much of an effort you make to work with others in a group environment.</p>
<p>investment banking</p>
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<p>You need to improve your ■■■■■■■■.</p>
<p>so having one of the most sought after jobs in the world is not fulfilling enough? I am no advocate for bankers, but it’s got to great to see the look on peoples faces when you tell them “I’m an investment banker”</p>
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<p>It is one of the most sought after jobs for undergrads. It is not so highly regarded among MBA students or others who have post-graduate work experience. If you enjoy working long hours it could be quite fulfilling. However, considering IB’s high turnover rate, I can’t imagine the jobs provides all that much satisfaction.</p>
<p>I have to disagree. Knowing you were good enough to get into IB and good enough to stay in IB for a few years at which point you are raking in the cash gives a sense of personal satisfaction. I would think people in such high positions know that they are the cream of the crop.</p>
<p>I believe the idea of tackling the traditional corporate ladder at say amgen, apple, etc would be the current trend. This is from what i have heard. Most of these companies are really ramping up recruiting and broadening there school list.</p>
<p>And for ibanking being one of the most sought after jobs - yes, only among those who are exposed to it. At UCSB for example, i have only met two people who knows what ibanking is and one happens to have a job offer at rbc.</p>
<p>I did one of those Career personality tests (livecareer.com), and the following are my results…</p>
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<p>In your opinion, which business/finance role would I stereotypically fit into best? Sales&Marketing, right? Or Relationship Management (of an IB for example)?</p>
<p>(I say stereotypically because in real life I can give a bit of an effort to change my preferences and be more flexible than what the results of a career test say… I hope 
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<p>i took the same test a while back here are my results</p>
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