Periodically I stress afresh about finding a job. I wish so hard that there was something I WANTED to do. Right now it is almost impossible to GET a job (I can’t work summers yet, for example, and dislike working with other people’s children), but if I had a job in mind for the relatively near future, then I could start taking classes or volunteering in that field, so that I’d be more ready when the time is right. Instead I go around in circles.
One problem is that it’s hard to know what jobs even EXIST, or what those jobs INVOLVE, or what is required to FIND and ACQUIRE those jobs. Lots of people are in very satisfying jobs they would never have drawn a picture of in first grade, because “accounts receivable” wasn’t a field that sprang to mind.
So here is what I would enjoy talking about, if you would enjoy talking about it too: I’d like to know what your job INVOLVES, and what it REQUIRES (education-/skill-wise), and maybe what you personally find satisfying and unsatisfying about it, and what you’d advise someone else to do in order to ACQUIRE it. This may mean very long comments, and you just go right ahead with that: I will be hanging on your every word. And you don’t HAVE to answer all the questions, either: sometimes I feel awkward if I only want to talk about one part of what a blogger is asking about, but sometimes I have 30 seconds and limited interest, so I get it if that’s your situation here.
I’ll go first, to give an example. I worked as a pharmacy technician for a couple of years. I found it because my mom was picking up a prescription and noticed a sign taped to the counter saying that they were looking for a pharmacy technician; if I wanted that job again, I’d go ask at various pharmacy counters. I’d continue to ask periodically, because at least at my pharmacy it wasn’t the kind of job where they kept applications on file; they’d start over every time they needed someone. It can have relatively high turnover, so I would definitely take a subbing or part-time position, feeling fairly confident that it would be full-time/permanent soon.
It’s an entry-level job with on-the-job training: no education is required. Customer service skills would be good to have: a lot of the job was interacting with customers. General computer comfortability would be nice to have; I had one co-worker who found computers inexplicable, and so I liked very much to work with her, because she would handle the register/customers, and I would handle the computers/medicines.
It’s hard to estimate, but I’d say about 50% of the job was filling prescriptions (counting pills or pouring liquids from fetched bottles, bagging them up and handling the paperwork, reshelving the bottles, filing the bags in the drawer), about 40% of the job was register/customer work (ringing up purchases, dealing with complaints, taking phone calls), and about 10% of the job was miscellaneous (putting away the weekly shipments of medicines, going through the drawers to get rid of prescriptions that hadn’t been picked up, filing original copies of prescriptions in storage boxes, restocking the supply of empty bags and bottles, going through the shelves of medications to find the ones expiring in less than a year).
What I found personally unsatisfying about the job was most of the register/customer work. One problem I have is that I am smiley and polite and friendly, and so my bosses think “SHE SHOULD BE ON THE REGISTER!!”—but I SUFFER. Every snippy or unfair thing a customer says stays with me FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE. I handle it politely and then go cry in the bathroom and/or lie awake thinking about it years later. Not a good fit for me, especially considering how many people feel free to vent to clerks. I also wasn’t fond of restocking, but I don’t think any of us were.
I also found the pay unsatisfying: $8/hour, with a raise to $8.50/hour after I’d been there a year. And there wasn’t much room for advancement: I could become a certified technician easily (by taking a pass/fail test), but that came with nothing but a small pay raise and a potentially improved pecking order among the other clerks, and after that the only remaining step was a pharmacist degree, which didn’t appeal. (That’s a job of careful, diligent, meticulous data-checking with potential fatal consequences for errors. The motto is “If it’s not 100% right, it’s 100% wrong.”)
What I found very satisfying was inputting (i.e., taking the paper prescription and putting it into the computer) and filling (i.e., counting/measuring the medicine and putting it in a labeled bottle) the prescriptions. I liked the process of taking a pile of work to be done (a list of one hundred refills when I arrived in the morning, for example), and turning that into a pile of finished work. I liked bustling around rapidly, taking an armload of bottles off the shelves and pairing them up with their refill paperwork. If we lived in a more populous area or near the right kind of business, I might be able to get a job that was all filling prescriptions, no helping customers, and I think I would genuinely enjoy that. Alas. Well, the pay would still be unsatisfying.
I liked taking the doctor’s scribbles and putting them neatly into the computer; I liked learning/knowing the codes doctors use to write prescriptions. I liked when insurance would reject a prescription, and I had learned enough to be able to figure out why, and then to either fix it or at least to be able to explain to the customer what had happened and what needed to be done (as long as the customer listened and understood, rather than giving me more things to lie awake thinking about). I liked knowing brand/generic name combinations, and I liked how eventually I got familiar enough with dosages to be able to notice when one was weird (1 mg instead of .1 mg) and mention it to the pharmacist. I liked that after awhile I knew which prescriptions were antibiotics and which were painkillers and so forth.
Okay, so that’s the sort of thing I mean, and I understand if you don’t want to write so much, but I wanted to give you an idea of all the SORTS of things I’m asking about. I am PARTICULARLY interested in jobs that require one year or less of education: I’ve got a nearly-useless (because of how old it is and how I haven’t had any job experience in the field since then) college degree in business already, and it’s hard to imagine justifying the expense/time of another when we’re about to try to help five children through college and when I don’t feel strongly about any particular career. That is, if I KNEW DEEP IN MY HEART that I wanted to be something that required a degree, I guess I’d go back and get another degree. But I DON’T know that. And I do HAVE the 4-year degree, in case a job requires “a college degree in whatever.”
I was an office manager at one point and I liked that. It was all organizing and keeping track of things and knowing what was going on. It fit in well with my love of Things Being in Good Order.
Try checking out mynextmove.org. It’s from the Department of Labor and they have several ways you can search. They even have a quiz type thing where you answer questions about what you enjoy and it tells you jobs that might be suitable. There is info about the types of jobs, how much they pay, training, how to find training, and what the market is like where you live.
Ok. I did this quiz and it is completely uncanny how *those* questions were able to say literally *the exact* kind of work I have done in internships and want to work in one day. There were *no* questions about it and very few even tangentially related, and this is a pretty obscure area – developing tools to help patients with medical decision-making. WHAT. Very intriguing.
Swistle, you should try it and tell us what you get!
I was a consultant with a big consulting firm helping a big government agency use their data correctly. It was basically data entry and client service with a fancy “consultant” title. I really liked it, though it would have been awful if I hadn’t liked my coworkers. I got the job b/c my resume was on monster.com (this was in 2004) and it is a gigantic consulting firm, so they had HR people hunting for people with the resume keywords I had (geography, customer service, etc).
I’ve been staying home with kids for 9 years now, though, and I’m in the same place you are basically. I can’t work except during school unless they allow telecommuting for other times, and nothing I did would make enough money to offset the babysitting I’d need to deal with lessons and driving and picking up and so on.
Our theoretical idea right now is still way up in the air but we’re thinking about something entrepreneurial in the craft alcoholic beverage world where I’d be in charge of that business and my husband would keep working to keep us with insurance and money. But he hates his job, so I’m not sure what to do about that either.
Anyway, I’m glad you wrote this and I feel the same way about the stuff you’ve written here and I’m going to get the comments emailed to me because I need this conversation.
I am looking off and on for a new job since it is crystal clear there are multiple layoffs forthcoming and I just barely squeaked through the layoff a couple of weeks ago. My job is very specific and unique so I don’t have any helpful information to share about it – but, this post struck a chord with me because I’m finding job titles are so weird! I will find a job that has the exact same title as my current job and it is absolutely NOTHING like what I do. If I happen upon a job that matches my skills, I add that job title to a growing list of job titles that are my search criteria in the job websites. It is so frustrating. I don’t know why I’m surprised since my job is so unique so I guess I’ll attribute my surprise to being out of the job market for so long. It makes the job search so much more stressful and irritating.
I work as an admission adviser for a health science for a large state university in the south west.
About 60% of my job is to meet with potential applicants, evaluate their transcripts, set up a course plan and explain the complex admission process. We are a highly competitive program in a highly competitive field, so some of my interactions are crushing dreams that their life plan really isn’t going to work out for them.
The other 40% is handling incoming Freshman orientation in the summer, managing the social media aspect, working on large college wide projects, data collection and running reports, current student issues, scholarships and other job duties that arise. Oh and meetings, I go to a lot of meetings….
At most universities you will need a bachelor degree (I have 2) and for any upward movement higher education is required. Although I really enjoy my job and the people I work with, my end goal is pharmaceutical patent law. I am currently working on LSAT prep and will take it this summer.
I never set out to work in higher education, but I have fallen in love with watching students grow, transform, and fulfill their dreams.
I have a friend who works at a local university doing this job except she specializes in non-traditional students. They are older or have come from a background where they started a degree and didn’t finish it. She says it’s very rewarding to help them find their way. Also? After a certain number of years of service, her children are eligible to attend college at the same tier (and her college has the list of them) at employee discount rates. YEAH. Talk about a perk.
I used to work as a student assistant (i.e., I was already a college student at that university) in the Office of Admissions for an Admissions Counselor. I loved that job – the people were great, especially my immediate boss and it was my first office-type job, so it was a wonderful way to get to know what office norms are early in my college career (I started as a freshman & quit to take another student worker job when I was a senior). One thing that was true at this University, though (big state school) was that I think the Admissions staff had quotas for recruiting students. So it was more of a sales/recruitment job than a counselor job on most days.
I’ll come back later and write about my job as a governmental auditor (which I think you may be able to do with just a business degree? My degree is in accounting.). I’m very well-suited to paper pushing in a nice little cubicle. :)
I was also a pharmacy tech for 7 years in high school/college. so I enjoyed reading what you wrote about it! Would there maybe be a hospital pharmacy you could work in? (No dealing with customers.) Or maybe a nursing home? The pharmacy I worked at did all the meds for the nursing home, so most probably don’t have in-house, but maybe a big one?
I also worked in pharmacy accounting one summer (perfect combo for me!). In this particular case, it was a data-entry job that didn’t require a degree of any sort. I’m trying to remember what we did. I think the main part of the job was taking statements from insurance companies and inputting which prescriptions for which they’d reimbursed us and at what level. There was troubleshooting involved if something wasn’t quite right and we did call the companies. It was enormously helpful to know brand/generic combos and other stuff from my tech days. I found it very satisfying as a person who liked taking stacks of paper and turning them into completed tasks.
It sounds like something that would be computerized now, without as much need for humans, but I would have thought so at the time, too, and it wasn’t. This was 2006, I think. I don’t know if those jobs are still around or not!
I wonder about one of those medical billing kinds of jobs? With all the codes?
I also have a nearly-useless business degree of what I would assume is about the same vintage as yours. I had a few jobs years ago, all of which I got through a temp agency. Neither required the degree I had, but whatever. I was unmotivated. (1) In the educational loans department of a large bank. It was a customer service phone job, taking incoming calls. I had to help people figure out which loans would be best for their situation and send them the appropriate forms to fill out. Also I had to help with updating credit reports, so there was faxing of forms, knowing who to call to do what, etc. I remember there was some researching of old accounts, also, which involved microfiche (!) I feel old) I learned on the job, and that was kind of a pain, but after I figured out all the stuff, it was actually kind of satisfying to help people. It was not satisfying to get yelled at about such things as the bank not sending tax forms in a timely manner, or bank screw-ups with the loans. However, it was very different from being yelled at in person, to my face, which is something I respond to in the same way you do, I think. I had the benefit of coworkers who helped me to shake it off, and really I did enjoy sorting those problems out like they were a bunch of tangled string. Yes, it was satisfying. (2) Accounts payable for a small business. There was plenty of inputting, and loads of filing and making sure things were very, very tidy. There was also a certain amount of problem-solving. Everything needed to be very correct, but no one was going to die if I made a mistake. Downside was that the working environment was HORRIBLE, but that was likely due to the type of business it was. (3) I assisted a paralegal for a short time, and that was fun. It was in a corporate environment, for a company you’ve probably heard of. We got along really well, and the job required me to organize papers and also information on the computer, send and receive faxes, and pull many, many files for her. Much of her job was checking the catalogs that went out to make sure all descriptions and photos were legal. I don’t know, I guess it sounds boring, but I liked it.
So, maybe a temp agency? Do those exist anymore?
Temp agencies DEFINITELY exist, and are always looking for workers who are reliable and efficient.
Oh – and I had great experiences post-college working at temp agencies. I mean, some of the jobs were shit, but mostly they were exactly as described…temporary data entry, organizational (filing, etc.), or other jobs in an office that were somewhat urgent (often tied to a change in a back-end system, office move, or other reorganization) but not critical. For example, one of my temp jobs was taking a huge number of PowerPoint presentations that were randomly formatted and putting them into the corporate template. Most were high-level executive financial reports (in retrospect, I could have done some serious insider trading with that info if I was the law-breaking type…which I’m not) that people had used whatever font types, sizes, colors, etc. I would apply the correct template and then go through each page making sure that everything transferred correctly, which it never did 100%. I would also correct egregious typos. It was nit-picky, but I love that stuff & had exactly the feeling of accomplishment when everything was pretty and matchy-matchy at the end. Nowadays companies probably either a) don’t care or b) make each employee do this type of thing for themselves.
The universities I’ve worked at have also typically maintained their own temp pools, which they use to fill open positions while other people go on maternity leave, projects come up that require extra help for a couple of months, that kind of thing. I wonder if other kinds of large employers (hospitals maybe?) do this too. Its great for someone who needs summers off. I knew one woman who was an executive assistant during the year and then stopped working every summer to go on archaeological digs.
I also looked at every single application in our temp pool about a year ago, and can say that someone with strong writing skills, a college degree, and a few years of job experience would stand out as someone worth considering. (Pay will probably vary by area/state, but for us its $16 – $21 an hour).
I’ve had great experiences with temp agencies, including a job that turned into almost three years of full-time work. It was really cool, because it was in the security office of a government agency, so there was a lot of operational security stuff that I found fascinating. Part of my job was issuing ID cards, so I had to learn how to authenticate identity documents like birth certificates and marriage licenses and the like, so that I could be sure I was giving the ID to the right person, and I had to pass two fairly intrusive background checks because the job required a certain clearance level. For someone like me who finds cloak-and-dagger stuff interesting, this was a great job. Even though I was a pretty low-level employee, it still felt a little James Bond–at least to me, with my overactive imagination!
I have two jobs. The first is a driver for an auto parts store, part time. The second is a nights/weekends on-call staffing coordinator for a nursing and therapist registry company. The disparity between the two is often pleasing to me.
Delivering auto parts entails driving a pickup truck (something I’d never do in my Real Life™), picking parts off the shelves and delivering them to little and big mechanics in a small city, maybe a 10 mile radius, max. You’d be amazed at how many there are. There’s customer interaction with the same handful of mechanics over and over, and they’re happy to see you because you’re bringing what they need. It’s often dirty, but easy to see what was accomplished at the end of the day. There’s also “slinging freight,” i.e. stocking shelves, but the parts can be huge. That would be satisfying if my coworkers knew how to put things in numerical order, but I often spend time fixing a shelf. You get to be outside a lot: summer yay, winter boo. You wear jeans every day. The pay is pathetic, but it keeps my chunky butt moving all day. I lost quite a bit of weight when I started.
On-call staffing allows me to work at home, which is not the peachy-keen dream people hope for. I am so sick of telling my kid, “Just a minute, I just have to do one more thing,” or taking a phone call during storytime. On the other hand, I’m in my pajamas right now, on the clock. I think for a position like this in general, you have to be okay with there being a crisis every time the phone rings. That can be true of all receptionist jobs, but my hours are 5p-8a, so nothing really good ever happens when somebody calls then. You must be precise in your communication and cover your behind with followup emails, because nobody else is around to back you up or correct you. You must have a good team working during the day (and I do!), because there’s only so much you can do during Appropriate To Call hours . You must manage your time better than I do now.
Whoa, your description of suffering from negative interactions is EXACTLY the part of being a lawyer that’s hardest for me. I am reasonably tough, or at least appear to be, but there have been some moments of utter nastiness, stress, and/or general horribleness in my career that have stayed with me for YEARS. If I had been more self-aware at age 22, I would have realized that being EXTREMELY conflict-averse is not a quality that makes for contentment within a profession that is premised upon CONFLICT.
In terms of jobs I’ve had that fit the description of what you’re most interested in, I have experience in several: bank teller, retail salesperson, hospitality (front desk of hotel), and college admissions. I could write a TOME about each but I’ll try to be brief.
Bank teller was easy in that I got to sit most of the time in a comfortable environment and when things were slow, I could chat with my coworkers. Most of the customer interactions were benign and pleasant. It was stressful, however, in that every day you had to balance your money drawer and if it didn’t come out to the penny, you had to go back through every transaction of the day and figure out what got messed up (transposed number or whatever). I would POUR SWEAT and be near tears every time that happened, although it wasn’t often. Overall: somewhat boring but on the whole pretty pleasant.
Retail: In college I worked at a store that sold mostly outdoorsy apparel and gear. The people who worked there were cool (mostly cooler than I was) and it was kind of a relaxed environment although the boss was very particular about certain things. I spent a LOT of time folding Patagonia fleeces. It was HARD because it was often very slow and tedious and I had to STAND ALL DAY EVERY DAY. Seriously, I was ready to lay down and perish by the end of eight to ten hours of standing and I was YOUNG then. I could never do that now. The upside was deep discounts on everything they sold, but to me not worth all the STANDING.
Hospitality: This was a FUN job. I worked for my university’s conferences and seminars department, staffing the front desks of various dorms that they turned into housing for events during the summer. The main downside was that it was either VERY slow and nothing happened for hours on end, OR there were a hundred people trying to check in at the same time. But mostly the people checking in were nice and chatty, and I got to give directions and recommendations for things around town a lot. Usually I had one other person working with me, so had someone to talk to during the long slow hours or I could just read. I had to wear a uniform of a polo shirt with a logo on it, but could wear shorts and sandals if I felt like it. I would definitely recommend this kind of job.
Admissions: By far my favorite job of all. I worked in the admissions office of my college for several years (while I was a student and for a few months before I left to go to law school) giving campus tours, coordinating visits by admitted students, and doing general office stuff. I liked the mix of tasks and the chance to get out and show people around and sell the school. I liked the people-orientedness and the stress level was quite low. I had to use the phone sometimes (which I generally dislike), but even that was kind of fun because parents and students tend to be on their best behavior when a prospective college is on the line. Occasionally, I encountered whiny people being unpleasant about a tour being full or whatever, but on the whole it was pretty good. The office was a convivial atmosphere and I didn’t have to do too much photocopying (copiers as a rule hate me). I also learned a lot about the admissions process, which was fascinating. Recommend!
I work at a university in an administrative role. I’ve been working for almost ten years and have had five major different job descriptions so far, so I won’t get very much into the details of each one, but it basically all boils down to be able to understand and keep track of a lot of things that are going on, being able to work with a lot of different personalities, and wanting to help things get done. For example, for a while I did visas. I learned the policies surrounding the various types of visas, I learned to recognize all the documents that go into a visa application, I learned how to do my best to communicate with someone who speaks English, but only in a limited kind of way and I learned how to be aggressive about reminding people about deadlines.
The thing I like about working at a university is the personalities. Tenured faculty have a lot of freedom to be themselves in their jobs, which is not a good fit for people who believe there are RULES for a workplace and get very bothered when people don’t follow them, but I find very interesting. I do enjoy figuring out rules when it comes to policies and procedures though, so being part of a bureaucracy actually kind of appeals to me in that regard. There are also a lot of power dynamics going on, which I find fascinating to watch. It can be a little like politics, but maybe not as ideologically charged as national politics, where issues like war get too depressing for me to want to be immersed in them all the time. Its also personally rewarding to be working on something that seems meaningful, like getting a visa for someone who is going to do cancer research, or scheduling classes for students who are going to be the first in their families to graduate college. And I like that it subverts my expectations about people…I have a bad habit of dismissing people as stupid too easily, but when you’re working with someone who has a Ph.D. in Physics, stupid is not an easy label to attach to them no matter how frustrating they’re being. (But at the same time, you also learn that degrees are no automatic indicators of competence, which is also a useful life lesson).
The negatives are that sometimes faculty turn the freedom to be themselves into the freedom to be jerks. A lot of the work you do is high stakes for the people you’re doing it for, so you end up working with stressed out people quite a bit. And if you’re at a public university, you’re at the mercy of the state budget which is not always the greatest thing. But overall, I would recommend it.
Oh and I should also mention that at various points I’ve been involved in a fair amount of hiring, and based on that experience I would NOT call your degree nearly-useless. A lot of times “has a college degree” is just a check box that a hiring manager is going to check, or not check, and then nobody is going to ask any more questions about it after that. It’s not particularly fair, but in this case the unfairness works in your favor.
This is also another advantage/disadvantage of looking for a job at a public university. There tend to be a lot of rules about hiring for staff positions. It makes it harder to help someone you know get a job, but it works out well for those who aren’t big networkers.
I work in higher ed as well (there are a lot of us here!) and second everything Kerry says. The previous commenter mentioned a university temp pool (which we have which would be a good fit) and the check box for degree (same here) and the weird hiring process that downplays networks (yep)
Not being sure of your location higher ed does seem a good work environment to pursue.
They way you talked about the things you liked about your pharmacy tech job makes me think you might like an insurance billing job. I did that at a hospital, and it was the same satisfaction of turning a stack of work into completed work, and learning about all the billing codes, and learning how to figure out why the insurance company didn’t pay, and either getting the correct information to them, or being able to explain to the person why they didn’t pay. Also, you might enjoy working with either an appraisal district or an appraiser or whatever consultant the appraisal districts in your area use to make new appraisals on property, input all that into the computer system, possibly even draw the parcels out, and keep that updates as new appraisals are made. I do lots of GIS (map drawing) type work, and I have that same satisfaction of something being complete at the end of the day. Also, it requires a lot of attention to detail, but nobody is going to die if you draw it wrong. Lots of energy companies and city/new development planning type people use this kind of product too. There would be a short training period where you learned to use the mapping program, and there are certifications you can get, but they can be gotten while you are working. (ArcGIS made by ESRI is the program I use. ESRI has a youtube channel if you are interested in seeing how it works.)
I’m an attorney and you might want to consider paralegal jobs. It’s hard to describe because there is a wide range of things that paralegals can do. If you look at job descriptions online, you should be able to get an idea. In my state, paralegals are not required to have any degree or be licensed, but there are optional paralegal certificate programs that take less than one year and might help you get a job.
I’m an accountant for a publicly traded company. I, personally, am a CPA, which is not required for my specific (non-management) position, but everyone at a manager level in my department IS a CPA, so it’s required for advancement, and I was hired with that in mind. To be a CPA in CA you have to have a bachelor’s degree and the appropriate number of college business and accounting courses. The most common way to achieve these two goals is to have a degree in finance/business/accounting, although I have a degree in linguistics, and went on to get my accounting units outside of bachelor’s degree once I decided I wanted my CPA. That is doable. I did it through a 1 year masters program, but there are also weekend university extension courses to achieve the same goal.
Practically speaking, I believe one of the most important accountant skills is Excel.
So my job. Wildly guessing with percentages. I would say about 35% of what I do is day to day general ledger type stuff. Preparing journal entries, reconciling accounts. This is satisfying in that I personally enjoy things like number puzzles and putting all the pieces together and having it all come out right. Other people at about my level are much closer to 100% on these tasks, but I have a bit of a specialized position.
Then I would say 30% is miscellaneous research projects and interacting with our auditors. I do a lot of benchmarking against other companies, where I go out and read their financial statements and compare what they are saying about X to what I am saying about X. Or research into revenues of other companies in similar lines of business. Or I did a really cool research project where I tracked our sales and key weather data in some of our principle markets, to quantify what the harsh winters are actually doing to our sales.
30% of my job currently is implementing our new financial reporting system. I’m the project lead.
And then 15% is clerical. I added up to over 100% but I’ve been working a lot, so whatever.
Satisfying: Research projects, being in charge of Important Things (financial systems upgrade), I work with great managers who always further their direct reports and give everyone credit for their work, etc. I also have a job where I feel Very Valued by the people work with. Because I’m salaried (combined with work environment), I am able to work from home if my son is sick, schedule appts as needed, stuff like that. I have a lot of autonomy, which I enjoy.
Unsatisfying: As a project manager, tracking down other people who aren’t doing the things they said they would do, and trying to get them to do it. Conference calls. Filing. There are a couple unpleasant people, which is of course typical. I feel like people outside finance have no idea what we do and also think we are worthless.
Overall I find my job very satisfying. I don’t think you have to be good at math to be an accountant, but I do think you have to be very logical/methodical in certain areas.
I haven’t even finished reading your comment but you, a CPA, listing percentages that didn’t add to 100 and “whatever”ing it totally cracked me up. I think you’ve found the sweet spot between anal bean-counter and oh who cares if the ledgers balance. :-)
I’ll take you at your word that you want to hear about all jobs, because mine is kind of weird. I’m one of the owners of our family business — we are a laboratory that does oil analysis. Like, the oil in your car. Since I’m one of the owners I do all kinds of things (in fact I should be working on payroll right now instead of commenting on your blog), but the main job we hire for is for analysts. Most people think you have to know a lot about engines or chemistry or oil to do this job, but in reality all you need to do is be able to write. Most people who can write don’t know much about oil or engines, so we hire good writers and teach the rest.
We recently had the wife of one of our lab guys start working for us building kits and peeling labels off the bottles we receive from our customers. It’s obviously a low-skill job but I do need people who are dependable and reasonably intelligent since there’s mailing and some thinking involved. I always thought the kit-building job would be a good one for someone in exactly your position because it’s part-time and has flexible hours. Basically I don’t care when my kit builders work, as long as we stay caught up. This is the kind of job that we don’t really advertise for, so I don’t have any advice on how to get something like this, except keep your ears open for weird little jobs you can slide into that people you know might know of. Good luck! I hope you find something that’s perfect!
How timely! I juuuust got a job working in the file room at a mental health clinic. I never see clients and spend all day working with paper printouts and file folders. It also has the very visual aspect of taking a huge stack of to-dos and turning them into a pile of completed work.
I have a college degree but this is unskilled work and the pay reflects that. HOWEVER. They are so in need of someone in the file room that I am allowed to make up my own hours (can come in whenever I want) AND they let me bring my 9 month old to work! I don’t have to try to find or pay for infant childcare! I was a little skeptical that I could get stuff done with a baby in tow, but I just put her in a carrier and get on with it.
My actual degree-related job is web development, which I loved but am feeling a little burnt out on, and I live in a super small town that doesn’t offer much in the way of employment opportunities. So the file room it is!
And I wonder if you might like medical billing. I used to do this. It seems like a job with all the things you liked about your pharmacy job, and none of the things you disliked?
I’m talking about where you get the patient records and find the appropriate insurance billing code and send that information to the insurance company to bill them, which when I did it was a whole separate job from sending bills to patients and having to deal with them.
My current job wouldn’t count for your situation (too much stupid education, too much conflict), but about 8 years ago I was an admin person for a few doctors/clinics in a mental health hospital. I requested files, requested blood work, updated computerized information, booked clinic appointments, etc. It was very satisfying. There was a lot of getting stuff in order, and making sure things were properly lined up. Every day had a set number of tasks, and if I was done early I’d just read.
I got the job through a temp agency, and it paid about $10-$12 an hour. I had a university degree, but in no way was that necessary for the job (but probably helped against other candidates). They loved the fact that I was competent, and I rarely had to interact with the public (mostly the doctors booked their own appointments, or the people were already inpatients so the ward nurses were doing that). If I hadn’t been going off to grad school I hope I might have been able to convince them to buy out my contract with the temp agency and get in as a regular (probably unionized) employee at a much better wage.
In general, from friends’ experiences and my own, hospitals seem to have a lot of admin/reception/filing/other jobs that pay surprisingly well and can be perfect for someone who likes that work. Of course, you have to find a way in (knowing someone always helps). Also, temp agencies are a good way to get some experience and test out jobs if you live in an area that is big enough to have a variety of companies/jobs.
I’m not sure how helpful this will be as I got my job through sheer nepotism. After my academic career (I have a Phd in literature) failed to launch, and after a few years of floundering around not being able to figure out what to do, I started working for my sister who’s a freelance writer in the field of natural foods, supplements, and nutrition. Her business employs her full-time and me part-time.
We mainly write marketing materials, either consumer-oriented or B2B. I write things like brochures, label copy, web copy, blog posts and social media content for companies, materials for salespeople, summaries of scientific studies companies use to making formulation decisions, etc.
I like that I can do it from home and that the hours are pretty flexible. I like my sister and communicating with her frequently (if remotely, we live on opposite sides of the country). I like reading scientific studies and figuring out how to put them into plain English. Often though, I miss academia and teaching and everything I thought was my calling. Sometimes it can get depressing. Other times I’m just glad to be able to supplement the family income with something I’m reasonably good at and that leaves me available for the kids after school.
Going with what’s familiar to me. Have you thought about looking at a university or college campus near you? There are usually lots of 9 month academic-year positions there, so even if you wanted to begin something right now you could be free in the summer and possibly on winter holiday and spring break. It strikes me that they might have, for example, an opening in the student health center that might tap into your previous pharmacy experience, in addition to positions that would tap into your organizational skills.
Four years of my pharmacy tech experience were in a campus health center! I loved it. There was quite a lot of interaction with customers (students), but they’re generally good customers. A big plus is that they didn’t pay with cash/check, etc. The bill went right onto their university bill, so they were less likely to get worked up over cost, especially if their parents paid their u-bill. (I’m trying to remember if sometimes people paid other ways?? There were a LOT of birth control prescriptions, as you’d expect, and some STD stuff so I’m sure some of them didn’t want parents asking what the charge was.)
Most of the employees worked year-round, but there was more flexibility in the summer and I think they’d welcome 9-month positions. It was hard for the year-rounders to stay busy in the summer.
My children are now both in school full-time so it was time to get back to work, yay. The job I now have was chosen purely because of the hours – 10am – 2:45pm on Mondays and Fridays, which means I can still do the school run, and it’s not too much to find cover for in the holidays. It’s cleaning at a holiday village, and those are their changeover days, so they have a small army of people (mainly women with children in school) who work just those hours.
Pros are the hours, definitely, and everyone is very understanding about needing to leave on time etc. If there’s one thing I can do after six years as a SAHM it’s clean up after other people, the work certainly isn’t difficult. There is zero chance of me having to talk on the telephone and guest interactions are minimal. And I have very little responsibility – nearly every problem is just passed to my supervisor – which is quite restful. There is no way to take the work home, either, I work my hours and that’s it. And there’s definitely something satisfying about taking a messy/dirty cabin and making everything clean and neat ready for someone’s holiday. And we get various perks such as being able to use the facilities (very nice swimming pool and spa etc) on a certain number of days.
Cons are that it is hard physical work, on your feet all day, and there isn’t a lot of time so you have to keep moving. And the money is only a smidge over minimum wage. And thinking ‘I went to university for this’, ha. Once the girls are older and more independent I would like to find a nice office job somewhere. But this works well for now.
Ooooh, I love this post times 1,000!!!
Ok, wtihout getting into too many specifics, I work for my state’s commission on higher education, which is basically the school district/governing board for the public/state funded colleges and universities. I work in the outreach department and we work primarily with students in K-16, trying to get them and their parents the right information at the right time about college prepraration, whether that is academic prep, both in younger grades and high school, financial prep (college savings, FAFSA completion, scholarships), and “ok, college…now what!?” information on how and when to apply, enroll, and start college. And then we also have programs that support students in actually getting OUT of college with a degree in a reasonable amount of time (4-5 years, not 13, for a bachelor’s degree).
So, I manage one of the many programs in my department, it’s my state’s version of a national program called the American College Application Campaign, and the idea is that during 1 or 2 dedicated weeks in November, every senior at participating high schools has the opportunity to fill out and submit at least one viable college application DURING THE SCHOOL DAY. So, typically, entire English or History classes are brought to the library or computer lab, there are counselors, parent volunteers, and reps from colleges and universities there to help them answer the questions on the applications, sometimes there is money available to help pay the college application fees (usually money is from the local school districts or businesses), and students can get on track for filling out a FAFSA application (my state has the LOWEST in the nation of FAFSA completion, we are trying to change that). In 2013 we joined this national program with 8 high schools in 3 districts, in 2014 we had 49 high schools in 15 districts, and for 2015 we will have more than 100 high schools!! My job is to coordinate and train the counselors and parents and principals at each school (which involves lots of preparation, a 100+ page guide with examples and templates, and many many phone calls and webinars and in-person trainings). I coordinate with the college/univeresity people to make sure they know what is happening where, and I coordinate the media for the whole shebang.
Requirements: I have a BS degree in Economics…which isn’t super useful but a 4-year degree is required to work for my company. Mostly, I need massive organization skills, project management skills, and lots of patience when trying to deal with public ed and piles of red tape and “we’ve never done this before…so why do it now?” (Because it’s low-cost and high result and it’s THE BEST IDEA EVER!!!)
Anyway, I have LOVED talking to students, helping them fill out applications, and seeing them light up with the idea of “oh, I *can* go to college.” I personally found it a major win when we had so many students applying to the local community college that we crashed their server (they knew it could happen, and chose to do nothing in advance. Not my fault.). Seeing the huge increase in numbers of students who are on the right path for a higher education–particularly students who may not otherwise have thought college was a viable option for them–gives me warm fuzzies and goosebumps all at the same time. Hearing college presidents, the governor, and the major news anchors talking about how this program is changing the landscape of higher ed in my state makes me so, so grateful for the incredible people I work with on a state and national level, and so thrilled that so many principals and counselors have caught the vision and are willing to try and implement a change.
Yes. I love my job. Love, love, love my job.
xox
Pros: huge satisfaction; doing a good things and making permanent improvements for thousands of students; I work for the state, ergo my benefits kick ass. Pretty easy schedule for 8 months of the year.
Cons: I work for the public. The public often-times sucks. I work in education, pay is not super awesome. CRAZY hours and travel in October/November.
xox
I wonder if you’d like something to do with data entry or analysis?
I work in the marketing department of a privately owned but global company, and my title is Marketing Content Coordinator. I’ve been with the company 6 years and the position is very unique, and has evolved since I got here, but it fits my particular skill set very well and the pay is quite good. I am responsible for the content on the US version of our company’s website; sometimes this means I get an idea for an article (creativity), write it (some journalism skills required), and then put it into our website’s WYSIWYG editor. (having blog experience actually helps with this responsibility). Other times I just “translate” a story that the company provides me, which, because my country speaks English, just means copy/paste and tweak the language (very satisfying). Sometimes it involves choosing stock photography to go with articles. Or assigning articles to our freelance writers, then editing them. I also have to write press releases, which I don’t particularly like, but can do. And I manage our social media, which I thought would be fun, but is actually rather a pain for my particular company, not becuase we get complaints or anything, but because we don’t have any budget to do the cool things like apps or whatever, and it feels fruitless sometimes when we don’t get any traction from all the work we put into posting things online.
There is also some SEO/analytics that I get to do, and enjoy. I don’t enjoy Adwords so much, but that’s because our budget for that is laughable.
The things I don’t like are the customer-service things, like when people forget a password or don’t know how to use our website. And the fact that our company is always full of drama. I also get bored/depressed sometimes being in a cubicle 8 hours a day. Thankfully they do let me use a laptop at home on snow days like today or sick-kids days, but it’s not a regular thing. They also let me work some flex-time which helps with pickups and homework and activities.
i can’t wait to go back and read the comments in detail!
I attempted to go back to get my masters a few years ago in social work. I had fallen into a job in social work before kids, and then moved, and needed a degree to get anything like the position I had had before. I found that (for me) going back to school while pregnant / having a newborn was miserable and so I quit.
in college I worked very part time at the law school library. I had no qualifications. I worked for the guy who ordered new books and received books from publishers. I did a lot of searching for book records by ISBN numbers and the thrill of finding the correct record was great! Lots of computer work and sitting, very little customer interaction.
Something like that sounds extremely pleasing right now since no one can argue with me.
And since I had to lock myself in the bathroom to even type this much, I will close here and hopefully come back later.
Your comments made me think of medical billing as well. I used to be a recruiter at a temporary staffing company and at the time (2004 – 2006) this was a high demand position and it was difficult to find good (wrt soft skills) and qualified candidates for these positions. The training is fairly quick.
To recap a bit about what you are looking for in a job: You are fairly flexible about work conditions (meaning you are not so picky about salary, needing insurance, etc). You seem interested in dabbling/trying new things. Your goal is to build a bit of work experience after an absence from the job market. You NEED flexibility for things like summer vacation. I’d recommend enrolling with a temporary staffing firm. These firms vary by location. It sounds like you would want to aim for one that focuses on administrative type of work, since staffing firms specialize in the jobs they place. Some firms only place legal jobs or IT folks or people with security clearances or manual labor jobs. I mention this because a little bit of up-front research will save you a lot of frustration down the line. Nothing stinks more than getting dressed for an interview, perhaps subjecting yourself to testing (grammar, punctuation, etc), and then realizing the company has ZERO jobs that you are interested in taking. A lot of these company’s have online application methods. I know that this is going to make you nervous, but given your background, I’d recommend calling the firm and talking to the branch manager/recruiter instead of submitting paperwork online. I’m saying this because it would be easier to explain your desires for a job and your gap in employment over the phone. As a recruiter, I’d review a person’s resume in about a minute. A recruiter is legally prohibited to ask if you have children and how childcare affects the types of jobs you are seeking. Once you bring it up as a point of discussion, then the employer can chat about it. Bottom line, I was busy as a recruiter. I didn’t have time to do detective work. In hindsight, I probably was too quick to delete resumes from people that were exiting a SAHM phase. Bring it up directly. Explain the desire for dabbling. Know what hours work for your family. You are open to taking truly temporary jobs that last a short while and see how you like it. Lots of times, temp work turns into a permanent position, if it is a good fit.
Well, the thing that strikes me is the “must have summers off” part….that can be tricky anywhere but a school environment. Part of the reason I like my job (school librarian) is indeed the schedule – and how I am in synch with my daughters schedule. I do not have to do the camp shuffle every summer so hoorah!
I know you said you don’t like working with other people’s kids but there might some opportunities in schools or school libraries that don’t do as much of that – for example cataloging or even a Library Assistant, doing cataloging, the paperwork, putting away books. Nice methodical stuff that requires attention to detail.
Librarian itself requires a Masters Degree – but Library Assistant doesn’t. Admin help in a school maybe? In an office?
As you know, I write for a website–part time now with plans to be full time when the kids are all in school. This was indeed one of those odd, gradual online happenings that I could never recommend as a career path.
However! You yourself have been hired to write columns online, you are a great writer, and you have interests in topics people like to read about: baby names, parenting, sociological issues, etc. You may not want to mix work and your online life, but it’s a thought.
Another thought, prompted by your volunteering at school: a lot of moms I know become aides in our school district once their kids are all in school. Same hours as the kids, no work to complete in the evenings.
This is FASCINATING!!
Half of my job is administering a system called salesforce.com, which is a software program used by a crap-ton of businesses to manage customer data & sales pipeline and info (and about 18235172365 more things depending on how much a company wants to leverage it).
I totally fell into this profession (I have a French degree, which doesn’t exactly scream “software admin”) but I LOVE it. This system supports the sales team, as well as virtually every other dept in our org, so I’m creating & managing a system that everyone needs and uses. I get to interact with a huge amount of people across the company, but zero customers (coworkers who need you = nicer than customers). I love that my job is different every day, because I’m solving a new problem or making someone’s life a little better / easier / more efficient in a different way each time I get a question or a request. I love that what I do impacts the business so obviously.
I had NO computer, coding, software etc skills aside from Microsoft Office & general stuff like that prior to working in SFDC (short for salesforce dot com, am nerd) but SFDC offers training courses & certifications. The first training is not cheap, it’s about $2k, but it’s a week long course and then you have this skill that you can use forever. The list of companies who use SFDC is nearly endless, and every single one of them needs an admin. You can easily freelance as a SFDC admin because the job can be done remotely and often during whatever hours work for you. If I have babies and ever quit this job/the other half of my profession in sales ops, I totally plan to freelance as an SFDC consultant to bring in cash. It’s flexible, in high demand, and is applicable across all industries.
(I have more to say about this if it sounds at all intriguing.. :) )
Good luck in your search!!
Alice! My degree is also in French, which doesn’t scream ‘website manager’! LOL
I’m an office manager. I do a lot of the accounting and HR related tasks for my current company. Essentially, if the company spends money, it has to go through me. We’re big enough that I have someone else do the billing, mail runs, and answering the phones. I hate the phones. They’re the worst part- actually PEOPLE are the worst part of my job. Give me a stack of invoices to code, budgets to forecast, new hire paperwork to complete, etc, and I’m perfectly content. Once actual people get involved, I get frustrated. I work 38-40 hours a week. I’m salaried. I work in a field where I can wear jeans to work every day. I do have a degree in accounting. It basically opens doors for me. I never bothered to follow through with getting my CPA (at the college I went to, 90% of all Accounting majors went to work for the Big Four, I was an anomaly), and now with the current rules, I’d need to go back to school to do so. My company is flexible, so if I have a sick kid, I can leave to get them, or stay home with them. That’s becoming less of a problem as the kids get older- my baby is 8 years old.
I have a job that most no one wants. I don’t want to post it publicly. It requires a bachelor’s and prefers social work background. It involves a lot of people being angry…seeing very sad situations….and copious amounts of typing.
What I like about my job is that I’m good at it and I do feel I make a difference.
I found it by applying on my states employment register, finding out I qualified, and the rest is history.
Good luck!
I work for the state health department. Mine at least wants you to have a specific degree in the kind of science you’ll be working in. There are admin jobs here, and if that appeals to you, definitely check your state (and county) website for what they have. There is probably a bigger choice when you live in the state capital, though.
Two other things I wonder if you’d find interesting are real estate, and x-ray technician. Real estate typically involves a 6-week course and passing a test, while x-ray is about a year of training. I think both jobs would have the kind of details that you do like. I don’t recommend funeral home work, though, unless you just look amazing in black. To even be a hearse driver you have to complete mortuary school.
I do look smashing in black. Really. But I don’t think that’s enough of an incentive to live through mortuary school.
Also, I wear so much black and grey that I have joked that if i made a career change, it should be to funeral director because I have the wardrobe. But now I know better!
Oh, I love this thread and I can’t wait to sit down tonight and read through all of the comments. I work in an insurance office for a national insurance company that has a commercial every 30 seconds during sporting events. I have a bachelor’s degree in psychology, but I have worked in several offices where the employees didn’t have bachelor’s degrees at all. I had to be licensed in four different lines of insurance, which I have to do continuing education to keep, and I took them after I was hired by an agent. It was a little stressful because it involved a great deal of studying and then I had to pass the exams at a Pearson Testing place in a big city, but thankfully I passed them the first time I tried, and my boss paid for the licensing exam. I know other people who have had to pay for it themselves, or who have failed the test and had to take it again. I took three weeks to study and take the exams, but I know other people who have studied for months before the exam was scheduled.
I do customer service and sales, which means that I have to talk to customers, figure out what they want insured and how, and work up a quote for the insurance, answer questions about the policy, and then hopefully make the sale. I also answer the phones, take payments, figure out underwriting issues, do some filing and faxing and troubleshooting, and deal with unhappy customers as well as happy, chatty ones. There are a lot of elderly people who come in to make a payment and want to stay and chat because they are lonely. There are also a lot of rude people. If people are angry because of a mistake that I made, I do feel terrible about it and think about it at night. However, most people are rude or angry because of things that are not my fault, like if their insurance cancels for lack of payment, or their rate goes up because their teenager has an accident…a teenager that they failed to disclose to us for two years (this happens a lot). I find that I am very adept at dealing with that in a calm and assertive way, and I am very proud of myself when I do. One perk is that after they leave, my coworkers and I will gossip about how unreasonable and ridiculous they were, which makes me feel better. Also, my boss does not want her staffers dealing with abusive customers, so if someone gets particularly ugly, I pass them right along to her. The sales side I am not so comfortable with, because there is the pressure to succeed, and everything is tracked numerically, and I don’t mind selling, but I do mind feeling the Pressure to Sell.
The pay is not great, but better than some jobs. Most offices pay either $10-14/hour plus commission, or if you are salaried it is usually $22-27K a year plus commission. So it varies depending on how many new insurance policies you write. My hours are 8-5, but I have coworkers who work part time and do just mornings or just afternoons. My biggest problem with the job is the schedule, which was hard for the family to adjust to after I was a SAHM for so long. I feel like I am letting the team down because I have to miss work for my kids so much, but at my current office it’s not a big deal. At my old office, I felt like it was more hostile toward my ‘mom’ role.
Honestly I am hoping to quit and go back to school to get my master’s in counseling, and I would love to see a description like this for a school counselor or a therapist, just to make sure.
I spent some time years ago working as a shelver in a library, and I really enjoyed it. You would have book trucks (carts) full of books that have been returned and it’s your task to shelve them. Skills required – the ability to alphabetize, use the Dewey Decimal System, and read. Our local library lets shelvers wear headphones while they work. I enjoyed the occasional question from patrons (especially children) that you could answer quickly (“DVDs are to your right, past the bathroom”) but mostly you’d hand off any difficult questions (“Can you recommend a book about diversity for MLK Day?”) to the librarians. You have the ability to work in I would suggest checking the local library’s website or asking when you visit. It may help if you’re a face that the librarians know. No real education required (I started in high school), although the pay reflects that (often $8-9/hour). Libraries often have other positions, assisting with the children’s center, helping out in the summer, etc. that might be a good fit as well, although more customer-facing (usually biggest complaints are fines and the library not having the book a kid needs for a project).
My job for the past 14+ years is a technical writer & project manager for a Very Large Computer Company. It’s totally a golden handcuff job because I get paid really well, I like what I do (more project management/team lead stuff now than actual technical writing), I like the people I work with, and I work at home 99% of the time, but there have been a lot of layoffs in the past 2 years so I have a low-level feeling of DOOM at certain times of the year. I have been doing a tiny bit of job searching, applying through online systems for a few jobs, but nothing has resulted in interviews. Most jobs would involve far less flexibility (I’d have to be in an office every day, my kids would have to go to before/after school care) & would pay me far less.
On a day to day basis, I do a lot of project planning (timeline, budgets, milestones, etc), status reporting (managers, other team leads), issue fire-fighting (this customer has a problem, is part of their problem the instructions they were following? What can we do about it?), and day-to-day managing of my team of writers. I did got to school for technical communication, with a Bachelor of Science degree, so I’m actually doing exactly what I trained to do (go figure).
This is fascinating. I will come back and read the rest of the comments tonight.
It made me think, how are you with potentially gross things? A couple of my friends work as pathology lab techs – they prep tissue samples. They both have small kids and the jobs (they don’t work at the same place) have a lot of flexibility around scheduling and part-time hours. I can ask them more if you are interested. They both love it.
Ooo, interesting question! I’m not sure! I’d definitely be fine with other people’s blood. I used to work in the infant room of a daycare, where there were a fair number of barf/diaper issues, and I was okay with that—but sometimes things are easier when it’s babies.
I’ll see what info I can get from them. There may be related jobs, as well, that don’t actually require looking at tumors. :)
Use your writing talents!!! Don’t take a job that doesn’t utilize those skills. Do you like being at home, yet want to get paid? Get a writing job where you can work from home (maybe go to the occasional conference to vary the routine). For instance, I have a friend who writes for Answers.com. and finds it works very well for her lifestyle and her family’s needs.
This. Swistle, you’re gifted. You’re a really amazing writer.
I also know someone who is now writing quick summaries of hotels for Google… look into Google based copy writing jobs maybe? It’s freelance, you can do it from home, it’s kind of boring, pretty low pay, but it would be a good start!
I actually went to the bathroom and got myself a snack so I could settle into answering this question and then reading all the other answers. You can expect a long response from me…
I have three jobs that involved income, and they each satisfy something that would be lacking if I were to give one or two up:
1) I work at a desk full-time writing/editing/analysing and reporting on policy in a niche area (it’s operational policy and governance relating to real property). This job gives me a good salary, respect from and interaction with a lot of people I quite like, great benefits, job security, slightly flexible working hours (in the sense I can vary the times I arrive and depart at by a couple of hours each day as needed, and make up time when I’ve got something that requires me to short a day), and the opportunity to use my mind. I love writing and editing and finding the perfect phrase. I also have great management who let me take a month off unpaid every summer without batting an eye. The drawbacks include the fact that my subject area isn’t well aligned with my personal interests and values or education (I have an M.Sc. in botany, and real property policy is not exactly contributing to saving the world), I would prefer to not be immobile at a desk for quite so many hours of the day, and it doesn’t require much in the way of imagination or creativity.
2) I teach a class at a gym 2+ times a week. This supplements my income slightly, but the best things about it are I get to be active and maintain an acceptable level of physical fitness and it commits me to doing so no matter what else is going on in my life, plus I get to draw on my knowledge, experience and expertise to help others do the same (I love teaching). The drawbacks are that I would not be able to teach enough classes to make a living at this (even if I wanted to exercise for many hours each day which, at 42, I do not), and when I do get people in my class who are critical – even if it’s just a remark that I had the music too loud that day – I remember it FOREVER and kind of cringe every time I think of it.
3) I shoot, process and sell photography, mostly of the fine art variety. This is my creative outlet, and I enjoy interacting with my online community of female photographers and the few I’ve met in person as well. I also like the meticulous bookeeping aspect once the numbers have all been located and assembled, though I do not like having to find all the numbers to put them into my spreadsheets in the first place as paper coming into the house is the bane of my existence, and some things are electronic and some are paper and it’s a huge effort to corral it all. But I get a very satisfied feeling when my numbers are all totted up and my taxes are done. I do not really make much in the way of money at this business, but I like that I can write off expenses I would have incurred anyway had I kept this merely as a hobby. I also like thinking I could use this business as a jumping-off point to actually making money, had I more time to devote to it (say, if I lost/quit my main office job). I don’t do portraits very often except by personal referral, but I believe I could do more (I enjoy photographing babies and making parents sooo happy!), and I certainly could expand my food/product photography.
One thing I don’t get to do in any of my jobs is let my inner science geek out very often.
As for non-paying roles: I love my kids and having them around and watching them grow and develop. I love taking time off to spend with them in our pool in the summer. I am however, vaguely surprised that this has not translated into enjoying other children more. I don’t like chaos, noise, unpredictability, and dirt (though I’m okay with clutter). I could never run a daycare or be a teacher for small children. I would also probably not be a great nurse.
My dream jobs: architect, CSI (the glamourized TV version) or Mythbuster. I might also enjoy teaching at the college or university level.
Oh shoot, I forgot the acquiring: my desk job I came to very circuitously – I was part of a program that hired recent graduates with Master’s degrees (any and all fields). The program put you through a bunch of steps and tests, and if you passed them all you got matched with a department and did a series of jobs with that department. This is where I ended up at the end of the program. My job would normally require a university degree in economics or statistics, or any degree plus sufficient experience in my field, as well as experience in doing lower levels of what I do (producing briefing materials, providing advice to senior management, etc.). To be hired from a pack of people with those qualifications though, someone would also need very high professional writing and analytical skills for my particular position.
To be hired for the gym job, one would need to pass an audition to be selected for training in the certification the class needs (BodyPump, in my case) , and most people with a passion for the program and decent technique and timing can do that.
Selling photography requires a good eye, some specialty software, some internet savvy, networking skills, willingness to take the time and effort to hone your craft, meticulous tracking of numbers, and a bit of luck. Putting out a product people are willing to pay for is key, but would be useless if you couldn’t find a way to reach your target market and have a way for them to buy it.
I work at a community college (and worked at a 4 year college before that). You may like working with college students as they are more likely to do what they are told – but some whine ;)
Both of my previous jobs required a Masters but I think you may like working in the college atmosphere. Its rewarding and it feels like you are breathing in learning by going to work. You would need to steer clear of offices such as financial aid as people get FEISTY there. Maybe working in a Writing Center or working as a Professional Tutor? You pretty much choose your own hours and can elect to take summers off as that semester is usually very slow.
As far as pay, we pay our professional tutors starting at 14.25 for Bachelor’s degree. BUT when the state employees get raises the tutors don’t always follow in suit. So…there is that.
I am an accountant for a large company, and I’m guessing it is NOT what you are looking for. However, I can’t help but wonder if you are exploring the writing route? You are such a talented writer and could make anything interesting. I have no idea how bloggers and online writers go about making money…but if anyone is making money for writing, it should be you!
I’m a producer for reality tv. My job involves watching raw footage and shaping it to the story we want to tell, writing and conducting interviews with the talent, working with editors on the cut, deciphering notes from the network, and digging for moments of gold. I have a Masters degree in film production, but you definitely don’t need one for this job, just a good sense of story and a willingness to be at work for LONG hours. The pay is on the high end for my position. To get started, a lot of people do what’s called “logging” where they watch raw footage and write out what happens so that producers can find the moments more easily among the hundreds of hours of footage. Those positions are not paid as well, but are very easy to come by if you aren’t a complete weirdo or a moron. I got started by working in documentary and then moved to development/assistant work at a reality tv company and was plucked from there by an executive producer because she didn’t want me languishing behind a desk answering phones and she thought I was smart and funny. (I am! and I am forever thankful that she saw that in me.) The best part about TV is if you don’t want to work in the summer, you just don’t take a job that goes in the summer! The worst part about working in TV is that you pretty much have to live in Los Angeles, but there are companies in Atlanta, Nashville, Seattle, Chicago and of course, New York. I love my job, the only thing I really don’t love about it are the intensive hours.
I’m going to leave a separate comment about my job but I wanted to say first, that a friend of mine is a pharmacist by day and works overnights a couple times a month in a warehouse that fills mail order prescriptions. She reads prescriptions and counts and fills all night and just loves it. Anyway, what you said about loving that part of the work reminded me. Not that it’s super helpful to you, but I like to tell you things.
As someone who has read your entire archives (and laughed out loud way too much along the way),I must suggest that you write for something or somebody. You really are an exceptionally good writer. Also, if you charged $10 (or whatever) over at your baby name blog, people would pay it. I am a former teacher turned SAHM, who hopes to never have to work again, so I am no help in that regard. :)
Really enjoyed reading the responses on this topic.
I am currently a freelance artist. I sell original drawings, prints, take commissions, do public art projects and occasionally teach college art classes. It is the job that I drew as a child and I am so grateful and lucky to get to do what I love all the time. The pay at this point is steady with room to grow. I like being totally in charge of my business. How well it does or doesn’t do, depends on me. The downside is that there is very little time off. It’s a competitive environment and in addition to making my work I have to promote it. My job also involves a lot of time alone, which fortunately I like, but sometimes it’s lonely. I have a master’s degree in Art and that helps a lot but isn’t required except to teach college. A couple of people mentioned that you should think about freelance writing and obviously that is something you are good at. However, it sounds like you want to be around people and have co-workers.
Before I was a full time artist, I was an office manager in a large museum. I worked in a service department within the museum so although my job involved customer service, it was to other staff members and mostly people were well behaved. The pay was okay. I had really good benefits though. I got thousands of dollars in dental work done when I worked there. I got the job by cold calling my resume and it actually said on their website not to do that. They hired me without ever advertising the job.
One of my favorite jobs was reading children’s test responses for the state of Texas. It was very entertaining, paid well and was part time. The other one was working for a mortgage company plotting homes onto flood maps to see whether people needed flood insurance. I loved looking at the maps, doing the exacting research and having a specific territory I worked with. That job paid well too and there was a bonus system in place that was lucrative. Both of these jobs I got through friends and they both required a college degree in any major.
When I had a day job, I liked working with other people but not with the general public and I enjoy doing research and applying the research to reach a conclusion. I do a lot of this in my current job as an artist too.
I am in university research administration (specifically, proposals), which is not a field that many people aspire to enter…probably because unless you’re an academic researcher there’s no real reason to know it is there. I fell into it basically by happenstance – and I’ll admit that I didn’t really have a clue what I was getting into when I went for the job interview – but it works for me. I enjoy the variety and deadline-driven nature of proposal work. Now I manage a team of proposal staff rather than doing them myself, so that part kind of sucks. Turns out I like the work better than supervising people. Anyway, moving on.
When I first graduated college and had no real life or job experience, I was a teller at a credit union. I liked that pretty well once I really got the hang of it, and there’s something very satisfying about balancing out your drawer at the end of the day. Plus there’s the unexpected bonus of being amused by the bizarre things people do with their money. It almost always made me feel better about my own financial situation. You get bank holidays and weekends (usually) off, but unfortunately summers aren’t free.
In college I worked as the box office cashier at a movie theater, which I enjoyed quite a bit. Time passes very quickly when you’re busy in that job – by the time you clear the line for a new release an hour and a half has gone by without you even realizing it. And on slower days (weekday mornings and such) usually you have plenty of time to read a book between showings. Plus free popcorn and movies, so there’s that. Usually at theaters with 10+ screens there’s a large staff so everyone can basically pick and choose their own (limited) shifts. Not great if you’re looking for something full time, but maybe worth thinking about if you’re just looking to fill some hours during the week – school hours are traditionally harder to staff because most movie theaters employ a lot of high school students. We usually had at least one or two retirees or similar on staff for those weekday matinee shifts.
I am so at a loss as to how to be an employed person that I named an entire blog after this particular hangup, so I’m just going to hang out here and absorb your comments section for a while.
In mid January I started working as a substitute teacher. My school district (only one in my city) opened up the requirements to anyone with a bachelor degree who could pass security background checks. I did have to do a resume, but they didn’t require any teaching experience.
What I love about this job is my own daughter is in college, and I really missed being around kids. I love that the pay is so much better than it would have been if I had gotten an office job. I love that I get such positive feedback from other teachers and the kids in the classroom. I have never been one month into a job and gotten so many compliments, it is amazing to me.
I was a bit worried because I am not a teacher, but then realized that being a mom is a pretty good background for teaching. I try to treat every child like I would have hoped for my own girl to be treated, and it seems to be working.
One thing I didn’t think I would like, you are constantly going from place to place, so every morning you are not sure what you walking into. I like the comfort of routine…but I’ve noticed this has opened me up a lot-I don’t worry because you never know what to expect, and I try to trust that I can handle whatever the day brings. I actually find I am less worried about things period!
Are you sure you don’t like working with other people’s kids? In a school setting, you have a lot of control. You seem like someone who loves children-and of course the schedule is perfect for you. The one thing, where I live I get paid very well for doing this, my sister is a certified teacher in Chicago, and is subbing this year-she gets paid only $15 a day more than I do. So I know I am lucky in where I live.
Try not to hate me but …being a parent is not good training for being a teacher. You may be a great sub, but it is not because you are a parent. Most parents could not do what we do. It’s a completely different skill set.
Sorry. This is just a HUGE pet peeve of mine.
Oh, I don’t hate you! I can only speak from my experience! I feel that my being a parent has helped me as a substitute teacher-BUT I should have clarified-I am not a regular TEACHER! Teachers are a whole different kettle of fish than a substitute teacher, and I should have been more clear.
What substitute teaching has taught me-I have always had the highest admiration for teachers. But after subbing, that respect has increased 100 fold. What teachers do every single day is absolutely incredible.
So, sorry I misspoke!
No, that makes total sense–I just hear a lot of parents saying “well, I can parent, teaching isn’t that hard” as if those 2 things follow. But you are right, subbing is different, and I am glad that parenting prepared you for it!
I am in the same situation. I have been wanting to redo my resume for the last 4 months but have found every excuse not to. I also can not work during the summers and would not be able to work if school was cancelled due to weather, which has happened a lot this year.
When I got stuck in the snake eating its tail cycle of thinking about post SAHM life, I took an online Myers Briggs test. It made me feel like I was doing something positive and was also incredibly helpful. Turns out I am an INFJ, which explained why I loved working for a not for profit and hated working for a Fortune 500 consumer products company. It was nice to solve that guilt inducing mystery. The Myers Briggs may bring some clarity to the issue at this point in time. Off topic: I’m finding it very tricky to have the expenses (and schedules) of teenagers combined with the necessary child care needs of a first grader. Driving and braces and college are so expensive, so working to help with those expenses makes sense. The types of jobs that are low skilled and flexible seem to pay the same hourly rate as a babysitter for a seven year old. I expect to be a few hundred dollars in the red this summer just so I can keep a part time job that is a dream during the school year. No easy answers.
Just want to second entry level library work. I’m a librarian (with a masters) but I really enjoy working for municipalities and the customer service aspects of the job. Labeling books, shelving books, are really good jobs.
Different Rachel, also a degreed librarian! :) Besides shelvers/pages which have been mentioned, my public library system also has part-time workers helping with processing new materials (you get to see all the new books first!)- putting stickers on, entering the barcodes into the computer etc. We also employ part-time workers as substitutes at both the circulation and information desks, which is a lot of customer service, but also helping with finding someone a great book to read and how to format their resume in Word. Nice variety of work all only requiring a college degree- and the desk substitutes can choose which shifts they want to work and which they don’t- so some weeks you can just work 4 hours or others you could work 40 if that’s how it works out. Check it out (library pun intended)!
Hey! Other Rachel said what I wanted to! The other thing I like about public libraries is it has the parts of retail I like (customer service) without the annoying parts (quotas, etc.)
I am an enrolled agent. This means that I specialize in tax and can represent taxpayers before the IRS in an audit. Although I have a degree in English, it wasn’t required, though being able to write well is definitely an asset. I got into this field when I saw that H&R Block was offering a tax class. I took the class to learn how to do my own taxes, liked it and applied for a job there. I worked for three tax seasons, at night because I still had little kids at home and needed to wait until my husband came home. When my youngest started school I worked full days, but only during tax season.
I studied for the enrolled agent exam and passed it, this doesn’t require formal education. There are a lot of study programs for this exam, which help, but having lots of tax experience helps too. I continued to work for Block for a few more years and then opened my own practice.
What I do varies by the time of year. Right now I mostly do tax returns, though I have a few matters I’m working on with IRS as well. I have a few bookkeeping clients that I work on year round. People can get into trouble with IRS all year, so I never know when a new one will walk in the door. There’s always people who haven’t filed for awhile, and I get them caught up.
Things I love. I work really really hard for about three months a year, and then my time is flexible the rest of the year. I like taking big untidy piles and translating them into nice neat tax returns. I like explaining really complicated things so people can understand. I like knowing a lot about a subject that most people don’t. I like knowing how to get things done with the IRS. I like that even after 15 years there are still things I have to look up, and that I learn new things all the time. I like my clients, and helping them plan to achieve their goals. I like that I can work flexible hours and be available for my kids and still make enough money over the year to contribute to the family budget.
Things I don’t love so much. People who blame me for the tax laws (but really, that’s like 2% of the total). Telling people they have to pay tax when they weren’t expecting it. Dealing with the IRS when they’re just being stupid. And when it’s our busy time, like now, I don’t like that I have to spend so much time sitting. Overall, though, I really love what I do, and am so glad I fell into it.
I work in grant-making which involves awarding sums of money to charities and or individuals. Usually in response to those charities/organisations applying for funding towards a particular project/aspect of a project. It also involves following up on the projects funded afterwards to make sure the money was spent in the way it was intended to be and see how successful the project was (or not!), being in charge of a budget each year and monitoring how much is being spent and on what, and raising public awareness of the work of your organisation and/or the charities/people funded via websites/publications.
In the UK where I live this is quite a niche area but in the US the grant-making field is much much more developed and I think there are many more opportunities for work and especially working from home. From my discussions with people doing the same job as me in the US the sector works in much the same way across teh pond tehre are just many more employers/employees than over here.
The job I do (Grants Officer) involves some aspects that i don’t think would appeal to you Swistle (such as lots of meetings with strangers/visiting charities) but other aspects that you would obviously be great at like assessing the merits (or not) of a project, writing up copy about funded projects/people and maintaining a website including all the designing/writing. Also in the UK you have to have a university degree to do my particular role, if you have no prior experience in the sector. However, once you have some experience you can work in any role without any particular qualification being 100% neccessary.
However there are lots of other roles in grant-making that are entry level – for example when hiring for the role of my asssistant (called a Grants Assistant here) no degree is neccessary and this job often involves the writing aspects but not the meetings/visiting aspects. Also you can work in more administrative roles (finance, comms, PR etc) which tend not to have an education requirement other than high school level. Generally, there’s a LOT of room for promotion/pay rises. Most people get into the sector by taking on the entry level photocopying/tea making roles and then moving up.
The things I like are that you can see the great work of charities and work specifically in areas which interest you (my interest is in the domestic viloence/ violence against women and children fields so I’ve been able to specifically go for jobs in this area now that I’ve been in the sector for a while). Also you are not contributing towards a “big company” profiting at the expense of others in society. Also it can open your eyes to issues/work you never even knew existed and this can enrich your own life/mental wellbeing. There are so many different types of grant-maker – huge foundations with hundreds of staff or tiny family Trusts with just one or two that you can choose the size/formality of the organisation you want to work for and teh environement you want to be in quite easily.
The downsides are that it can be easy to become jaded – for example I regulalry have to deal with charities that have intentionally or unintentionally comitted fraud and with people lying to try to be awarded funding they are not really entitled too. Also there is A LOT of administration/paper pushing, and the usual “office politics” that you get in any essentially administrative environment – who gets to boss who around, who is lazy and coasting on others work etc.
Up until 6 months ago, I was a food product developer. The best way to explain this is that anything that you ever buy from the supermarket – new yoghurt flavour, new cereal with healthy clusters, new dairy free ice cream, etc- someone somewhere comes up with the concept then makes an edible recipe that meets costa and then makes it happen in a factory. It is as magical as it sounds, they basically pay you to eat! However, it can also be very stressful.
I did a degree in food science, but a lot of my colleagues have a home ec or tourism or catering one. This might not be the job for you as it’s not flexible at all and working hours are quite long. However, there is also something called a development chef, or a recipe developer (it might have a different name in the US) in which a company gives you a generic product, like say bisquick, and you go away and come back with 10-20 different recipes to make out of it. Also, there could be a customer which wants a specific product out of that, like a coconut almond cookie, an you have to use the mix and add ingredients and make the cost work for them. For this you only need to have done maybe a year long course in cooking/catering/cheffing, love for cooking/baking and creativity. I think you would be perfect for this as it’s per project so you take it when you want and have time, and it would tap into your love for baking!
Not sure how you get one of those in the US, though. Here in the UK I signed up with a few recruitment agencies that cater to the food industry and they call me when there’s a job that’s suitable.
I mentioned I was in the food industry ‘up until 6 months ago’ because I got a bit tired of having to come up with yet another recipe after 15 years of that kind of work and now I’m re-training to be an interpreter/ translator. We’ll see how that goes!
This post has been really interesting to read!
Another vote for something in a library! I’m a librarian and have long thought you would be a good one based on the wonderful way you write about books. As others have said, you need a masters for a full librarian position (easily acquired from an online library school, but usually takes two years & some cash), but there are lots of other jobs — cataloging, shelving, circulation — that don’t need it.
You could look into volunteering at your local public library as a page, for just a few hours a week, to see if you like it and also do something nice for your community at the same time. Circ jobs do involve a lot of dealing with the public, but page work is often just you and the materials. Things like pulling books off the shelves for people who have placed holds, scanning them into the computer, organizing them so people can find them. I’ve done that when pages are out sick, and it makes you feel very busy & useful & also pleasantly disposed toward all the awesome readers in your community.
I’m in Publishing and, though my current job really isn’t relevant to this discussion, there are a couple of aspects of it that might be.
The first is freelance editorial. Although everyone thinks they’re an editor, editing is actually a really skilled job. These days, much of the substantive editing, copy editing and proofreading is done by freelancers. This means working from home and taking jobs as you want. Plus, unlike in-house jobs, you don’t need to be in a major city near a publishing house. Thanks to email and the Internet, it can all be done remotely. You can get work outside of publishing houses too. Unfortunately, freelancing means approaching companies about work (which I don’t think you’d like). But if you got in with a few places and they liked you then they would probably give you work regularly. Based on your interest in writing (and the quality of your writing), this might be something to at least look into. You can usually take courses in editing and you wouldn’t need a full degree. If you wanted further detail, let me know.
I actually got out of working in what I consider “traditional” publishing and now do publishing and marketing work at a community college. (I know, in the states, universities are “colleges” but, here in Canada, universities give degrees and community colleges give diplomas. Not sure what the equivalent is there.) My job is very specific so not applicable, but I still think a community college might be a place for you to look. They have a range of jobs with a range of requirements and, at least here, they are unionized so moving into other jobs is easier as hiring from within is the norm. So someone could get a lower-level position and then move around/up as desired fairly easily. Also smaller communities are more likely to have a community college than a university, and I get the sense you are significantly outside a large city. Unfortunately, the only people who can take significant time off in the summer where I am are faculty, so that would be an issue.
I think that is actually the biggest factor for you. If you can’t work summers then it sounds like some sort of freelance work or working in the public school system are your only options. I immediately thought of the secretary in the public school office. I have no idea how you’d get a position like that though. But I would think it would offer the type of work you like without the people stress (since the principal would handle irate parents). I haven’t read all the comments but I’ll be curious to see what appeals when you your follow up.
I want to just follow up on the freelance mention above. I currently run a website startup for real estate agents, and I don’t see anything in that or in the real estate business that might be right for you, but I used to be a website content manager for a very large corporation. I managed content for about 9 websites, and I had roughly 30 content writers, 25-ish of whom worked from home. I had to hire SUPER carefully because the work was very detailed (required a lot of on-the-job training directly from me) and the writers and I had a LOT of day-to-day interaction.
What struck me as I hired person after person after person was that oftentimes the applicants just heard “work from home” and “flexible hours” and they didn’t realize how much work the jobs really were. And this was supposed to make their lives EASIER, not HARDER. It was disheartening to me when someone quit after a few weeks, and it also made me feel super bad for them – I tried so hard to be veryvery clear about the job expectations in the interviews. (to note, the money they made was GOOOD – like, they made more money than I did).
But eventually I ended up having a stable of 30-ish really great reliable contract employees, and I worked my butt off to make sure they were happy and that their voices were heard. (Sometimes freelancers or SAHMs don’t get listened to.)
The bigger problem was professional freelance editors – the people who actually edited the writers’ work. Nicest people, just super nice, overall. But so few of them were reliable AND did good work. Over 5 years, I had ONE editor who was both reliable and who did good work. The rest either did passable work – even needing an editor of their own in some cases – or they would go incommunicado or take their time to get back to me with work, but then complain about our payment schedule. (we paid freelancers once a month.)
All of this to say…. if you can be a RELIABLE freelancer, you will be golden. Good management will never want you to leave and they will fight for you to stay. Also, there is SO much writing and editing work out there. It’s really everywhere, from tiny businesses who want to get up SKUs and short product descriptions to medium sized companies who want to start a blog and get social media up and running to huge corporations who need a constant flood of content. Just ask!
One thing to watch out for is some school offices are open all year long. I worked in the business office of a school district right after I graduated high school, and we didn’t get summers off. (This job was waaay back in 1982 and I was a keypunch operator. I loved it, but I don’t think they even make keypunch machines anymore!)
I am in the same situation as you – my kids are 5 and 7, so I can’t leave them at home alone on days off of school, but I could really use something to do when they are in school. I have degrees in electrical engineering and business, and I worked as an engineer for 10 years before my older daughter was born. I never really loved engineering, although there were aspects of it that I did like, and sometimes I daydream about going back to it. But I can’t imagine finding a part-time engineering job that would be as flexible as I need it to be (especially in the area where I live where there are only about 3 companies that might hire me at all.)
So, I got a job at Target. And it’s kind of awesome. I don’t quite get as many weekday hours as I would like, but I do enjoy having a little something to do and a making a little money. And I think in the summer when I’m with the kids all day, it will be a nice break to get out and work on nights/weekends. I was hired as a cashier, which is fine, but it’s way too much small talk with strangers for me to truly enjoy. I’m actually hoping to train in other areas, and then when my kids are old enough, maybe I can work on moving up through the organization and put my business degree to use. (And by that I mean, get a job that requires a business degree. I’m not convinced I learned anything actually useful!) It’s a nice low-risk way to figure out if retail business is a possible career path. Best thing about the Target job though is the 10% discount.
Wow! I don’t have time to read/write right now, so will wait on that. But your post has me wondering: What the heck is the highly-paid Pharmacist actually doing? I realize that they would be compounding meds and such in “compounding” pharmacies, but IME most retail-established pharmacies don’t do compounding anymore. Also – I”m sure they *are* doing a lot, but I’m wondering *what* they are doing!?!? Because it sounds as if the pharm-tech does much of what I thought the Pharmacist does!
I’m writing myself a sticky-note to remind me to come back to read later! /gleefully rubbing hands together!
Oh, my husband is in his final year of pharmacy school, and as I understand it they do everything that a tech does, but in addition to that, the Pharmacist is basically the manager of the pharmacy and is in charge of all of the techs. They have to have malpractice insurance and anything that goes wrong is technically their responsibility. They are also the only ones who are allowed to “counsel” patients and give them advice/directions on their meds. They have access to and know how to search /use massive databases to find out more info about any drug to answer questions and check for drug interactions and stuff. It can get really complicated, especially with elderly patients who have tons of meds.
But that’s retail pharmacy. There are a surprising number of other jobs for Pharmacists. My husband did a rotation in a NICU where all they did was watch over, double check, and recommend meds for the NICU babies. That was by far the rotation where he came home with the most interesting stories!
I am glad that the pay is good, because the schooling is very expensive! It is a minimum of about 6 years of school, usually about 8, and then they have to pass a licensing test. There is talk that residency (4 additional years) will also soon be required. Pharmacists are actually doctors, holding a Pharm D (Doctor of Pharmacy) degree. We have quite a lot of student debt.
And here I thought I wouldn’t be able to contribute because I am a stay at home mom! I have a degree in writing and have only ever done some copy editing, substitute teaching, and waited tables!
At our pharmacy, the pharmacist’s main job was to check to make sure the prescriptions were done correctly. We techs could count the pills and put them in bottles, but the ultimate responsibility for the prescription being filled correctly, with the correct medication at the correct dosage with the correct instructions, lay with the pharmacist. He had to look at the original prescription, open the bottle, examine the pills, double-check all information.
The pharmacist was also responsible for catching issues with the prescription itself: medication errors, problems, and interactions. It was fairly common for the pharmacist to make a call to a doctor saying, “Er, I see you have prescribed this at ten times the usual dosage—was that what you meant to do?” Or the pharmacist was supposed to understand and know ALL the medicines and interactions, so that he (I keep saying he because ours were both he) could say, “Wait!! This patient is taking Medication A from this doctor and Medication B from this doctor, but those interact with Terrible Consequences!!” (This is why if possible it’s a good idea to get all your prescriptions filled at the same pharmacy.) Or he might call the doctor and say, “You’ve prescribed Medication A, but that’s only a brand-name and the patient wants a generic; Medication B is the same thing and has a generic; is it okay to switch?” The pharmacist was the only one who could accept a called-in prescription over the phone from a doctor.
At our pharmacy, the pharmacist was the only one who could handle narcotics of a certain type: he had a safe to keep them in, and only he would measure them and give them by hand to the patient. The pharmacist was the only one who could answer questions from customers about medications: we could direct them to the Q-tip aisle or tell them what happened with their insurance, but if they asked ANYTHING about the medication (either prescription or non-prescription), even a question like, “So, I take this twice a day?,” we were supposed to get the pharmacist.
So it wasn’t a job that appealed to me. LOTS of pressure for everything to be PERFECT, lots and lots of boring and careful checking.
When my mom went back to work after being a SAHM for 20 years, she first worked at a retail store. She hated the standing all the time. She left and became a bank teller, which Lawyerish described above. She moved from there to being the person who has a desk that answers questions about opening new accounts and mortgages and that kind of thing. The hardest part of being a bank teller is that you do have to stand for most of the shift, you occasionally have to deal with annoying people, and you have to balance to the penny.
This blog is perfect. Thank you so much. My children are now old enough for me to work out of the home but I find I am in the same position as you. What to do? How many hours? What kind of qualifications do I need?
I have a degree in English, received a billion years ago. I started in administrative assistant roles but quickly fell into a technical career. There were things I liked about it and things I did not. In a nutshell, I liked learning new things and helping people understand technology. I disliked almost the same things – the pressure to constantly learn new things, to try to implement them even if not fully understood, and – as stated by many others – people are not always the nicest. And people whose computers are not working… watch out!
Then I had children and made the decision to stay home. I have had several part-time and work-at-home positions in the past 15 years. I held two different accounting jobs. I found the work tedious, although getting out of the house a few days each week was nice. I tried a home-based business selling product through home shows – Sales might be my least favorite. I enjoyed meeting new people but hated the stress of lining up the next show and feeling like everyone I met had to be treated as a potential customer. I tried retail. Finding a position that gives daytime hours was difficult and nights/weekends takes away from the limited family time we have. And I have had several different technical support roles, working from home or as an independent consultant.
This is where I am now. I have a flexible, part-time position working at home that pays well and allows me to set my own hours. On the surface it seems perfect. However, I work alone and have very limited interaction with ANYONE. It is lonely and I think that I am slowly (maybe not that slowly) losing my mind.
I have dusted off my resume, although I’m still not sure the direction I should be going. The hardest part of trying to kick start a new career, is the crippling lack of confidence I feel about my qualifications, and even my ability to deal with other people after being years by myself. And I know I am supposed to network, but I rarely see another living soul except my family, and I am not the type of person who is comfortable talking to random strangers at the local coffee shop. I think that my solution lies in finding a good volunteer opportunity for awhile, I just haven’t had the nerve to set it up yet.
Also, I like the suggestions here about trying out a temp agency.
Do it! If this comment was a cover letter, it would be in the top twenty best of the ones that I’ve read. Top ten if you take out the part about crippling lack of confidence = ).
In grad school, I worked at a bookstore, and I loved it. I loved everything about it: being a cashier who could recommend books to people (if you liked this, you’ll probably like this and this; your aunt might prefer this to that). Shelving books and putting things in order. Getting staff recommendations and making theme displays. The pay was only okay (of course) but it was such fun work. Working at a library as a non-librarian would be similar, I think, though you probably wouldn’t get to make recommendations.
Now I am a college professor and I also love that work, but it takes a LOT of expensive education and, at least in the humanities, doesn’t really pay commensurately. I agree with many of the commenters who’ve suggested work at a university if there’s one near you. I am the chair of my department and I have a program assistant who works for me 20 hours a week (it could be more if she wanted more hours.) She does all different sorts of things: manages student worker time cards, helps me figure out faculty schedules and courses for the catalog a year in advance, finds venues for events, writes up the minutes for department meetings, puts together the department newsletter, and so forth. There’s a ton of variety and I literally couldn’t do my job without her and no one is ever mean to her. She can also take classes here for free, and she has summers off. I think this is the kind of job you’d be really good at.
I’m a lawyer in a specialized field, which I love. Rather than drag you through the lawyer details, let me give you a rundown of what a paralegal/legal assistant/general office manger job with my non-profit looks like.
She drafts routine documents for us, has us sign them, copies, then makes sure we get them filed on time. She collects records for us, which involves very little telephone work and mostly email/fax/etc. She makes sure we and our volunteers get their messages and records. She collects data from each file for our grants and inputs them into a spreadsheet. She manages our social media, writes some press releases, and does some design work. She’s got just a general business degree, which we couldn’t care less about–it’s really her love of organization and speed of learning that we need.
Maybe see if any nonprofits could use a volunteer who just wants to come help organize stuff, or collect data, etc? She started off as a once a week volunteer for us. As soon as her kids were in school full time, we hired her full time.
I wanted to add–I mentioned the legal assistant job rather than mine, not because I don’t think you could be a lawyer–it’s just not time or cost efficient, in my opinion.
Dittoing the insurance/hospital pharmacy/hospital billing departments.
I’ve been in retail, in software development, in office management, and in politics. I think you’d probably like office management best of the things I’ve done. I’ve managed offices for lawyers, doctors, and for a abused women’s shelter, and I had to deal least with “the public” at the lawyers and the abused women’s shelter.
My suggestion to you would be to look at temp agencies in your area and ask what skills they’re looking for and take classes in those skills.
Great topic! I’m a registered nurse, got there through my 2nd bachelor’s degree (an accelerated, 18-month program). I’ve been a nurse for 5 years and it’s great. I finished my master’s degree at the end of the summer last year and am about to sit for my nurse practitioner boards. I like nursing because there are so many different places and specialties to work. My challenge now is finding a job that is part time but enough hours to keep me current, when all I really want to do is be home with my 2 1/2 year old and 4 month old babies.
You might want to look into LNA/CNA (nursing assistants are licensed or certified depending on your state) jobs – the training is less than a year in most places, you have a lot of places you can work (hospital, nursing home, provider’s office) and many larger places will help pay for more education if you decide you’d like to pursue a RN degree. Nurses LOVE nursing assistants who are intelligent and hard-working; you can feel free to come work with me anytime :)
My current job (Production Stage Manager for VidCon) is one-of-a-kind, so I’ll tell you about working in a bookstore, which I used to do full time and which I now do only when someone at the store needs help.
I would say it has three main components:
Shelving: Each bookseller was charged with a handful of sections to maintain. Mine were Intermediate Readers (age 9-12), Picture Books, Psychology & Self-Help, Sociology, Gender Studies, Native American Studies, Weddings, and used YA and Intermediate books. I had to make sure the sections were neat-looking, organized alphabetically, and shelve new books that came in. Also, put away any books that customers had pulled out and not put back. Because I was working at an independent bookstore and not a corporation, I got to choose which books were facing out on display, which I enjoyed very much. Shelving/maintaining my sections was my favorite part of the job because I could look at all the books and feel very accomplished when I ended the day having put away all the books.
Cashier: So that we could take turns maintaining our sections, all booksellers had to take shifts at the registers. This part of the job involved a lot of standing and smiling, which wasn’t too bad once I got used to it but could sometimes get tedious. I also developed a bunch of pet peeves about transactions. (Like, when customers just throw their money on the counter instead of putting it into my hand, that really bothers me. Especially if it’s coins. Or single dollar bills that they throw one by one onto the counter as they count, and then don’t pick it up or straighten it before I’m supposed to take it. Yes, people really do this.) The nice thing about this part of the job was seeing all the books people were buying.
Info: Stand at info desk and help customers find the books they’re looking for. Offer recommendations for people who don’t know what they’re looking for. A few times an hour, wander around the store to see if people need help. (This last part works as a theft deterrent. We don’t bother people who look like they want to be left alone, because most booksellers would prefer to be left alone to shop. We get it.) I liked working the info desk because it was extremely gratifying to connect people with books. I didn’t like wandering around the store looking for people to help/making sure nobody was stealing.
Qualifications: High school diploma required, bachelor’s degree in anything preferred. Love of reading a MUST.
The downside to this job is it doesn’t pay much (I made minimum wage most of the time I was there) and it familiarizes you with so many amazing books it’s hard not to spend your entire paycheck right at the store.
The nice thing is that it familiarizes you with so many amazing books, you’re inspired to read a lot more. I also found that being familiar with current titles was a tremendous help socially — it became a lot easier to talk to people I didn’t know very well because we could connect over books even if I hadn’t read them. So like, my step-relatives and I finally had something in common. And my mom’s friends became easier to talk to. Stuff like that.
Also, all your Christmas gifts are COVERED and we got big Christmas discounts at the bookstore I worked at!
I loved this comment-because one of my favorite jobs was working in a bookstore. I am just going to say it-Borders. Your comment how people in bookstores don’t want help, unless they ask for it-is so right! I was at Borders when they were flailing around, trying to stay in business. At one point in time, they wanted us to go up to every customer we saw, and say “Can I help you?”. I think that is when the CEO was hired from a grocery store chain.
We HAD to do it. One man looked at me and said “if one more person asks me if I need help, I am leaving this store and will never come back!”. HA! He had been approached by numerous employees. As you know, you get that sense if someone wants help, or they will ask at the info desk. Badgering customers? Not the best idea!
This has been a fun read! I am not a mother, but through other personal and family choices have ended up with many different jobs. I have a Masters in Physics which I have never really used, but it has impressed people during interviews.
I have been a software engineer, which I hated. But the pay was great.
I have held a variety of assistant/office manager/administrative positions. I love putting things in order and being the backbone of a company that helps Get Things Done without being directly responsible for the Things A Company Does. I’ve had great flexibility in some of these positions but never months off at a time. The thing I do not like about these positions is that if I enjoy the place I will get involved in more and more projects until I am not just an admin person but In Charge Of Things. Which to me negates half the reason to have this type of job. I also sometimes bristle at the wide range of tasks I have and how I am compensated the same for cleaning a toilet as I am for setting up a new ISP.
I currently have one of those jobs, plus own my own retail store with my husband. I don’t think owning your own store fits the job profile you are looking for. But I have held two other jobs that I don’t think anyone has described here yet.
1) Dog groomer’s assistant. I was responsible for washing, drying, and brushing dogs before they were groomed. I also helped restrain/position dogs while they were groomed if needed. Other general clean/tidy duties. Pros: I love dogs, it was flexible hours, not too much people interaction and then it was with other dog lovers. Cons: Dirty work and hard work (you could consider this a plus if you want a workout but I was sooo tired after 4 hours of dog wrangling). I worked with one or two nasty dogs, but the groomer I worked for didn’t put up with much of that. Biggest con in working for an independent groomer is that she often wouldn’t know if she needed me until the last minute. We agreed I would be available two days a week but once or twice she didn’t mean at all during a week and frequently she’d need me one more day (to which I could say no).
2) Online shop keeper. I worked and volunteered in many positions for a non-profit, but this is the one I thought you might like. My duties were to maintain an online store of their gift shop items. I’d take/get pictures of new products, write the description, and decide the shipping rules. I worked with other staff to set up coupons, sales. I also worked with the gift shop manager on fulfilling the orders but I think it is easy to separate the “maintain the online store” into a part-time position of its own. We used a WYSIWYG online shop software. I’m confident anyone familiar with a blogging platform would find it an easy environment. Pros: Creative, fairly low-stress, flexible work environment – sometimes I took products home to work on as my other “positions” often disrupted office time. I also liked the online customer service aspect – I am making people happy with things they want to purchase but I didn’t have to speak to anyone! Cons: Coordinating inventory so someone did not purchase an item online that was not available. Other hypothetical cons 1) I walked into this with an established nonprofit that has thousands of online followers. I do not know how I would have generated traffic for the online shop itself starting from scratch. 2) This is a job I see as Very Necessary for a nonprofit that wishes to make money via merchandise or online donations. I’m not sure every nonprofit agrees. You could maybe approach nonprofits that have poorly designed online stores and offer to volunteer to “spruce it up” then see if they are willing to pay you to maintain it? But that can be a lot of hard work for free in the beginning.
I suppose all of this applies to a small retail business that doesn’t do online sales as well, although they would have to want to do the fulfillment side of things or you would have to pick that up in addition to managing the online content. You also would likely end up as an independent contractor in this position which carries more “I own a business” responsibilities.
I’m an editor, and once my first child was born, I managed to move from a full-time, salaried position to working as an independent contractor from home doing the exact same work for the exact same company, with a small cut in pay and no benefits. Since my editing work is very specific with a steep learning curve, I won’t get into it, but as someone else mentioned, the publishing world is increasingly outsourcing editing/writing work to freelancers, so I’ll touch on what I love and don’t about that aspect of it.
Satisfying: I don’t have to work full time hours every week, and am available during the day for my young children. Outside of my standing contract (which is up for renewal a year at a time), I can accept or refuse jobs as I like. I have busy periods, and then lulls in workload, which feels like having a little vacation every few weeks. I’m a procrastinator, and someone who works much better with small chunks of time, and under a bit of pressure. I could NEVER do eight straight hours of desk work, even when that was my job. Now, I don’t have to feel guilty about wasting company time (although I never had a problem meeting deadlines even when I was in an office). I also feared that I wouldn’t have the discipline to work “for myself,” but it turns out I totally do, and that’s really pleasing to know. I’m solely responsible for editing and putting together a particular product, and every project completion makes me feel very competent.
Trade-offs: I have to work many nights and weekends in order to be with my kids during the day, and my husband and I get less time together than we’d like. Also, wasted time feels like time I’m stealing from my husband, since he comes home and then takes over childcare/chores while I work. If I spend time online or writing (a hobby), I feel guilty. There is little external praise – I have to know I’m good at what I do, because I have no performance review, no boss, and sometimes authors can be cranky and even occasionally mean about how I’ve edited their work. Other times, they’re very grateful, so that helps. I don’t ever get to “leave work at the office.” My work is always there waiting, even if it’s a slow day, and there’s always something I could be doing, even on vacation. Sometimes, I actually have to make time to work while on vacation out of town. I feel obligated to say yes to most projects, because it means more money and I don’t know how long this particular gig will last. I get paid on an uneven schedule, and sometimes in large lump sums. This can be good (we don’t have to save pennies for months to afford large purchases) or bad (I have to pull money from savings if we’re running short before I can invoice for a job; it’s hard to keep a monthly budget when money doesn’t come in at the same time every month). I have to prepay taxes, which means sending out large checks four times a year, and having to account for that in our budget.
The bad: Having to solicit work. Because I still work for my old company, I haven’t had to take this step yet, but there was a brief stretch where it seemed like my contract might fall through. All my colleagues working for the same company looked for other projects. I just decided to let the chips fall because it’s that difficult for me to network or put myself out there for other work. If and when I do lose the contract (publishing is a dying business, apparently, although I like to think there will always be a need for editors), I might not want to continue the life of a freelancer, at least if my paycheck is essential to the family’s well being. At yet I can’t ever see going back to office work. I am miserable on someone else’s schedule.
A couple of things to consider if editing is something that you’re at all interested in: (a) The type of degree didn’t matter, even in my very specific field (business, English, journalism, humanities, history, and political science were just some of the degrees my colleagues had). (b) As a freelancer, nothing really matters to the client except your editing abilities, and they will often send a test article, or give you a trial edit. For editing-specific classes, you could probably take a few copyediting/grammar courses at a community or state school. The important thing is knowing how to look up style preferences in a particular guide. (c) The pay varies wildly. I get paid very well for my particular type of editing, with my particular company, but this, apparently, is something of an anomaly. Having to set rates and figure out what to charge and what jobs you’ll say no to because it’s not worth your time is a huge pain.
I want to add, since I ended on kind of a bad note, that the flexibility I have and the chance to both make money AND stay home with my kids make me feel very lucky. I’m not always sure I’m happy with what I do, but I also can’t think of anything I’d rather be doing right now, since I more or less have the best (and worst) of both worlds.
I wanted to share this website which does a series called ‘How Do I Become…” that talks about different jobs and how to get them, but like going down the rabbit hole, there is lots of interesting articles to read…
http://www.theguardian.com/money/series/how-do-i-become-a
long ago i fell into arts administration and it’s what i still do. i do a lot of things that are financial in nature, but i am not an accountant (which is mostly common sense IMHO). i do a lot of things that are vaguely legal in nature – like contracts and by-laws – but i am not a lawyer (i know who to call and i am good at the google). i juggle lots of stuff, so day to day is rarely boring. once upon a time, my boss called me a “horrible mensa bitch” and i think that would look great on a business card. when i’m feeling cheeky, i tell people my title is “director of everything else”.
Hi Swistle, I’m posting under a pseudonym because I use my real name usually when commenting on your blogs, but I assume you will recognize my email. :)
Can I just say, first off, that I think you are an incredible writer. I worked in publishing for many years and your style, your sensibility, your nuance & command of English, not to mention your humor, is seriously professional level. As good as and often better than the published authors I worked with (I saw their first drafts…) Have you ever considered writing a novel? Or short stories? If you ever do, please keep me in mind and email me as I have advice on how to query and get an agent, that kind of thing. More people deserve to read your writing. You have a rare talent. (AND you can publish under an assumed name and keep your privacy! The publishing industry understands that. Google Elena Ferrante, for example…and read My Brilliant Friend if you haven’t yet.)
As far as my own work history, I went to a big university, got a BA in a humanities subject, and found myself in publishing… I do think you’d be great in publishing, but the whole industry is in NYC and has a kind of a climbing-the-ladder drudgery and paying-dues culture, so I don’t think it would be easy to start that now. Also, the pay is terrible relative to the hours and it is cutthroat, usually lots of office politics.
Now I work from home and manage an artist’s studio (who is also my partner). It is a lot of work but I’m my own boss (relatively speaking) and it gives me time to work on my own writing. (I’m writing a novel myself.)
As for you… you are so talented. Have you considered freelance editing or proofreading? Neither is easy to break into exactly but I think you could be so successful and appreciated.
But more than anything, I encourage you to try writing a book… And if you do, email me and I will try to put you in touch with agents or whatever the next step would be. Yes, it is incredibly hard to sell a book and get it published; but it’s also incredibly rare to be as talented with the English language as you are, and you so clearly have potential.
LOVE this thread. I do career counseling at a college, working mostly with students but occasionally with mid career people. I work 1:1 with students to talk about their plans and goals, figure out where they should apply to, and then I help them with resumes/cover letters and practice interviewing. It’s largely fun and rewarding (I love doing resume editing – often feels like a crossword puzzle, trying to convey something in a clear way given limited space and formatting constraints). I also work closely with employers to help them post/fill positions. Sometimes I serve as a kind of double agent if an internship is not working out – I’ll talk to the employer and then the student and try to help while maintaining confidentiality on both ends. Overall I really like it, but it gets very repetitive. You need a master’s to do almost any student-facing job at a university (super annoying), but many of the admin jobs just require a bachelor’s and can often be rewarding and fun, with good benefits and flexible hours – as others have pointed out.
One great resource for SAHMs is called http://www. irelaunch.com – great tips for rejoining the workforce from women who have made it happen themselves.
I manage the education department at a nature preserve. I LOVE my job, but I don’t think what I actually do is what people imagine when I say that I work at a nature preserve. I schedule all the field trips, outreach programs / appearances, Scout programs, birthday parties, and summer camps. We also run some adult ed and homeschool classes and put on around six largish special events each year. This involves coordinating with teachers and parents via phone and (mostly) email, keeping track of names and info for dozens of things, assigning staff to cover programs, sending out confirmations, and then sending out follow-up evaluations. I spend most of my time at my computer. I also loosely supervise a few employees who teach the programs, organize a few dozen volunteers who help with the programs, write some curriculum, prepare materials, come up with new program ideas now and then, and teach / lead programs when needed. Oh, and I tabulate statistics each month on how many people attend the various programs we do, plus manage spreadsheets for scholarship grants. I like it because I’m really, really good with details and I can multitask like a BOSS. Things I dislike are the pay, which is not amazing since I work at a small nonprofit and having to work weekends, though I shouldn’t complain too much since it’s usually one Saturday a month (vs three Saturdays AND three Sundays a month at my old job). I did our taxes the other day and felt a bit embarrassed by the total number on my side of the income line. But as a trade off, I do have a somewhat flexible schedule and can usually take off when I need to for things at my big kid’s preschool. Plus since I’m not full time, I get to take Monday off every week (except during summer camp weeks) to spend with my kids.
I have a BS in geology and a BA in English, but I didn’t get my job because of either of my degrees. I previously worked for six years teaching science workshops at a museum, and when I got downsized I was lucky enough to be able to transition to my current workplace because of my experience teaching and my several years of volunteering there. I worked as a teaching naturalist for about two years, then my supervisor quit and I was semi-promoted to run the department ( minus some of her duties that I was not qualified for nor interested in, such as care / feeding / training of a whole bunch of animals ).
To get a job like mine, I think you have to be in the right place at the right time, which I’m sure is a very frustrating thing for me to say. There just aren’t a lot of jobs running education programs at nature centers, though, as far as I can tell. But to get a job similar to mine, such as maybe an office manager or registrar, I don’t know that you’d need any specific credentials. I wonder if you might be able to get in by volunteering at a place for a long time. A friend’s mom booked programs for the local Girl Scout council for several years, and I could be wrong but I don’t think she had any specific degree relating to that job…she had just been involved with the GS council since her kids were young, and I think the job was there when she needed one and it worked out. Now I’m going to go back and read everyone else’s comments, because I find stuff like this fascinating!
I am really enjoying reading these! I have a (useless) Psychology degree. I ended up going back to school for an 8 month program in software development and got a job for a small non IT company as their software developer. When I got pregnant with my first child, my boss let me work from home and I have been doing that ever since. I need to be around during business hours generally, in case they need to reach me. However, as long as I get the work done, my hours are mine to make. In the summer it gets dicey sometimes trying to get stuff done, but it works out. What I like about the job is that it mentally challenges me. I find for me, the puzzle of trying to figure out a way to solve the issue is the most fun. The thing I like the least is once a project is done and people keep wanting small changes made that should have been mentioned when it was being built. Sometimes I am overwhelmed with work, and others I have days when I have no work at all.
I have also worked as a bank teller – which I found a fairly relaxing, pleasant job, at a coffee store (before they were called barristas…) I really loved that job. 99% of customers were happy to be there and pleasant,. There would be regulars that you got to know and have jokes with. It was a fairly laid back job (except during the busy times) . The pay was minimal, but the job was fun.
My sister’s job might work out well for you, if something like this exists in your area. She grades her school district’s writing assessments . Right now, she is grading writing assignments from first and second graders. She does the work from home while her 10-month-old is sleeping. The work only goes on during the school year because no one is taking any writing assessments during the summer. She has a bachelor’s degree in an education field, but the requirement was for a high school diploma with a bachelor’s degree preferred.
My own job is that I work in the online learning department of a university as a long-distance adjunct. My main job is teaching an academic course. I also occasionally take contracts in 4 other areas: helping maintain the online course I teach and communicating with other people who teach the same course, doing some administrative reports/training, screening new hires, and training brand new instructors. My base contract time is 10 hours per week, but it can go up to 25-30 on occasion.
I have a master’s degree in the subject that I teach, and that’s the standard requirement for the school I teach with. Some instructors do have a bachelor’s plus experience in the field, though.
Things I like: Hours are very flexible as long as I get the work done. I can take as many contracts as I have time for in any given semester. I love training new instructors. I read a lot in my field anyways, and it’s nice to have conversations about that with someone over the age of 5.
Things I don’t like: Not a lot of individual control over the course (it’s designed by an on-campus professor). Answering the same questions all day. Plagiarists and cheaters. The online system has a tendency to go down at the single most inconvenient time, every single time.
How I got my job: My husband was out of work and we had a newborn and no money. I had planned to stay home without working, but I prefer having money for groceries :) We used to live about half an hour away from this university, and when I saw that I could work from home, I was sold. We live 4 hours away from there now, but I still have the job.
Perhaps you would like working as a buyer? At my (very large) company, our buyers (I think they are officially procurement managers?) process orders from various members of our team, to a variety of vendors. Very methodical and easy to see when the job has been done correctly. A fair amount of interacting with coworkers and some phone work when orders go awry, but mostly online ordering. Some of our procurement people also create Request for Quotes (RFQ) for specialty orders or whatnot. Mostly modifying a template to fit the project. Specific skills required are mostly organizational, spreadsheet maintenance and being able to enter credit cards correctly/track orders (plus a college degree, I think).
Hope this helps!
I teach preschool. Right now I am in a daycare setting which I hate because the hours are nuts, no one else really has the appropriate level of education, and benefits and vacations are nonexistent. I hope to get a job teaching in PK-2 next year. I have a BA and MA both in education as well as licensure in early ed (infants through third grade) and am almost to teaching licensure in English grades 7-12. Right now I spend my mornings in the classroom with 4 and 5 year olds and afternoons with kids who are 3 or very young 4s. I do all the curriculum and assessments for the older kids–plan standards based units, develop different centers and activities, attempt to differentiate because I have some kids with very little letter recognition and some who are nearly reading. For the littler ones I help plan as needed, provide some early literacy and math activities, and write some of the progress reviews and help with assessments. There are lots of things I really like about it–I love the kids, even the really difficult ones, and I like a lot of their parents, and I like planning, and teaching really well is a kind of transcendent experience for me. I also find it really challenging, exhausting, there are never ever enough resources, and I have had a VERY mixed experience with co-teaching. I got my job by going to school, developing a really good portfolio, and applying everywhere!
You don’t want my job but I have a job idea for you!
I’m a speech therapist and you would need a 2 year masters degree. Plus it doesn’t pay well in some settings (schools and early intervention) and in hospital or rehab settings you would do mostly swallowing assessment and intervention and you need a strong stomach for that, which I don’t have. My last week at my highly under paying job is this week and I’m so excited!
I am going to become a doula and lactation counselor. Given all of your experience I bet you’d be great!
To become certified as a birth doula you attend a weekend workshop, a child birth class, read 5 books from a recommended book list, attend three births, have evaluations completed about your performance, and write an essay.
To become a postpartum doula you attend a different workshop, read a few different books and some of the same, take a breast feeding class (they offer them online) and I don’t actually remember what else off the top of my head. I am attending a birth doula workshop in Boston in April through DONA. It includes a third day which is the child birth class and costs $500. There are no postpartum doula courses in the near future in New England so I’ll have to do that later or travel at some point.
I am also looking into becoming a certified lactation counselor which is different than a lactation consultant. To become the latter you need so many supervised hours that you really need to already work in a medical setting. The counselor training is 5 days as far as I can tell but I have more research to do.
I’m SO late responding to this but I loved reading every comment!
My kids are 7 and 9 and I went back to work a little over 2 years ago. I LOVE my job but it is definitely unique.
I’m the chief of staff for a state representative (might be called assemblyman in your state.) In my state, our legislature is in session less than 4 months a year, from January through April-ish. During the legislative session- right now- I work very full time. My office is in our state Capitol, adjoining the state house.
My job includes doing so many different things. During session, I focus on legislation- researching laws and bills, discussing them with my boss and our advocates/lobbyists, preparing testimony and witnesses for hearings. I also do a lot of constituent work- during session, mostly responding to people who have contacted my office with their opinions on policy. There is also some ceremonial stuff- attending events, preparing proclamations. I do quite a bit of scheduling as well. There is a ton of phone work, in-person meetings, and emails.
The hardest part of session for me is that there is no “taking a big pile of work and completing it”- I can never finish everything in any given day. In general I just stop working when I realize that if I dont leave my desk I won’t be home for bedtime.
The other 8-9 months a year it’s SO MUCH EASIER. My boss has another job, so he’s out of my hair, and it’s part time out of session(called interim). I work one day a week in the office and two days a week from home- but I can work when the kids are around in the summer. My schedule is completely flexible. Sick days, snow days, chaperoning field trips… I can always handle it. The job is 90% constituent services in interim. People call because of potholes, or their power got cut off, or their kid is getting beat up in school, or their parent is being abused in a nursing home, and I connect them with whatever resources and contacts I have to fix the problem. It can be depressing, but it’s also satisfying.
During election years, I’m also a contracted campaign staffer, which is another entire novel of job description.
Education wise, I have a degree, which you need, and I really enjoy politics and law, which is basically another requirement! I’m in the process of applying for a masters program in public policy. The pay is mediocre but the benefits are unbelievable- tons of vacation time, cheap cheap cheap healthcare, and a pension. I also have such great coworkers- everyone is so smart and interesting- it’s a benefit all its own! Overall I feel so lucky to have gotten into a field I love so much with such a family friendly schedule.
Late to the party, but to answer anyway … I’m a medical editor; the medical part I fell into (I was an English major for a good reason), but the editor part comes naturally to someone who is always noticing typos and proofreading menus (“look, there are two spaces between those words, and they spelled that word three different ways, and…”).
Funny thing about proofreading and editing jobs is that they can be hard to find because companies use the two terms to mean the same thing, or the same term to mean different things, and there’s just no agreement about what it all means. I remember being frustrated before I figured out what I wanted to do, because it was so hard to narrow down my search, and then frustrated after I knew what I wanted but couldn’t find it. Job searching is so much harder than it seems it should be.