How to Choose Between Two Careers

In 2006, Sheena Iyengar, Rachel Wells and Barry Schwartz published a finding in Psychological Science that puzzled a lot of people: graduating students who approached job hunting as maximizers — comparing every option until the very end — landed starting salaries 20% higher than their less exhaustive peers. And felt noticeably worse about their choice. The problem isn't the options. It's the strategy.

Two options, both real. You've spent several days cycling through them — listing pros, crossing out cons, rereading. Nothing settles. The standard advice — "weigh everything" — assumes you have an information gap. You don't. What's missing is the answer to an earlier question: what are you actually weighing, and in what order does it matter.

Why pros-and-cons tables fail when both options are good

A comparison table works when options differ clearly across most criteria — the winner emerges on its own. When both are genuinely good, you're comparing rows of roughly equal weight, and the result depends more on your mood when you sat down than on logic. Itamar Gati and colleagues, writing in the Journal of Counseling Psychology (1996), classified career decision difficulties into a detailed taxonomy and identified a specific category: "inconsistent information" — when someone knows enough but the data don't point anywhere because the values haven't been ranked yet. More data doesn't help at that point.

The maximizer trap: more comparison, less satisfaction

Iyengar, Wells and Schwartz tracked 137 graduating university students through their final year of job searching. Students were grouped beforehand by their decision strategy: maximizers sought the single best possible offer; satisficers aimed for something good enough. A year later, maximizers had secured starting salaries averaging 20% higher. They also reported significantly lower job satisfaction, more negative emotions during the search, and more regret after the decision.

A better objective outcome — and a worse subjective experience of it. This isn't a coincidence. The same behaviors that make maximizers effective at finding good offers are exactly what undermine their satisfaction with those offers.

Barry Schwartz laid out the mechanism in The Paradox of Choice (2004): the more options you compare, the higher your expectations for the outcome — and any gap between the ideal and the actual feels like failure. When you're choosing between two careers that both work, the answer isn't more comparison. It's a better tool.

Step one: which option fits your RIASEC profile better

John Holland's model, first published in the Journal of Counseling Psychology in 1959, describes both people and occupations using the same six interest types — Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, Conventional. Every occupation gets a three-letter code: a clinical psychologist scores SIA (Social–Investigative–Artistic); a financial analyst scores CIE (Conventional–Investigative–Enterprising). Your interest profile, measured by a validated assessment, produces the same kind of code.

Compare the codes of both career options against your profile and see where the top two letters align most closely. This isn't a gut check — it's a structural comparison. Two careers may both seem "analytical and people-oriented," but one requires a C-environment (order, procedures, precision) and the other an S-environment (understanding, supporting, guiding). Getting that wrong means spending a year in someone else's natural habitat and blaming yourself for not trying hard enough.

Step two: values as the tiebreaker

If RIASEC congruence is roughly equal across both options, values take over. But not in the form of "is autonomy important to you?" — almost everyone will say yes. The real question is a forced choice: what are you willing to trade for what? Stability for less freedom? Rapid growth for two years of uncertainty? Collaborative work for the fact that the result is never entirely yours?

Write down five career values and rank them. Then ask: which option sacrifices the less important ones? That's the one that fits better — not because it's objectively superior, but because it's more aligned with who you are.

Sources

1. Iyengar, S. S., Wells, R. E., & Schwartz, B. (2006). Doing better but feeling worse: Looking for the "best" job undermines satisfaction. Psychological Science, 17(2), 143–150. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16466422
2. Schwartz, B. (2004). The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less. Ecco/HarperCollins.
3. Gati, I., Krausz, M., & Osipow, S. H. (1996). A taxonomy of difficulties in career decision making. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 43(4), 510–526.
4. Holland, J. L. (1959). A Theory of Vocational Choice. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 6(1), 35–45.

This article is for educational purposes and does not constitute professional career counselling. Assessment results are based on the RIASEC model and are not a diagnosis or guarantee.