Which ££££ career for my daughter?!

[HBGKC]

Hi all,

Off the back of all the recent high-salary threads on MN, I thought I'd ask for some suggestions for a job/career for my DD.

She's about to graduate from a Russell Group Uni with (probably) a 2:1 in Biomedical Sciences.

Her top priority is earning potential, particularly in the short-term (ie next 10 years) as she'd also like marriage and kids one day.

She's likely on the 'lighter' end of the autistic spectrum; she's very black-and-white, not what I'd call a people-person! She's professional, but not particularly emotionally aware, IYSWIM.

She did 3 sciences for A-level (not Maths).

She doesn't really mind what she does, so long as it pays well. She is extremely disciplined, self-motivated, organised, reliable, hard-working... in many ways the ideal employee. If she doesn't know how to do something, she'll work it out; in fact, she's independent to a fault!

She wouldn't mind travelling for work if necessary.

Any ideas (or further questions), throw them my way! TIA

Well you can certainly do it in the Big4 because of the attrition rate. Up to Director (before the level of Partner if I remember correctly), depending on your service line of course. Of course you can move to 'industry' for a salary bump.
For 'technical' roles in tech extremely possible , again provided you're happy to switch companies. Everyone wants experience, but nobody wants to train any juniors.

I don't know about other roles but promotion isn't generally about competence. It's about good timing. And salesmanship. An opportunity has to open up when you wish to jump, and you have to convince them to hire you. Certainly I have seen across the industry when you've impressed someone as a person a role can be created for you.

Unless you're a highly skilled technical contributor you won't get far not talking for people (as 'management' roles pay more) but as you said she's not aiming for '6 figures' it's eminently doable.

@TedLasto I believe Tax, despite it's reputation to the general public gives good W/L balance and is well paid. Being a revenue generator, unlike Audit.
The Big4 also have risk management, tech consultancy, all sorts.

Also @TedLasto last sentence waas for the OP not for you!
Not trying to explain your own former job to you :D

*own former company... arghh typos. And i didn't mean toi put an emoji

So many women drop out of high paid careers after DCs if she wants lifetime earnings she should look at the retention rates of middle aged mothers in these firms.

Do they have on site crèches?

Do they pay full pay maternity pay for a year?

Do they publish their equal pay stats?

Do they have prominent women in leadership roles?

A career isn't just about the first 10 years.

This comes across that you have tonnes of love and are very proud of your daughter. It's heart-warming. But its quite naive. You'd really need a good knowledge of the particular sector that she's working in to determine whether or not she'd rise through the ranks quickly.

In a large company in the pharmaceutical industry, for example, she'd hit a ceiling quite quickly without a PhD. In a smaller company, she may be able to get onto a higher salary quicker but to rise up the ranks she'd need to be both technically very skilled in the lab, and also have some really innovative and creative ideas for shaping the business and its future. With all the respect in the world, you don't know whether your daughter has these skills.

But I get it. My mum does it too. I'm an academic and I've told her that I'll never make professor. Her response is always "Yes you will". But she knows absolutely nothing about the promotion process in academia, what's needed or even what my job now looks like. She's proud of me and believes I can achieve anything.

@KStockHERO I like your user name

Of course DD would need skills/aptitude suited to whatever industry she ended up in to do well; my point was rather that often the actual know-how/cold hard knowledge is learnt during one's career, rather than graduates arriving knowing everything about a particular field already.

Assuming that most people learn HOW to do their jobs WHILST actually doing their jobs, I'm saying that DD has a sound base of very transferable skills, and more importantly she has a can-do attitude, isn't afraid of hard work, and isn't scared of working out how to fill gaps in her knowledge by herself rather than wanting to be spoon-fed by others, etc etc.

I am very proud of her work ethic. She will probably have a considerably more successful career than her younger, more academically gifted sister, who got A*AA at A-level doing the bare minimum of study, but who has ADHD, some physical limitations and a very low boredom threshold... and about whom I think I'm going to start another thread, as this one has proved so helpful!

I hate to be that person, but your daughter needs to pick her own career. This is one area you can't choose for her.

Well, obviously.

I'm just asking for some ideas to pass along. Young people have no way of knowing much of the vast and varied array of potential careers out there; MN is a great resource for queries like this.

Read all these pages with interest but no one has yet asked, so here goes....

It's nearly May. Of her 3rd year. Has she not up til now given this any thought? She ahs missed the boat for most milk round recruitment. Genuinely, I'm baffled.

Fair question. She has cycled through a few ideas/plans. She thought of doing an MA to pivot into FIN/TECH. Has applied to MI5 but the application process can take a year.

As I said, she's not particularly wedded to any one area of work, which makes it difficult to focus on job-hunting/planning whilst she's still studying full-time, and also working 20 hours a week (in a general admin role that has given her a lot of useful experience in a variety of things).

Well I did ask, albeit rather diplomatically, but OP was not forthcoming,

The point of university isn't just the degree. Especially as RG universities there'll have been career fairs, panel talks, opportunities to speak to seniors.

For some graduate roles the majority go to interns as well, making the 'graduate' roles more competitive.

Among my children's 20 something friends it's the lawyers who are dragging in the big bucks. One very average student who failed to get into uni to do her first choice of medicine did biomedical sciences instead. Bog standard 2.1 from big standard uni. Did 2 year law conversion (second year paid for by the firm who hired her) and after a year in work is earning 90k. Her friends who did get their grades for medicine are spitting!

🙋🏼‍♀️ I asked - all the way back on p2. Way to late for most of these suggestions and even getting onto a masters now might not be that easy.

For anyone else with uni age students, you need to apply at the start of the final year.

Data Scientist, if she intends to quit/stop climbing the career ladder in 10 years. It pays well now and there are good conditions.

Accountant and work her way up to become CFO of a large company, if she wants to keep grinding for a long time. I think this will take longer to build up and requires taking exams over several years, but will pay really well in the end for a long time.

I disagree re Masters. Most will still
be available.
Also the 'milk round' jobs seem to come in batches throughout the year. Plenty of applications open in Sept. Many of my children's friends got their acts together in the summer and autumn

Software engineer

Or patent law, but software is better I think as the hours wouldn't be extremely long so wouldn't have to ditch the career after having a family.

Friend who was a Band 7 nurse by mid-30s (did an MA and further studies) decided to change career and is now working in pharmaceutical regulation and compliance.

She made the jump about 10 years ago. IIRC she did an MA and then worked for Price Waterhouse Cooper before moving on. From what I understand she is mainly involved in compliance and policy. When she visited at Easter it was in her company car, a new Range Rover. I can only guess from the price she paid for her latest property and the fact that her children go to private school that she is doing very well for herself.

Your daughter has the right degree and needs to get professional careers advice on what she needs to do next.

Nonsense. I have a maths degree and I am a chartered accountant of thirty years. Maths and accountancy are not even vaguely similar and you do not do any maths in accountancy studies, well not unless you are calling basic arithmetic “maths’, which as a maths graduate I do not. I know hundreds of accountants that did not do maths at A level.

Not that I am recommending accountancy or anything else. I find it really odd that OPs daughter has no interest in anything other than earning money.

Solicitor specialising in Company law, after a few years she can work in-house for any major company eg insurance company. These companies have much better work life balances.

F

Pfizer or Merck to work in a laboratory setting on vaccines.

I find it really odd that OPs daughter has no interest in anything other than earning money.

I agree, and also find it quite sad.

That's not what I said though, is it?

I said her top priority was earning potential, and that she doesn't really mind what field she works in.

To put it another way: she sees her future job/career as a means to an end (i.e. earning a decent living), rather than an end in itself. Her earnings will enable her to do/achieve the things she's really interested in, outside of work.

I also mentioned that she's mildly autistic. This manifests as being hyper-focused to the point of occasional tunnel vision when she gets an idea in her head.

As her mother, of course I would rather she spent her days working at something she enjoys, which contributes to the greater social good, rather than 'just' the best-paying role she can get. And of course, I'm sure she won't plump for something she actively dislikes.

She's not very communicative about anything, including this topic, so it's very difficult to know what her thought processes are... hence this thread asking for a variety of ideas I can casually strew in her path, lol...

Thank you to those who have contributed some.

I'd caution against the law. Of all the professions, I know more people who've given up law than any other. And I suspect that to thrive in accountancy you've got to be a certain sort of person, too. Only she will know whether she's prepared to endure years of boredom and frustration and lack of autonomy (if that's how it turns out) in order to attain the lifestyle she currently imagines she wants. I say that because after a few years I think lots of people change their minds about their priorities.

One of my accountant friends quit one of the big accountancy firms and is now comfortably ensconced as deputy head of finance at her local NHS health board. Earning half what she once earned working in the City but has a life beyond work and is much happier for it.