CHOOSING
A CAREER IN THE CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY
Remuneration package should never
be the major reason for choosing a career in the Construction Industry or any
other Industry for that matter, because you eventually start to practice, you
will discover that you are missing a whole lot of other things that should
sustain you. Many of us got into the Industry after graduation to find out that
truly, there is lots of money to be made in the construction industry but the
money only accrues to those who take time and made sacrifices to develop
themselves to rise through the ranks.
You get
paid for the value you can add to a company not for bearing a name; Engineer,
Architect, Quantity Surveyor etc’
The greatest among other factors
to be considered is the LOVE or PASSION for the particular discipline. The
commonest way to test your love for any discipline you are about going into is
to ask yourself these questions before during and after University education;
1. What
am I naturally good at? Talking, writing, working with my hands, reading,
acting and so on.
2. Do
I enjoy doing this job? Did I enjoy those classes where core courses of this
profession were being taught while you were in school?
3. Can
I Offer my services for free? How far can I go to learn to new things in this
field?
4. What
difference exactly do I intend to make practicing this profession or is it just
for the money?
The answers to these and other questions
will easily help you understand if you are choosing the right profession or
not. This is important because young professionals in the construction industry
put up with different kinds of challenges in early days of practicing and how these
challenges are handled gives a clear indication of such a young professional’s
future in the chosen discipline.
For instance, The Nigeria
Institute of Quantity Surveyors (NIQS) allied professional bodies keeps
tightening the process of becoming a qualified member of the Institute in order
to reduce the number of Quacks manipulating their ways to this enviable status
of becoming a MNIQS (Member, Nigeria Institute of Quantity Surveyors), because
once you become a member, whatever you do wrong robs off on every other member
of the institute.
Consequently, when you are not
driven by passion for your profession, you discover that frustration sets in
while trying to scale through this hurdles on the Ladder that takes you to the
top and when you can’t at least get a professional qualification in that
discipline that you chose, sooner or later you are going to get stuck at one
salary level in your office, your boss will appoint new comers or Junior staff with
the requisite professional qualification as Boss over you who don’t have.
Some persons will say, well, even though I’m a
civil Engineer, I can take up a job as a Cashier in the Bank. Fine, but just
before you do that, I would like you to find out what became of those Civil,
Mechanical, Electrical Engineers and others like them employed in the banking
sector when the economic recession began in 2008. They were the first point of
call in the rigorous attempt to downsize recurrent expenditure. Those that
survived it are ones that got to the bank, started building a career in Banking
by developing themselves; acquiring banking certifications and what have you
even though they didn’t originally have a background in the financial sector.
So the requirement is the same,
it takes even more passion, love and commitment to start developing a career in
a discipline you didn’t train in, in the university. This is why the need to
get it right, right from the onset cannot be over-emphasized.
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