Career highlights
The most satisfied workers
An accountant-turnedrecruiter says it wasn’t until her 30s that she realised what she wanted from her career.
Greta Knight moved to London in the early 2000s to pursue her career in accounting, when she hit a wall and realised she had fallen out of love with her job.
‘‘It didn’t come easy to me. I had to put in a lot of effort into that job,’’ Knight said.
And she is not alone. According to a recent study by AUT lecturer Jarrod Haar, millennials aren’t the only ones disillusioned with the corporate world – most women don’t enjoy their jobs until they hit their late 40s.
The study pointed out women in their late 20s to mid-30s were least satisfied with their jobs, whereas this period was the best for men.
Haar said this could be because women generally tended to settle down and have children in that age bracket, and finding a work-life balance was tricky.
According to Statistics New Zealand, the average age of mothers having their first child was 30 in 2012.
‘‘Women tend to make more compromises than men in those years. The same reason why men have greater job satisfaction in those years.’’
Knight turned to recruitment, a career she found was one that she could excel in and offered more flexibility with it being a femaledriven industry.
Similarly, career coach and former journalist Lucy SandersonGammon said she struggled to find her niche until later on in her career.
‘‘I was one of those people who fell into a career due to circumstance rather than choice. Raising two children on my own, I put myself through journalism school and then moved into corporate communications,’’ Sanderson-Gammon said.
‘‘There really was no such thing as balance in my life at that time, and it was more about survival than being focused on having a challenging or fulfilling career.’’
Knight said often part time jobs or flexible workplaces were hard to find as a new mother, as those perks were given for long-serving employees.
She said during recruitment interviews, young men were more confident about selling themselves for a role than women.
‘‘As women get older and get more experience and confidence they want to take charge, talk to people and take better opportunities.’’
Haar said the inverse effect on job satisfaction for men as they grew older could have been due to limiting career opportunities and greater responsibilities.
‘‘Traditionally, and still in many cases, men are the main bread winner, so as they get older they have had more responsibility to provide for their family.’’
Knight said another factor for disenchantment among men was with those who returned from their OE in their mid to late-30s and early 40s and encountered fewer career opportunities.
‘‘In New Zealand, people don’t change roles a whole lot of the time so you’re waiting for someone to leave, and often people just stay where they are.’’
Haar’s study showed that women in their 50s were the happiest and struck the right balance between work and play.
Sanderson-Gammon, who is in her early 50s, said it was about the freedom of choice for older women after their family responsibilities reduced.
‘‘There’s something incredibly freeing to get to a place where you can say, and believe, ‘I am enough’.
‘‘Once you get to that point, any learning and development is purely for enjoyment.’’