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CNN Sunday Morning
Interview with Laura Lorbert, Jonathan Yavelow
Aired May 12, 2002 - 08:47 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
QUESTION: What do you think is the best job?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Well, for each person I think it's different. But for me I think it would be probably working with children, teaching.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'd probably be a sports announcer.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'd like to be a CEO of a major corporation.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A professional baseball scout.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Something where you can help people. I don't know.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A television producer.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: All right, you think you've got a good job? Well, forget it unless your a biologist? Yes, that's the number one best job, according to a new survey reported in Careerjournal.com.
Laura Lorbert is with Careerjournal and Jonathan Yavelow is, well, smile, Jonathan, you're a biologist. Congratulations.
PROF. JONATHAN YAVELOW, RIDER UNIVERSITY: Thank you.
O'BRIEN: A professor of biology at Rider University. Is it Rider University?
YAVELOW: Yes, it is.
O'BRIEN: All right, in New Jersey, at which point I usually should say what exit? But anyway, let's proceed on, shall we?
Laura, first of all, the idea for the list, where did that come from?
LAURA LORBERT, CAREERJOURNAL.COM: Well, everyone wants to find out, you know, what they should do for a living. A lot of people are looking at changing careers. College students need to figure out what they want to do once they get out of school. So, you know, we looked at this, this is the third year in a row that we've looked at this rating.
O'BRIEN: Yes. Well, why don't you give us a sense, first of all, let's go through the top five. Or let's do the bottom five first, shall we, Darcy? Can we do that first, do the bottom five?
We have been going through some of our -- let's do the worst five first and take a look at those and talk about them.
Now, some of these are jobs, you know, lumberjack, that sounds kind of romantic. Fisherman out on the sea, cowboy, iron worker and seaman. Some of those seem like the kinds of jobs you'd say, you know, like when you were six years old if you asked do you want to grow up to be, cowboy. Were you surprised, Laura, that these came out on the low end of the scale? And maybe you should tell us a little bit about the criteria.
LORBERT: Well, I'm not surprised that they come out on the low end of the scale. One of the main reasons why they would would be because of the physical demands of the job, danger, the stress involved and low income.
O'BRIEN: OK, and, you know, and it's -- as we look at the top five now -- I've got to ask you is perhaps coming together, putting together a list like this one of the best jobs there is?
LORBERT: Biologist. Well, we looking at six criteria. We're looking at job environment, physical demands, stress, income and, let's see, outlook...
O'BRIEN: And some other stuff.
LORBERT: And (UNINTELLIGIBLE), yes.
O'BRIEN: All right, Jonathan, let's go to you, because you're a biologist actuary, financial planner, computer systems analyst, accountant. These are not what you call marquis jobs. I mean, you know, these are good jobs, important jobs, but not the kinds of jobs that, you know, whatever happened to NBA star and that kind of thing?
Tell me why your job is so great.
YAVELOW: Intrinsically biology is just in such a fascinating period nowadays with all of the genomics. And wherever you go when you talk to people that you're a biologist, you get a lot of respect. The compensation is pretty good. The stress is low. My colleagues are great.
So what more could you ask for in a job?
O'BRIEN: Were you surprised, however, when you found out that biology was at the top of the list?
YAVELOW: I guess so. It's basically, but it's not the nerdy discipline that you would normally think.
O'BRIEN: Oh, we didn't say the "N" word.
YAVELOW: It really isn't.
O'BRIEN: No, no, no. Not us.
YAVELOW: Yes. Overall, doing research, trying to help people, help your students work in this fascinating biotech industry, they're all really positive and when you go home and you talk to people, it's, again, very, very highly respected.
O'BRIEN: Well, let me ask you this, though, because I mean most people have a bit of job envy. If you had -- are there any jobs that you have that you look out at and wish you had that, you know, or are you content?
YAVELOW: Well, I'm pretty content, actually. The gentleman that drove me into the studio this morning asked me that same question. And basically there's so much autonomy in most biology positions. You can really determine what you're going to do every day and the results that you get from that day drive the sort of experiments you do the next day.
And so that fact that we're not told what to do on a daily basis, I think, goes a long way for job satisfaction.
O'BRIEN: Oh, amen to that. I would love to have a job where nobody's telling me what to do, because that's all that people do. Anyway, Laura Lorbert and Jonathan Yavelow, thank you very much for sharing with us the list and congratulations on finding a job that you love so much, Jonathan. We appreciate you coming in with us and spending some time with us this morning.
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