“I thought I wanted to work at a ski area,” he says, explaining that he wasn’t exactly certain of what kind of work he would do.

To be extra sure about his major, Peder sought help from Layne Meredith Nelson, director of career services and academic support at Western State.

“She helped me out a lot,” he says. “I took some career tests to feel out if recreation was a strong point for me. It was one of the top things on the list of jobs that would fit my personality.”

Peder, who’s not related to Layne, says he began working in the career center during his freshman year and became familiar with all it had to offer. So when he became interested in global positioning and geographic information systems — computerized mapping — in a sophomore environmental studies class, he knew where to go to get help in finding how to turn his interest into a career.

Peder researched the uses for the mapping systems, which are primarily used in engineering. He learned that the same techniques that are used to map things like flood plains and water sources can be used in recreation.

“There’s a growing need for mountain bike mapping,” Peder says, explaining that ski areas could benefit from the mapping techniques as well. “It’s kind of the wave of the future.”

Through career services, Peder found an opportunity to perform a “guest analysis” for the Crested Butte Mountain Resort, using a special geographic information systems computer program to track and map where the resort’s guests live and help predict where to target advertising for future guests.

“A lot of marketing firms are starting to use it,” Peder says. “People understand things much better when they see maps.”

Peder spent the summer between his junior and senior years volunteering for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, teaching employees how to use global positioning and geographic information equipment. Then he spent the fall semester of his senior year as a teaching assistant in a geographic information systems class at Western State. He has been able to keep his major in recreation and tailor it to his newfound interest. He knows he has found his calling.

Making Your Interests Marketable

Layne Nelson says that Peder isn’t the only student she’s counseled who’s been able to find a way to make a living doing what he loves. And she points out that any student with a strong interest can do the same.

What can you do if want to turn an interest into a career?

“There’s no set routine, really,” Layne says. “A lot of it is just brainstorming. I usually start out by asking students what they really see themselves doing to make sure they understand what they’re talking about…A lot of it is just conversation.”

Trish Bergmaier, director of career services at Georgia Southern University in Statesboro, Ga., says she starts in the same way with students who are looking to make their interests marketable.

“The first thing I like to do is sit down and talk with them,” she says. “I ask them what are some things they are good at.”

Both career counselors say they often give students assessment tests to help them decide if they’re really suited to the area they’re considering.

“I’ll also send them away to do some research about the careers they may be interested in,” Layne says.

Bergmaier says she also likes to have students do research in books and on the Internet.

Some students, Bergmaier adds, know what career they want to pursue, but need to find an appropriate major. She points to a student she counseled several years ago who wanted to become a wedding planner.

“She wanted a four-year degree and she wanted to stay at our university,” Bergmaier says, explaining that the student knew someone who already ran a wedding-planning business.

“I had her do informational interviewing,” Bergmaier says. “I had her look at some wedding planning books and referred her to a professional association.”

After all that, Bergmaier says, she and the student began looking at possible majors.

“She chose management with an emphasis in small business,” Bergmaier says, adding that the student also spent her weekends working for the friend who is already in the business. By the time she graduated, Bergmaier says, she was ready to go into business for herself.

Layne says she also encourages students to talk to people working in fields related to their interests.

“We give out names of people they can talk to,” she says. “Sometimes that helps clarify things for them.”

Layne stresses that students who hope to turn an interest into a career shouldn’t try to go it alone.

“Take advantage of the resources at your career center,” she says. “Talk to faculty members. Go to career fairs…Just get some idea.”

“I love what I do.”

Ask people who work in community development about their careers and that’s what you’re likely to hear. It’s a field in which you can be entrepreneurial and ambitious, take risks and earn a living, yet feel fulfilled by knowing your work has a positive impact on people’s lives. Because it often offers unusual opportunities for creativity and leadership, it can be a good choice for young professionals starting careers.

Community development is the economic, physical and social revitalization of a community, led by local residents. The field emerged about 30 years ago as a grass-roots movement to improve living conditions, most often in low-income areas. It has since grown into an industry, and continues growing, with jobs in urban, suburban and rural areas in every state and overseas.

Volunteering and Internships Are Keys to Future Jobs

The difference that community-development efforts can make is evident in the South Bronx, N.Y., says Paul Grogan, a vice president at Harvard University and former president of the Local Initiatives Support Corp., a national organization based in New York that finances local community development housing and business initiatives. “In 1979, [the South Bronx] was rubble, the dustbin of history. Today it’s still poor. But housing is booming, crime is down, and you can see the start of economic revival. A new supermarket is opening, there’s a Little League team playing, it’s now a place where life is normal,” he says.

Partnerships Are Key

The field relies on partnerships between resident-led and professionally staffed neighborhood groups and public-sector and for-profit investment and support. Nonprofits pursue programs, such as low-income housing or job-training for at-risk youth. These are supported by local, regional and national nonprofit intermediaries which provide funding and technical assistance. Sources of business-sector backing can include corporations, investment banks, law firms, lenders, mortgage companies and even venture-capital pools.

“In a growing number of corporate boardrooms, lagging neighborhoods are now touted as targets of opportunities,” says Neal Peirce, a syndicated columnist based in Washington, D.C., who writes about state and local issues. For some banks, community-development finance has become an important business line. For example, Bank of America has made a 10-year $350 billion commitment to community-development lending. Additionally, developers, property-management companies and business owners are partnering with local groups in housing and economic development ventures.

The public sector assists these efforts by providing subsidies and funding services, regulating, monitoring and even partnering in projects to make direct loans or reduce risk. Further, universities and foundations are expanding their support of community-development initiatives.

In Tune With the Times

Demand for talented community-development professionals has swelled over the past decade, and the career’s popularity has grown. “Community development is fully in tune with the times,” says Peirce. “The field is entrepreneurial; its approach spans the political spectrum and is popular because it combines doing good for people and communities with the ethic of self-help and self-improvement.”

The field spans a variety of careers and industries involved in economic and social revitalization. Dan Nissenbaum and Roxie Perez-Lohuis represent either end of this spectrum. Nissenbaum, 36, is a senior vice president at Chase Manhattan Bank’s community development lending arm. Perez-Lohuis, 28, is a manager in a social-services program run by a Bronx nonprofit neighborhood organization that owns more than 1,500 apartments. She helps tenants overcome obstacles in their daily lives, such as finding day care so they can work, and build their skills to help themselves and each other.

Even though they come to the field from different approaches, they share a similar enthusiasm.

“My job is full of excitement. The phrase ‘doing well by doing good’ may be trite, but it’s true,” says Nissenbaum.

“This work is very rewarding, the type of reward that nourishes the soul,” says Perez-Lohuis.

Community development work can involve:

• community organizing,
• financing, housing and new businesses,
• redeveloping deserted industrial sites,
• job training,
• joint-venturing in developing local supermarkets and
• shaping public policy.

Employers include:

• community-based nonprofit organizations,
• banks,
• city, state and federal government,
• business enterprises,
• academic institutions,
• foundations,
• real-estate development companies,
• social-service agencies,
• job training and placement organizations,
• investment firms and
• think tanks.

Entry-Level Jobs

Even beginning jobs can offer challenge and interest. Shelia Slemp, 26, works for Neighborhood Progress Inc., a Cleveland organization. She designed and now manages a program that links college students to internships in grassroots community-development groups.

Slemp found her current position through an internship organized by Case Western Reserve University, where she’s pursuing a graduate degree in social work. She’s been participating in volunteer and civic organizations for years with her parents’ encouragement. After graduating from the University of Virginia, where she majored in government, she spent two years as an AmeriCorps intern, working in teams with community residents on building a greenbelt trail and other projects.

Community development appeals to Slemp because of its interaction with local groups that are “constantly innovating and thinking creatively,” she says. “I find building community by encouraging people to be involved is much more effective than through any corporate or government agenda.” She works 25 hours a week, setting her own hours, while continuing her studies.

Building Upon a First Job

An advanced degree usually isn’t necessary for your first job. The wisest career journey starts with an entry-level job. This experience will help you decide whether you really do enjoy the work, the kind of work you like best and the setting you prefer.

From your first job, you can climb the ladder in your organization. It may even pay for further education or training. Many banks, for example, offer first-rate in-house training. Or you might take a series of jobs — some paid, some volunteer — to try out different settings.

As an alternative to an advanced academic degree, you might consider enrolling in training courses. During the past three decades, a specialized nonprofit sector has grown that offers workshops on general community-development concepts and strategies, as well as specific techniques, such as commercial real-estate development. .

The Downside

All right, nothing is perfect. The best part of this career is seeing the positive changes in lives and neighborhoods that result from overcoming the economic factors that cause economic and social decline. The hard part is the frustration, day in and day out, of pushing against forces that resist change. Sometimes it’s people who can’t or won’t break out of their cycle of poverty. Other times it’s an external event, like a plant closing that eliminates neighborhood jobs.

Although community-development jobs often are more flexible than most, they may require long hours, including evenings to attend meetings or weekends to complete special projects. You may have the opportunity to quickly gain responsibility and experience in a variety of work mainly because your organization is understaffed, leaving you to handle many tasks and take the reins.

Another drawback can be compensation. Though salaries in nonprofit community-development organizations are comparable to those at other nonprofits, the pay is generally lower than in the for-profit sector.

A Springboard

This is a field where you could spend a lifetime or use as a springboard to another career. Former community developers lead foundations, banks, development companies, publishing houses and universities.

Others have followed a path to elected office, becoming mayors, state and local legislators or U.S. Congressmen and women. For example, Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) started out in public life organizing her neighborhood to fight the construction of a highway that would have cut the area into disjointed pieces. The neighbors won.

Volunteering and Internships Get You in the Door

Community service, through internships or volunteering, is a good way to land your first community-development job. It’s best not to walk in cold. Demonstrating your interest gives you an edge. If there’s a community-development group active in a neighborhood in your city, volunteer for its programs. Local and national religious institutions, including Habitat for Humanity International, based in Americus, Ga., and the Jesuit Volunteer Corps, also run community-volunteer programs.

Internships usually are structured positions within an organization, which will teach something about the work in return for your labor. They also may pay a stipend. Many local, regional and national community-development organizations and foundations have created formal internship programs. Or you can approach a community-development group and make your own slot.

Mark Gaines used networking and informational interviews to find a desirable employer. He learned about the Dallas division of Ryland Homes, a for-profit housing development company, and got his foot in the door by creating an internship with them. “They’d never had an intern before,” says Gaines. He was selected by the National Congress for Community Economic Development, a trade association in Washington, D.C., to participate in its emerging leaders training program. Gaines also has teamed with two other graduates of the program to launch Resurgence Magazine , a Web site devoted to community development.

His latest project is a collaboration with a newly formed nonprofit, the African-American Pastor’s Coalition, building 284 market-rate homes in a long-ignored section of Dallas. As part of the project, he administers a mentoring program that helps African-American builders complete about one-fifth of the homes.

Then think of the guilty pleasure you feel when you emerge briefly from your reverie to notice the harried businessmen and businesswomen scurrying through the terminal as they rush to make their flights to Toledo, Tulsa, Tallahassee, or some other mundane metropolis.

For some, business travel is the spice that makes a job intriguing. But for many others, it’s a burden to be endured, a necessary evil that disrupts family life and grinds down both body and mind. Jet lag. Connecting flights. Shaky commuter planes. Airline food. Weatherwoes. Miserable airport traffic that can cause you to be late for your appointment or your flight. It’s enough to make some frequent fliers long for the moment they can plant their feet firmly on the ground and their seats firmly behind a desk.

This is not to say that business travel always is a drag — far from it. A handful of trips a year can offer a welcome break from the monotony of the workaday office. In addition, business travelers meet new colleagues, make new friends — and often establish a network of contacts that can be valuable in a future job search. The willingness to travel often is a sign to the employer that you’ll “pay your dues” to the company; some bosses see it as a test of loyalty and commitment.

Business travel also can benefit your private life. Most corporate travelers accumulate frequent flier miles on their individual accounts, a perk that can pay off down the road with free airline tickets, rental cars, and hotel rooms that can be applied to personal vacations (if there ever is time for a vacation). For those enterprising or flexible enough, business travel schedules sometimes can be reworked to allow for visits with far-off family and friends, or a little sightseeing. For instance, instead of forcing a worker to fly out Friday morning and returning later that night, many bosses will allow you to stay in town a few weekend days, if you so desire, and perhaps fly back on Sunday — although the employee likely will have to foot the bill for expenses incurred beyond those related to business.

A welcome trend in the business world is the growing popularity of destination resorts that cater to conventions and large corporate gatherings. Savvy executives know that holding the annual branch managers’ meeting in Aspen or Palm Springs — rather than at corporate headquarters in, say, Pittsburgh — can be a big morale boost. There’s nothing like a little skiing or golf to lift spirits and liven up those boring seminars.

More often, however, business travel leaves little time to experience the ambiance and take in the special sights of particular destinations. Marathon meetings with clients can leave executives with a desire to do little other than head back to the hotel, order up room service, and hit the sack early. What’s more, the growing world-wide popularity of office complexes near large airports means that on a three-day trip to “Munich,” you might never get closer than 20 miles from the Bavarian delights of that colorful city. Looking for local color at one of those small, quaint hotels? Given the international expansion of the big hotel chains — and the barter deals companies increasingly are negotiating with such chains — your room in suburban London might look an awful lot like the bland digs on your last trip to Chicago or Charlotte. The best most business travelers can do is sample a restaurant or two; the normal itinerary — back and forth from airport to hotel to office to airport — usually won’t give you a real feel for a city or a region.

Business travel comes in a wide range of styles — from road trips in one’s own car, with sleepovers at the roadside budget motel, to first-class airline and hotel accommodations with service staff that pampers the traveler and goodies that flow freely. But even the beneficiaries of the most luxurious business travel — for instance, professional athletes, who fly on chartered or team-owned planes and stay in four-star hotels — can grow weary of the grind. A rookie NBA player probably will revel in the attention lavished on him by obsequious hotel staffers and flight attendants on the team’s private jet. He’ll probably love the nice per diems for meals, and he likely will enjoy sampling the nightlife in each city he visits. On the other hand, veterans who have seen and done it all usually grow jaded in regard to the fast lane of life on the road, and long to get back home to their families.

The jobs discussed on this list are meant to serve as a representative selection, not as a comprehensive list of careers that involve travel. Obviously, the individual circumstances will dictate whether a particular employment situation involves travel. Indeed, even positions you wouldn’t expect to entail taking a trip or two can offer that opportunity. For instance, waiters and waitresses aren’t normally counted among the globe-trotters of the working world — but it’s certainly not unusual for a large, specialty chain that is launching a new restaurant in another city to send experienced staffers from an established location to the new site on a temporary basis, to help train personnel and get things organized for the opening.

So take a look at this list to get an overall feel for the nature of business travel. You may not find the particular field you are considering; if not, try to find a similar one, which in some cases may approximate the travel opportunities.

You may be someone who loves to fly and to stay in hotels; on the other hand, you may despise traveling or be unwilling to risk the loss of family time business excursions often require. Whatever the field, however, the guiding principle of business travel is: smaller doses usually are better.

So, teachers are ready, willing, and able to serve small businesses. Is there a catch?

Well, there is a teacher shortage, and the U.S. Department of Education predicts that it will reach crisis proportions with an expected increase in students, and when teachers born during the baby boom start to retire and there aren’t enough young teachers around to replace them. Every bright communicator-negotiator-manager that an entrepreneur entices away from a school is one less educator teaching America’s children.

That’s a dilemma for Ben Klasky a former Teach for America Corps member, Mr. Klasky taught at an inner-city school in Louisiana for two years. Now, he is hiring employees for his company.

Mr. Klasky speaks highly of the passion teachers bring to their work and the maturity their experiences give them. “I obviously need to get good people and to get team players,” he says. But emotionally and ethically, “I would have a less hard time hiring somebody from a competitor,” Mr. Klasky says, “than recruiting from a school because the need is so great.”

He even discourages publicizing the attractiveness of teachers to corporate employers: “I would hate for somebody to get the picture that teachers are great people and then all of a sudden have it be even harder” for schools to hire teachers, he says.

Educators May Benefit

But is his attitude fair to teachers? Long term, competition for their services increases their value and will force their pay — and their status — up, say current and former educators. Those are the real keys to attracting and retaining teachers. And that, ultimately, could be very good for American schools, though in the meantime an accelerated exodus no doubt would be painful, say the educators.

Horizon Software System’s Karen Larson doesn’t feel guilty for luring teachers away from schools. “I’m a firm believer in public education,” she says. “I sent my children to public schools. But the way we pay teachers is a travesty. And then we don’t even give them control over their work. They’re going to leave anyway.”

Poor Customer Relations

Dan James, vice president of business development at Carolina Biological Supply Co. in Burlington, N.C., a company that produces science materials for classrooms, says his company doesn’t directly recruit in the schools. He points out that there are competitive and ethical reasons for education-related businesses not to recruit teachers. “Our market is the schools,” Mr. James says. “You’re recruiting your own customer and that doesn’t make you a good vendor. We appreciate how hard it is for schools to get people.”

That’s not to say former teachers don’t work at the company. “A lot of teachers just come to us,” Mr. James says.

Entrepreneurs must decide for themselves whether recruiting teachers is corporate carpet-bagging — or a belated recognition of teacher skills that ultimately strengthens the profession. But for those businesses that do decide they covet teachers, legions of passive job seekers are out there. Says Annie Huggins of Horizon, “I have not [conducted] a single training session where a teacher doesn’t come up to me and say, ‘So what did you do to get this job?’ ‘Who did you talk to?’ And when they hear it was really easy, they’re amazed. I can read it in them: They want out, but they don’t know how to do it.”

If ever a college senior seemed likely to eschew the world of signing bonuses and stock options, it was Monica Nah Lee.

Caught up in the challenges of education reform, the Amherst College psychology major coordinated a tutoring program for Latino girls and dreamed up plans for her own charter school — while maintaining a 3.7 grade-point average. Ms. Lee spent her summers working with at-risk middle-school students.

So after checking the career possibilities at a number of charter schools, inquiring about positions with educational policy groups and attending job fairs sponsored by nonprofit organizations, what are her plans once she graduates next month? After three months of difficult deliberation, Ms. Lee, now 21, decided to take a $5,000 signing bonus from McKinsey & Co. and go to work as a business analyst.

Nonprofits have a hard time competing with private employers for graduating students. And they handicap themselves, according to Lisa B. Tessler, director of the career planning center at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. While business recruiters come to New England campuses earlier each year, she says, nonprofit employers are “just gearing up now.”

That’s too bad, “because there are bright young people entering their senior years who are looking for service,” says Judith A. Auerbach, president of Auerbach Associates Inc., an executive-search firm specializing in nonprofits.

But it’s not just a matter of recruiting tactics. Even for the likeliest prospects, the reality of nonprofits can be discouraging.

“If I went the nonprofit route, I’d be just a body at a soup kitchen or a homeless shelter,” Ms. Lee says. “That’s very worthwhile, but I feel like I’d be wasting my education.” So she intends to spend a few years at McKinsey, learning how business works, and then return to the nonprofit world with skills that will translate into more clout and the potential to have greater impact.

“The truth is, I still plan on going into education reform,” Ms. Lee says, “but right now, I feel like all I have is passion and no resources.”

Building up her resources before returning to the nonprofit world should also mean a higher salary when she gets there. Newly minted graduates are generally offered just $22,000 to $25,000 a year, according to Irma R. Tryon, director of recruiting for the career services office at Wellesley College in Wellesley, Mass. That compares with the more than $50,000 that McKinsey will pay Ms. Lee.

“The difference in salaries is incredible,” Ms. Tryon says.

That difference, and a mountain of student loans, make the job decision straightforward for some seniors. “Students often have a real conflict, because they graduate with a great deal of debt, and of course the prospect of a few years with high pay is very attractive,” says Joanne Murray, director of career services at Wellesley. Like Ms. Lee, they often have the idea of then returning to their nonprofit roots.

Money was one reason Bradford J. Mak, who will graduate from Brown University in Providence, R.I., this May, accepted a $42,000 offer from a San Francisco Internet start-up that has a stock-option plan. Having spent one summer in Costa Rica and Peru, digging latrines and teaching villagers about hygiene and sanitation, and the next conducting a field-research project out of a hospital in Bangladesh, he seemed like a lock for the nonprofits.

“I used to be, like, `I’m going to live in refugee camps,’” says Mr. Mak, who majored in human biology.

But by last fall, with corporate recruiters hitting the campus regularly, Mr. Mak was weighing the pros and cons of the corporate life. He had suddenly been hit, he says, by the reality of supporting himself. And his latest close look at a nonprofit had been disillusioning: The “inefficiencies, corruption, bad management and miscommunications” among the members of the project’s management team had left him wondering just how much he wanted to work for one after all.

In Ms. Lee’s case, the career choice was in keeping with the wishes of her parents. Korean immigrants in Youngstown, Ohio, Chun Shik and Young Mee Lee often brag about their daughter’s activism, but are happy she chose McKinsey.

“I’ve been very proud of her for having such large dreams, and for being so fearless in pursuing them,” says Ms. Lee’s mother, but “we overwhelmingly wanted her to go into business, either as an end in itself or as a stepping stone to education reform.”

The younger Ms. Lee’s interest in education began at 17, when she read how poorly the U.S. educational system compared with other industrialized nations’.

“I became really outraged, because it seemed absurd to me that America — which had so many resources — would have such a horrible education system,” Ms. Lee says. One reason her parents had moved here, she says, was to give her and her sister a better education than they would have received in Korea.

Soon after, Ms. Lee volunteered for the local school board. In her senior year, she raised funds for a new school building and helped start a drug-prevention program and a peer-tutoring program. “It consumed me,” she says.

It continued after she arrived at Amherst in 1996. During her first summer vacation, she taught math, German and journalism to sixth graders in Cincinnati for Summerbridge, a program for at-risk students. “It was really incredible,” she says. “It was the first time that — no matter how tired I was — as soon as I stepped into the classroom, I felt totally revived.”

The following summer, she worked for Summerbridge again, this time in San Francisco. Then 20, she chaired the program’s foreign-language department — and started to make long-term career plans, brainstorming about the charter school she hoped to open after college.

“And after that charter school was successful, I planned to work with one particular city and help the city reform its entire educational structure,” she says.

Last fall, Ms. Lee began visiting charter schools; she also attended teaching and nonprofit job fairs. But only low-paying, low-impact jobs were presented to her, and she grew anxious that she would graduate jobless. So when big companies arrived on campus, she applied to three consulting firms — though she says she didn’t expect they would even choose to interview her.

But all three did. Ms. Lee says she “totally bombed” in the first two: “When they asked me why I wanted to be a consultant, I really didn’t have a good answer for them because I didn’t really want to be a consultant. I didn’t necessarily look down on it for other people, but I did for myself.”

In mid-December, she went to her third interview — this time with McKinsey. “I told them the truth,” she says: “that I didn’t really want to be a consultant, but I wanted to gain business experience so that I could go into nonprofit work and help the nonprofits where I think they really need help, which is in efficiency.”

Much to her surprise, the truth proved successful. She advanced in McKinsey’s interviewing process and before the month was out had a job offer. Though she kept going to nonprofit career fairs, in March she decided to accept it.

Despite the American public’s consistently low voter turnout, young college graduates continue to flock to Washington, D.C., every year in hopes of launching a career in politics.

Getting the foot in democracy’s door isn’t always easy. If you want to work in politics, you have to understand the process, make contacts, be able to spin your qualifications and run a personal campaign that gains the trust of key decision makers.

One Student’s Personal Campaign

Josh Rubenstein, a political-science major at Washington University in St. Louis, Mo., is a long way from Washington, D.C., and the Beltway political action which is his career goal when he graduates this spring. So when the Commission on Presidential Debates chose his school as a site for a debate, he wasted no time planning his job-search campaign.

Planning a Strategy

Opportunities on Capitol Hill

Other Career Routes in Politics

Schmoozing at the event was a cornerstone of his game plan. He gained entrance by volunteering as a VIP escort. He introduced himself to the political elite as he shuttled them from the Ritz-Carlton Hotel a few miles away to the debate site on campus.

“I think the debate [was] an excellent opportunity, not to distribute resumes, because that’s really not what the people [were] here for, but to at least meet them, express some interest and maybe get some names of people to follow up with,” he says.

Planning a Strategy

Knowing he would be meeting some of the country’s fastest movers and talkers, the savvy 22-year-old from Middlesex, Mass., prepared a quick pitch introducing himself and letting them know he has an interest in politics. It was something like: “I’m Josh Rubenstein. I’m a senior at Washington University, and I’m planning to pursue a career in politics when I graduate this spring.”

His research kept the conversation going. “I follow politics pretty closely, so I [knew] something about the people and their backgrounds and [could] engage them in a meaningful and memorable conversation,” he says. “If you can show an interest in what they do and what they’re trying to accomplish, you’ll stand out from [students] who just want to hand them a resume and say, ‘Hire me.’ ”

In case this crash networking session doesn’t produce a solid offer, he’s also planning to a trip to Washington, D.C., in the spring to follow up. “I’ll be going up, making phone calls and trying to get my foot in the door somewhere that way,” Rubenstein says. He’s also applying for a summer position as a White House intern.

Temperament and Timing Are Key

To break into the political field, it helps to have a thick skin and competitive personality. Jim Larrew, a senior studying political science at University of Missouri in St. Louis, found this out firsthand recently, when he ended up literally toe-to-toe with U.S. Congressional candidate Bill Federer of St. Louis.

Larrew, a 22-year-old intern with House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt’s (D., Mo.) campaign, was conducting what’s euphemistically called “opposition research.” He was videotaping Federer as the candidate campaigned at a parade in St. Louis. The candidate confronted him. The tussle that ensued, all caught on tape, was broadcast on local television stations.

His father, Joseph Larrew, a St. Louis attorney, says it was an educational experience for his son. “I think Mr. Federer embarrassed himself and the political process by what he did. And that’s probably a good learning experience for my son in terms of finding out that people in politics sometimes act in an unpredictable way,” he says. Jim Larrew and his attorney couldn’t be reached for comment.

Conduct can make or break a rookie staffer’s career, says Jeff Smith, deputy political director for former Sen. Bill Bradley (D., N.J.) during his recent presidential bid. “Temperament is an issue,” he says. “I wouldn’t characterize what happened on [Gephardt's] campaign as normal, or something that one should expect. On the other hand, campaign workers probably get yelled at a hell of a lot more than somebody working in accounting.”

But in a fast-paced, demanding atmosphere, advancement opportunities can break at anytime. When Smith accompanied Bradley to the Iowa caucuses in January, he was tied for low man on the staff totem pole. “A month later, I was suddenly the No. 3 guy out of about 30 or 40 people,” he says.

For most minor leaguers, the climb to big-league politics is a tough one. After advancing from intern to staff assistant to legislative assistant to, for example, press secretary, staffers can find themselves earning only $30,000 a year at age 29. Many decide to leave the public sector and move to such professions as public relations and lobbying, which often pay annual salaries of $85,000 or more.

Where the Entry-Level Jobs Are

Election seasons present numerous opportunities to break into politics by working on a political campaign. Of course, you’ll likely have to start by volunteering your time, and job security will be a gamble considering your candidate may not be elected.

As in the private sector, many of the most viable opportunities focus on information technology. “If you’re Web-proficient, that will be enormously helpful to you as candidates are moving their campaigns to the Internet,” says Smith. “Many of us who are involved in campaigns don’t know how to put up Web sites but look at the Internet as a new dynamic for politics.”

Research is another avenue with numerous options. “The first thing a candidate does when he enters a race, ideally, is to hire someone to do research: first on himself and then on the opposition. You have to know everything that you’ve ever said, publicly, and everything that’s out there on you as a candidate, so you’re inoculated against any attacks if they come your way,” says Smith.

As Jim Larrew discovered, a research role might not be as dry as one might think. Opposition research can combine the intrigue of a soap opera with the shock and excitement of tabloid television.

For the more faint of heart, there’s also a need for pollsters, who conduct market research. Moreover, says Smith, “There’s also a lot of grunt work to be done, which isn’t nearly as glamorous as it may be portrayed in ‘West Wing’ ” a television drama.

Opportunities on Capitol Hill

If you’re looking for a slightly slower pace and job security, you may want to consider working for a sitting congressman or senator. However, the opportunities are more competitive and timing is everything. “Even though the jobs don’t pay well, there’s always a horde of recent college graduates going to try and find these jobs…There are never enough jobs to go around,” says Smith.

To secure a job on Capitol Hill, you’ll need to go there during the December transition when members of Congress are going through orientation. “That’s when they’re staffing up,” says Smith.

The best contact to approach is the congressman’s or senator’s administrative assistant or chief of staff. Rather than relying on a resume pitch and a prayer, attend a Capitol Hill job fair where incoming congressmen are looking to hire experienced staffers, Smith advises. “You need to find a way to get your face in front of them,” he says. “You need to either give [a resume] to them personally, and have five minutes to try and sell yourself, or know someone. I don’t think sending a resume would be a good use of your time unless you’re a Harvard Law graduate at the top of your class.”

Paul Wright, a graduate of Brigham Young University in Salt Lake City, landed his spot as an intern with Sen. Robert Bennett (R., Utah) through the university’s Washington, D.C., seminar program, which gives about 30 students a chance to intern in the nation’s capital each semester. “I got in through the school…It wasn’t personal contacts or anything like that,” he says. Later, he worked in the office of Sen. Orrin Hatch (R., Utah).

Wright credits his success to a strong resume and cover letter, which was focused and thoroughly critiqued prior to submission. If your aim is simply to land an internship spot regardless of the area you’ll be working in, do some research first to find out what’s most needed, says Wright. “Try to find out what the office is looking for. If it’s press, you can stress your interest in journalism,” he says.

Many in D.C. Pursue Grad School

Now Wright is following a path common to many recent graduates who have worked in Washington, D.C. He’s a first-year law student at Washington University. While he has an interest in constitutional law, he hasn’t settled on a long-term career goal. He has no plans to seek political office, but after graduating from law school, hopes to become involved in political issues and campaigns wherever he settles down.

Rubenstein also eventually plans to pursue a law degree or a master’s degree in public policy regardless of the success of his short-term job search. “From people I’ve talked to in government, most of them go back and get a graduate degree after getting a couple of year’s experience in Washington,” he says.

Other Career Routes in Politics

There are many facets of politics and many more ways to shape public policy than these. Consider Michelle Purdy, student-union president at Washington University. She’s heavily involved in campus politics but after graduation in May, the 22-year-old plans a break from elective office.

“I’m interested in doing something unity- or public-policy oriented, such as Teach for America, the Americorps program or pursuing a fellowship,” she says.

Whatever cause she decides to take on, Ms. Purdy, thanks to her involvement in student politics, will have plenty of marketable experience and contacts. During the four-day debate extravaganza at Washington University, she conducted media interviews, helped welcome the national television audience and collected business cards from influential decision-makers.

Demonstrate Diplomacy

But political involvement can be a touchy issue for many employers. Adam Eidinger knows this slippery slope well. He began his career as a congressional intern, then moved to Rabinowitz Media Strategies, a public-relations firm in Washington, D.C. But his job there hit a dead end when he became involved in protests against the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, and a newspaper ran a photo of him at an event.

“I lost my job because of my political beliefs,” he says. His boss saw the photo and asked him to stop working on the issue. “He said, ‘I don’t like the issue, and I wouldn’t take them as a client,’ ” says Eidinger. He’s now with Mintwood Media, a Washington, D.C., public-relations firm that specializes in nonprofit and social-action causes.

If you’re looking for the nation’s best job in terms of low stress, high compensation, lots of autonomy and tremendous demand for your skills, look no further than financial planner. Everyone from new retirees to aging Baby Boomers to young dot-com executives needs their expert guidance — today and in the future.

On the other hand, as the top-selling novel and movie “The Perfect Storm” illustrates so well, the life of a commercial fisherman couldn’t be much rougher in terms of work instability, poor pay and pure danger, making it the nation’s worst job by a wide margin.

Those are the results of the latest ranking of best and worst jobs nationally, based on data gathered during the second half of last year and recently published in “Jobs Rated Almanac” by Les Krantz (St. Martin’s Griffin,). Using six key criteria, the Almanac determined the most and least appealing career opportunities. The criteria include environment, income, employment outlook, physical demands, security and stress.

The results from the rankings can be eye opening. If avoiding stress is a career goal, you might consider becoming a medical records technician, janitor or forklift operator, among three of the nation’s least-stressful jobs. Or, if finding a stable, healthy environment that doesn’t require long hours is your most critical issue, consider opportunities as a statistician, mathematician or computer systems analyst.

The following are lists of the 10 best and worst jobs overall, as well as the best three jobs in each of eight different industries, according to the “Jobs Rated Almanac.”

Best Jobs Overall

• Financial planner
• Website manager
• Computer systems analyst
• Actuary
• Computer programmer
• Software engineer
• Meteorologist
• Biologist
• Astronomer
• Paralegal assistant

Worst Jobs Overall

• Commercial fisherman
• Roustabout
• Lumberjack
• Cowboy
• Ironworker
• Garbage collector
• Construction laborer
• Taxi driver
• Stevedore
• Welder

Best Jobs by Selected Industry

The Arts

1. Motion picture editor

2. Architectural drafter

3. Antique dealer

Business/Finance

1. Financial planner

2. Paralegal assistant

3. Bank officer

Communications

1. Technical writer

2. Editor

3. Broadcast technician

Healthcare/Medicine

1. Hospital administrator

2. Dietician

3. Audiologist

Math/Science

1. Actuary

2. Meteorologist

3. Biologist

Production/Manufacturing

1. Industrial designer

2. Aerospace engineer

3. Electrical engineer

Public Sector

1. Judge (federal)

2. Parole officer

3. Postal inspector

Social Sciences

1. Historian

2. Archeologist

3. Sociologist

Technical/Online

1. Website manager

2. Computer systems analyst

3. Computer programmer

A George Washington University student presides over the reading group. Off to one side, an important guest proudly looks on. He is Vincent Pan, executive director in a social-services program he co-founded called Heads Up, which arranged the reading session. If there were a book named “Vincent: A Visiting Dog’s Story,” it might begin by relating this:

Once upon a time, but not too long ago, Mr. Pan was an Ivy League economics major, aspiring to a Wall Street career. But like thousands of other young people these days, he decided instead to start his own business, straight out of college.

Yet starkly unlike most of his peers, Mr. Pan created a nonprofit corporation that, after four years in operation, still pays him an annual salary of less than $30,000 and grants him no stock or options. Heads Up has issued no shares — and never will.

In other words, money isn’t the goal. By mobilizing students from six universities, Heads Up so far has created tutoring programs at six inner-city schools, serving more than 400 young children and teenagers. The current efforts cost about $1.6 million a year, and Mr. Pan oversees nine other people on the full-time staff.

“Our mission is to provide low-income children and families with the learning opportunities they need to succeed, while fostering a new generation of leaders committed to strengthening their communities,” wrote Mr. Pan, now 27 years old, in one grant application last year.

In choosing the nonprofit lane, Mr. Pan is keenly aware that he is swimming outside the mainstream of his generation. After all, so many other young entrepreneurs are trying — and in many cases succeeding — to become fabulously rich by age 30. “It’s kind of sad that there are so few of us young people who are willing to work for a lot less money, for something that has greater social rewards,” he says.

‘I Was Different’

At least three of Mr. Pan’s friends have formed high-tech companies, and he has met dozens of other young entrepreneurs, even attending a meeting at a Georgetown bar of a group of them called the Brat Pack. “It was clear that I was different from them, but I could be the same if I wanted,” he says. “But I want to make them more like me, not become more like them.”

One of his best friends, Michael Weinbach, a 26-year-old M.B.A. candidate at Harvard, has already raised $1 million for an Internet start-up. “If my business plan is successful, I’ll earn in equity several million dollars within a few years,” Mr. Weinbach predicts. He would love to hire Mr. Pan — “If he wants, he can have a job anytime” — but knows that his friend has altruistic priorities. “Vin would almost feel guilty if he were doing something solely for himself,” Mr. Weinbach says. “I’ve seen very few people like that.”

All the same, Mr. Pan, a trim, athletic man with a low-key manner, is an ambitious and skillful entrepreneur. “Tenacity and drive are things he has very much in common with the people who are starting technology-based companies,” says Charles W. Stein, a former technology-company chief who now serves on the boards of five for-profit companies — and Heads Up.

“There’s a lot in common between the corporate invention of those who start nonprofits and the corporate invention of those who do start-ups in the for-profit world,” agrees Harris Wofford, chief executive of the federal Corporation for National Service. The former senator, whose agency spurs a broad range of community-service projects, adds that Mr. Pan “is an extraordinary guy — I’m very impressed. He does all the things any good business entrepreneur would do.”

In fact, not unlike many Internet start-ups, Heads Up readily burns through all the cash it gets and is constantly hungry for more. Nevertheless, Heads Up makes no pretense that it will ever be profitable — not in a monetary sense, anyway.

Even Mr. Pan’s own parents had trouble understanding his career choice, Mr. Pan concedes. “When you combine the high risk with the low earnings potential, you start to raise eyebrows,” he says.

Born in New York City in 1973, Mr. Pan is the son of immigrants from Taiwan. His father, once a busboy in Manhattan’s Chinatown, became a maritime lawyer and piloted the family into the upper-middle class in comfortable Short Hills, N.J. At high school in nearby Millburn, Vincent captained the track team and raised money for class dances. He also excelled as a student, winning admission to Harvard University.

“At Harvard, the current is flowing toward investment banking and consulting,” he says. “If you want to go in another direction, you have to swim pretty hard to get away from it.”

At first, he went with the flow. Planning a Wall Street career, he spent the summer of 1993 as an intern at Paine Webber Group Inc., a New York securities firm, preparing spreadsheets with data on public companies. “It was challenging and exciting,” he says. Yet his career choice fell into doubt. “At the end of the day, I really didn’t think I had contributed anything that made a difference to society,” he says.

Time to Tutor

Back at school, he got greater satisfaction from volunteer work in nearby Boston, in a tutoring program overseen by Phillips Brooks House Association, a public-service arm of Harvard. Two or three times a week, he would ride the bus to the Mission Hill housing project, in the depressed Roxbury neighborhood. There he would meet the clients — young children and teenagers — at a playground, then walk them to a nearby technical school where he helped with arithmetic, grammar and creative writing. When injuries cut into his time at rugby, a favorite pastime, he stepped up the volunteer work.

On successive trips, as the bus passed from Cambridge to Roxbury, he became increasingly upset at the class differences in American society (a socioeconomic ladder many of his entrepreneurial peers now look forward to sitting atop). “If you’re poor in this country, you’re saddled with less-safe neighborhoods, schools that aren’t as effective and streets that aren’t even paved right,” he says.

Resolving to fight poverty, Mr. Pan became the head of the tutoring program. Later, his peers elected him president of Phillips Brooks, an unpaid post whose one-year term caused him to defer graduation for a semester, until early 1996.

After receiving his Harvard diploma, he sought funds to start his own tutoring organization in Washington, D.C. The Stride Rite Foundation provided $15,000. “I wasn’t sure he could do the job for 15 grand, but that’s all he wanted,” says Arnold Hiatt, chairman of the foundation, based in Boston.

Mr. Pan recruited a partner — Darin McKeever, now age 26 and Heads Up’s communication director. Working initially from a small basement apartment near the Capitol’s DuPont Circle neighborhood, the two young men called on public-school officials, colleges seen as potential sources of tutors, and assorted community leaders, including prospective board members for the venture, at first called University Neighborhood Initiative of Washington, D.C.

By the fall of 1996, they had arranged for about 15 volunteers from American University to tutor children at James G. Birney Elementary School, in the southeast portion of the city. But the $15,000 in initial funding was exhausted, as was $10,000 from other sources. The partners were drawing no pay. For pocket money, Mr. McKeever went to work briefly in a record store near his parents’ home in Westport, Conn. Mr. Pan stayed on the job, mostly seeking financing.

At the beginning of 1997, Mr. Hiatt sent $15,000 more (this time from his personal account), but Mr. Pan and his partner were still hardly flush. “It’s a rite of passage,” Mr. Pan says resignedly. “You have to prove you can make do on next to nothing before you can get any more funding.”

By the end of 1997, Mr. Pan was drawing a modest salary (about $22,000) and had expanded the program to two more public schools, served by tutors from Georgetown University and Howard University. Tapping local foundations, the program also succeeded at raising more money. Then, in a major coup, it won a three-year funding commitment totaling more than $670,000 from the Corporation for National Service’s AmeriCorps program, a sort of Peace Corps for domestic projects.

Mainly, the AmeriCorps money would enable Mr. Pan to buy more books and art supplies, and to use AmeriCorps members as volunteer coordinators and tutors. In exchange for a year of service, members of AmeriCorps receive a small living stipend and help in paying for a college education. The three-year commitment gave Mr. Pan a bit of relief from what had been a constant financial crisis.

“For a start-up, cash flow is everything,” he says. “It does no good to have a budget of $1 million if $800,000 comes in during December.” AmeriCorps provided $190,000 the first year, saving the rest for later.

(Today, Heads Up’s annual budget is about $1 million, mostly raised from foundation grants and individual contributions as well as the AmeriCorps money. The remaining $600,000 to run the tutoring program this year comes from outside sources, such as college work-study programs.)

Mr. Pan’s dream of building a nonprofit enterprise was starting to be realized — not least because he was working about as hard as entrepreneurs ever do in the for-profit world. Extending long workdays into the evening, he continued to make contacts in many of the city’s neighborhoods.

“There was no distinction between work time and non-work time,” he says. “There was just my life.” The pace was problematic at times. “I was dating someone,” recalls Mr. Pan, who is unmarried. “We broke up because I had no time to do anything except work.” By this time, he had a small storefront office — and sometimes he stayed overnight there in a sleeping bag when it seemed like too much trouble to go home.

Early in 1999, Mr. Pan rechristened the organization Heads Up, a snappier name aimed at attracting donors. “It’s a stronger brand identity,” he says. “It improves our visibility.” By last October, when he was part of a small group of young social activists invited to a meeting with President Clinton, Mr. Pan was winning recognition as an effective social reformer. Mr. Pan says the president gave him good advice: “to get across the passion without being sanctimonious.”

He tries to do that. Relentlessly even-tempered, he also tries not to get too upset from day to day about social problems. “If you get too emotional about all the injustices, you can lose your sense of purpose,” he says. “The problem is to channel your energies into something constructive.”

Participants have found the program very constructive so far. “It’s a very effective program,” says Yvonne Morse, the principal at Birney elementary school, which is situated near a big housing project called Barry Farms. The proportion of pupils reading below grade level at Birney fell to 26% last year from 39% the year before, Ms. Morse says. She ascribes the improvement partly to Heads Up, which tutors about 70 pupils in the student body of 579. “It’s unusual to find young people who organize something like this and stick to it,” she adds.

Now big enough to post a full-time staff member at each school in the program, Heads Up has moved its headquarters into 1,700 square feet of commercial space, situated in an unfashionable area about one mile southeast of the Capitol. Mr. Pan dreams of having a much larger space — “a community space where people of different backgrounds come together.”

Across Class Lines

Indeed, much as Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeffrey Bezos always insisted that his Internet start-up wasn’t just about books, Mr. Pan says Heads Up isn’t just about tutoring. By bringing together mostly affluent college students and largely poor community members, Heads Up aims to cut across class lines and catalyze social change in still-unfolding ways.

“I don’t think this would be very interesting for me if I just wanted to create tutoring programs,” he says. “We’re trying to find a way to get people out of poverty.”

Nevertheless, he confesses, “Sometimes I wonder if I might have more of an impact if I went out and made a lot of money and then devoted myself to philanthropic efforts afterward. There are folks my age, left and right — and I’m not that different from them — who are making multiples and multiples of what I need to raise for Heads Up.”

If he wanted to, he could do just that, his friends and associates believe. One pal, John Zoltner, a 32-year-old founder of Transparent Technology Inc., an Internet applications service provider based in Washington, D.C., says Mr. Pan “kind of fits the profile of a tech start-up entrepreneur,” and could easily transfer to the for-profit sector if he wished. “He’s highly skilled, and his future is pretty much wide open.”

But Mr. Pan declares: “You become what you do. It’s dangerous to defer community responsibility. What you do in the present is who you are.”

Besides, he thinks he is essential to his organization’s success, while Internet start-ups and other for-profit ventures don’t really need him. “If I didn’t do this now, I don’t think it would get done,” he says. “The other stuff is going to happen with or without me.”

Let’s face it. Some graduates with technical degrees are excited by the prospect of sitting in front of a computer all day, writing miles of code for new programs, designing complicated networks or developing faster Internet connections. You, on the other hand, may be a different breed. You may have studied computer science because that’s where the economy is moving these days. But you may want a career that puts you in contact with lots of people — and allows you to earn big money.

Perhaps you’re cut out for sales.

In the high-tech world, which encompasses a range of products besides computers, selling is a viable career. Positions range from pure sales professionals to sales hybrids. For instance, some highly technical professionals accompany sales representatives when they call on customers and make presentations. Called systems engineers or field applications engineers, these professionals provide the technical insights many sales reps lack about their products. They review the company’s situation, assess its challenges or problems and make product recommendations and configurations, says Harvey Bass, president and managing director of the Sparta, N.J., office of Sales Consultants International, a recruiting firm based in Cleveland.

“This is sales support at a high level, and great technical expertise is required,” says Bass.

Many new graduates who want to break into high-tech sales initially take customer-service, telemarketing or other sales support jobs before moving to outside sales slots, Bass says. However, there’s plenty of opportunity at all levels. Nearly two-thirds (60%) of all U.S. companies planned to increase their sales and marketing staffs , according to a Sales Consultants survey. Demand is particularly strong in high-tech fields, with almost 80% of telecommunications companies and 65% of information-technology firms planning to hire sales and marketing personnel, the firm reports.

It’s one thing to be hired and quite another to be successful in high-tech sales. You need to be made of strong stuff. This is true of sales in general, but in the high-tech world, the competition is tough. You may feel more tested than you would selling consumer goods or pharmaceutical items. “The average tenure of a new sales person is 12 to 24 months because this industry is so volatile and entrepreneurial,” says Bass.

To help you decide if a high-technology sales career is for you, ask yourself these questions.

1. Do I have the right degree and background?

Surprisingly, almost any background will do as long as you can sell. While many technical companies require new sales hires to have bachelor of science degrees in electrical engineering, B.S. double-Es don’t always make the best sales people. Liberal arts graduates often are more adept at understanding customer needs, gaining their trust and building the relationships that are all-important to a successful sales career, says Arthur Demirjian, regional director of sales for Integrated Systems and Services, a software company in Little Falls, N.J. Demirjian prefers to hire liberal arts grads for sales jobs and assign technical pros who want to break into sales to such roles as identifying and qualifying prospective clients and making appointments until they gain needed sales skills.

Steve White, a political science graduate of Merrimack College in North Andover, Mass., started his career selling copy machines in Boston, but he quit after 10 months because the field was so high-pressured. He then started managing a suburban Boston office of Agency Rent-a-Car, a Cleveland car rental firm.

While the new position was less stressful, he wasn’t getting rich. A friend who worked in computer sales told White about a position at Data General Corp., a Westborough, Mass., minicomputer company that was hiring sales people.

White interviewed and landed the position. During his four years at Data General, he learned important sales essentials. He built a successful track record that helped him land his current position as an industry sales representative in eastern Massachusetts for Dell Computer Corp., a direct-sales personal computer firm based in Round Rock, Texas.

2. Do I have sales skills?

To many high-tech employers, selling abilities are more valued than technical savvy — at least initially. Anita Damron earned a chemical engineering degree from the University of Massachusetts at Lowell. After graduating, she sold computer tables, storage cabinets and other peripherals for Wright Line, a computer-furniture company in Wooster, Mass. She also sold software to auto dealers for Automatic Data Processing Inc., a Stamford, Conn., payroll and tax-filing processing firm. In the meantime, she tried to start a business based on a skin-cream product she’d formulated. It was a brief, humbling experience.

Damron abandoned entrepreneurship and took a part-time sales position at a mall to pay bills while lining up a new opportunity. The position was at Wentworth Galleries, an art store owned at the time by Fidelity Inc., the Boston mutual-fund company. She didn’t view it as a serious career step until she began earning commission checks of $10,000 to $20,000 monthly.

It was at Wentworth that she learned how to ask for orders and to accept rejection. She realized she had flair for sales and, after Fidelity sold Wentworth, parlayed her sales success and computer background into selling chips for Intel Corp., a Santa Clara, Calif., microprocessor maker. Now she’s a sales representative in Woburn, Mass., for Lucent Technologies Inc., a Murray Hill, N.J., telecommunications equipment company.

3. Can I ask good questions and really listen to the answers?

When you’re face to face with prospective customers, the gift of gab isn’t what’s required. The best sales people ask questions and listen to the answers to assess a customer’s wants and to see how they can fill their needs. Selling isn’t telling. You’ll sell more if you listen and respond to what you hear, not trying to convince customers to buy based on your notions of their needs.

Asking questions also helps you to fit what the customer wants to the product line or service you sell. This big picture view includes:

• understanding all aspects of the product and the consequences of the purchase to your customers
• being able to explain to customers how the complicated items they purchase will fit together and solve their problems.
• offering the best terms and conditions, lining up financing and licensing and troubleshooting throughout the relationship

4. Do I have the right work style?

You must relish the challenge of having to meet specific sales goals to earn your target paycheck. In this sense, you’re working for yourself. Your pay will likely be part salary and part commission or bonus, paid monthly, quarterly or annually. If you make a $100,000 sale and your commission is, say, 10%, you’ll earn $10,000. At many firms, your income potential is unlimited. The companies are more than happy to pay you big commissions because it means you’re selling lots of products.

Many new graduates don’t realize that what they earn in sales depends on how much they can sell. Companies look very closely at the bottom line. While you’ll be given a certain period of time to reach your target sales volume, you won’t stay long if you don’t achieve it. Moreover, your goals will increase the longer you remain in the business and the larger your territory becomes.

In the high-tech industry, new sales hires may receive an added incentive — stock options. These allow you to buy a certain number of company shares at a certain price. The hope is that the price at which you may exercise your option to buy the stock will be well below the stock’s trading price when you eventually decide to sell and that you’ll reap a large gain on the difference.

Bass estimates that about half of all high-tech sales professionals nowadays receive stock options, but most companies granting options aren’t public yet, so their stock may have little value when you first receive it. If the company launches an initial public offering, employees may reap windfalls, but not every startup reaches this stage, he says.

“Seventy percent of the companies granting options are pre-IPO, so the options are relatively worthless, but they attract the hell out of people,” says Bass.

Liking people and having the gift of gab isn’t enough to succeed in this field. Neither is being an avid computer and e-mail user. To be a successful sales person, you also must be a highly motivated self-starter. You may be part of a sales team, but often the other team members’ roles involve supporting customers and the product. You’ll be working alone a lot of the time, with no one to rescue you.

Damron puts in long hours, always returns phone calls, asks for what she wants and needs, earns customers’ trust by listening carefully before responding and accepts rejection. White also gets up early, makes lots of calls, follows through on promises to customers and quickly recovers from defeat. He isn’t always comfortable with the pressure on him to sell, but he’s dealing with it.

If you’re serious about a high-tech sales career, find an employer who believes in you and will teach you everything you’ll need to be successful. Convincing a company to hire you is the first and most important sale you’ll have to make.

Consider Pete Laviola, a risk analyst with GE Capital in Cincinnati. He’d been an engineer with a marine engineering firm in Arlington, Va., for eight years. His work, although interesting, became repetitive. “I’d do a cycle of ship programs and move on,” he says.

He enjoyed working on budgets and began to explore a possible career in financial services. He’d had engineer friends who transitioned to finance-related careers and knew it could be done. So he left to pursue his M.B.A. full time on a partial scholarship to Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y.

Ginny Rehberg, a career coach and television commentator in Boston, tells professionals eyeing the M.B.A. route to career change to “go inside yourself first.” She recommends probing the obvious but often ignored question: “What is it that I really want to do with this M.B.A.?”

But adding b-school credentials to your resume isn’t enough to make a successful change. You’ll need to choose the right M.B.A. program, build strong personal connections with others through networking, identify your transferable skills and demonstrate them to employers. Here’s how some newly minted M.B.A.s made their career transitions successfully.

The Program and Your Goals

Career changers find the type of M.B.A. program they attend plays an important role in their transition. Take Donna Fernandes, a former researcher and animal curator, who wanted to become a zoo director. She has a Ph.D. in animal behavior but she needed an M.B.A. to reach her goal. Men dominate zoo management, so she chose the Simmons Graduate School of Management in Boston, an all-women’s school. She wanted a program that would present academic excellence as well as give her skills to become a “strong female leader,” she says. She’s now combining her scientific background with the practical management skills of her M.B.A. as the president of the Buffalo Zoo in Buffalo, N.Y.

Then there’s Sarah Heckscher, a former consultant in business process re-engineering and strategy consulting, who wanted to create new products and services and market and develop them, a process not traditionally part of consulting. She chose the M.B.A. program at Kellogg Graduate School at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., for its focus on entrepreneurship. “One of the places you learn from is the student body,” she says. Through networking with her classmates, she became interested in Internet services. “I talked to lots and lots of people. I asked them questions about what they do during the day, who they interact with.”

Networking

Networking is a key job-search tool, especially for career changers, and b-school is a great place for it, says Ms. Rehberg.

“Business school is one large informational interview,” says Brett Huff, director of product management for OpenAir.com, a Boston maker of software for Web-based billing, time and expense tracking.

The Kellogg M.B.A. and one-time Deloitte & Touche management consultant did his homework on prospective fields and employers in both the classroom and the halls. “You’re not really talking to strangers. You’re talking to classmates,” he says.

But the connection that secured his first position after graduation came through off-campus connections. Mr. Huff had kept in touch with a man he once met on a plane. When the man started OpenAir.com, he tapped him to join the fledgling organization. In 1999, Mr. Huff was one of eight employees and is now one of 50.

Likewise, Ms. Heckscher landed her job through her off-campus networking. She was at a wedding in Minneapolis when she got a tip about a dot-com in the San Francisco Bay area, where she’d wanted to live.

She traveled to there several times at her own expense for interviews and informational meetings. During one trip, she connected with Epicentric Inc., a provider of next-generation portals, the dot-com she heard about at the wedding, and is now its director of business development/syndication and exchange services.

When networking, tap the connections you’ve made from college, former colleagues, family and friends. Some b-school grads even send out a broadcast “Do you know anyone who…?” e-mail. Ask the contacts you meet what they read and then hit the books, says Ms. Rehberg. You’ll need to learn the language of your prospective career. Traveling, schmoozing, reading and meeting people are all part of the networking needed to make a smooth career transition, she says.

“Collect business cards,” she says. “If you’re going to be in town a few days, see if it would be possible to meet. It will create urgency.”

Tips for Making the Transition

• Identify Your Transferable Skills

Identify the skills and experience you’ve gained in your current field that are transferable to your new one. Ms. Fernandes was able to show that her scientific experience was a solid foundation for her Simmons M.B.A. For example, she knew at a zoo fund-raiser to locate a loud band away from animals, which might react adversely to the music, and thus averted a potentially costly mistake.

• Connect Your Work and Education to the New Job

You can’t just insert your M.B.A. into your old resume and expect magic. To help you identify your most marketable skills, make a T on a sheet of paper. On one side, write eight to 10 skills that you’ll need in the job you’re after. On the other side, list the skills and experience you earned in your professional experience and education. Match up the two lists. Seeing these connections in writing should help in interviews, writing cover letters and resumes and talking to networking contacts. In interviews, help your prospective employers connect the dots.

Mr. Laviola looked at the skills he used as a mechanical engineer and applied them to the financial services arena and came up with many matches. In shipbuilding, he’d had to examine the implications of particular calculations and be analytical and precise – three things a financial services employer seeks. These links between his past and his future helped him make a smooth career change.

• Don’t Look to Recruiters for Help in a Career Transition

Executive recruiters may not be able to help you make a career change. Headhunters usually place candidates within a particular industry. While some will place an executive outside of his or her field, it’s not the norm. If you’re yet unproved in a new career, your best bet is networking, on-campus recruiting and contacting companies directly. Headhunters aren’t career counselors.