It surely starts with school; they say your education comes too early and when you are at school you’ve been there for nearly a lifetime!

For many pupils, there are far too many exciting distractions to invest all their time in learning so ‘if I had my time again’ I’d have taken school a bit more seriously, but only a little as I had a great time!

When you’re young, you have your whole life in front of you, and you think you have plenty of time to think about your future. But you can’t begin to know how quickly it is before you are looking for your first job.

How many people knew that they wanted to be an accountant when they were 8 years old?

Today, it might be that you have the best job ever or maybe you’d be happier doing something else, but at what stage did we know going for ‘that’ interview would impact so heavily on our lives? Think about it: for many people, it impacts on where they live, who they marry, who their friends are and even what hobbies they might have.

If we knew that ‘that’ interview would set us on our ultimate ‘life path’, would we have worked harder earlier in life? Would we have chosen a different degree or perhaps had more interviews to have enabled us to have different choices now?

Now firmly in your career, what have you learned about yourself and with your experience of adult life, what would you have done differently? Or would you have done anything differently?

Would you have made the decision to work in a job that paid more money; are material things your driver?

How much emphasis do you put on holidays, school, cars, extensions and even retirement – I can’t say I gave these points much thought in my early teens!

Has your focus changed from making ‘loads of’ money to having success and how do you measure success, now that you are on life’s escalator.

Is success having a good work-life balance? Or working fewer hours? Or spending more time with your children? Is having a job with lots of perks something you seek? 30 days holiday per year, Fridays off, etc?  Sounds great to me!

Maybe you would have pursued a hobby job, something that you can enjoy every day or something that would have enabled you to choose a different location?

Would you have chosen a job centred around humanity, working for charities?  Or would you have chosen a job which would allow you to ‘give something back’ to others?

I suppose at some stage we all look for meaning or wonder ‘what if.’ The truth is that there are often many great options in your industry, there are jobs that you could have or paths that you may have taken.

Explore our job descriptions for inspiration on where your career path may take you next.