Compensation can often times make or break someone’s choice to accept, reject, or retain a job. While compensation is just a number, it can feel as though it speaks to our level of worth not only as an employee, but also as a human being. On top that, compensation is often a comparison game. Knowledge of others’ wages can also have an effect on our individual sense of worth.
For these reasons above, compensation and motivation go hand in hand. When I began my undergraduate degree, I was considering a few subjects to major in. The main two subjects I ultimately decided between were Finance and Fashion Merchandising. Fashion is a huge passion of mine, but I knew choosing this as a major was riskier than choosing finance. I knew that with a degree a finance, not only would there likely be more job opportunities, but the compensation is traditionally much higher. Ultimately, I could not justify choosing a major where I knew I would have less of an opportunity to have a high wage early in my career.
In my second year of my finance degree, I began taking accounting classes. The subject matter came very easily to me, so I began chatting with the university’s accounting advisor. She educated me on the career path, the compensation opportunities, and gave me the tools and the contact information of recruiters at the big four accounting firms. Once I was made aware of the starting wage of a tax associate at the big four firms, I was immediately sold on adding accounting as a second major. Although it was not something that excited me, my main and only true motivation at the time was to secure a high wage post graduation. I felt as though my worth and success post college was determined by the compensation I attained.
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