Accepting a job with QA out of school. It was 4 months before graduation, and I had been searching 2 months and my morale was low at having been rejected a few times. I was a very good student with many accolades so rejection was new.

As it happened, 1 month before I graduated, a job opened up in my ideal group, one I had interned in before and gotten a strong review, but by then I had already accepted the QA position (at the same company) and it was impossible to transfer. Took me nine years to transition to being a dev, studying nights and weekends.

At least in the U.S., your first job out of school tends to become your "career"