Warren Buffett’s advice on finding your perfect career

Careers

Aug 7

In a recent shareholder letter, Warren Buffett, one of the world’s most successful businessmen, wrote about regular talks he has with university students. "I have urged” he says, “that they seek employment in (1) the field and (2) with the kind of people they would select, if they had no need for money.”

“When they find that sort of job” he goes on to say “they will no longer be working”. He recognises that “economic realities may interfere with this quest”, but urges students “to never give up on the quest.”

Now, Warren Buffett is in a league of wealth that most of us can only dream of, and the number of people who go on to achieve the sort of financial success as he has will be few, but from my own experience, I can tell you that his approach has worked pretty well for me.

I chose to study Law for all the wrong reasons, but I loved my time at university.

While studying I got involved in going back into schools, to help students to make their university choices. I did this without reward, at a time when I didn’t need the money (as I had a student loan and grant). I had inadvertently found a job that I would do, even if I wasn’t paid. And the other students who did this voluntary work? Well, funnily enough they were exactly the sort of people who I wanted to spend my time with!

When I graduated, I found that I could forge a pretty decent career from it, starting out as a schools liaison officer, and moving up the ranks, so that twenty years later I was Director of Student Recruitment and Outreach at Imperial. And I found some amazing, like-minded people to work with, both in universities and in schools.

After Imperial, I worked freelance for a couple of years, and then found some more incredible, like-minded people at Unibuddy. I worked with them for five years, building a fantastic tool that has helped millions of students to make better decisions about their university study. Unibuddy’s success has enabled me to do what I am doing now; writing articles and creating a newsletter all about making great university choices, for no reason other than that it is what I want to do.

I wouldn’t go quite so far as to say that my jobs have never felt like working; I’ve done long hours, had challenging projects and difficult colleagues. But I can say that it's much easier getting up for a job that you believe in, rather than one you have to do, just for the money. I sincerely hope that you can also find a subject, and a course that ultimately enables you to find your vocation, your passion and your purpose, so that you too can forge a career that you really believe in.

Hopefully some of my noodlings might even help you get there!