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Recession Proof Jobs and Others part 2
Recession Proof jobs and Others
11 Best-Kept-Secret Careers
In a competitive environment, it's worth taking a look at these little-known jobs
By Marty Nemko
Job seekers have it tough in these troubled times, especially in going after big-name careers. It's a great time to consider these hidden gems, which score well on the Best Careers 2009 selection criteria.
The 11 Best-Kept-Secret Careers are:
Accent-reduction specialist
Casting director
Child life specialist
Creative perfumer
Health informatics specialist
Orthoptist
Orthotist/prosthetist
Program analyst
Program evaluator
Prospect researcher
Surgical technologist
Ahead-of-the-Curve Careers
Here's a look at 13 cutting-edge careers, viable now and poised for future growth
By Marty Nemko
Cutting-edge careers are often exciting, and they offer a strong job market. Alas, the cutting edge too often turns out to be the bleeding edge, so here are some careers that, while relatively new, are already viable and promise further growth. They emerge from six megatrends:
Growing healthcare demand. The already overtaxed U.S. healthcare system will be forced to take on more patients because of the many aging baby boomers, the influx of immigrants, and the millions of now uninsured Americans who would be covered under Barack Obama's promised healthcare proposals. Jobs should become more available in nearly all specialties, from nursing to coding, imaging to hospice. These healthcare careers are likely to be particularly rewarding. Health informatics specialists, for example, will develop expert systems to help doctors and nurses make evidence-based diagnoses and treatments. Hospitals, insurers, and patient families will hire patient advocates to navigate the labyrinthine and ever more parsimonious healthcare system. On the preventive side, people will move beyond personal trainers to wellness coaches, realizing that doing another 100 pushups won't help if they're smoking, boozing, and enduring more stress than a rat in an experiment.
The increasingly digitized world. Americans are doing more of their shopping on the Internet. We obtain more of our entertainment digitally: Computer games are no longer just for teenage boys; billions are spent by people of all ages and both sexes. Increasingly, we get our information from online publications (just look where you're reading this), increasingly viewed on iPhones and BlackBerrys. An under-the-radar career that is core to the digital enterprise is data miner. Online customers provide businesses with high-quality data on what to sell and how to individualize marketing.
Another star of the digitized world is simulation developer. Ever faster Internet connections are helping entertainment, education, and training to incorporate full-motion video simulations of exciting, often dangerous experiences. For example, virtual patients allow medical students to diagnose and treat without risking a real patient's life. A computer game, Spore, allows you to simulate creating a new planet, starting with the first microorganism.
Globalization, especially Asia's ascendancy. This should create great demand for business development specialists, helping U.S. companies create joint ventures with foreign firms. Once those deals are made, off-shoring managers are needed to oversee those collaborations and the growing number of off-shored jobs. Quietly, companies are off-shoring even work previously deemed too dependent on American culture to send elsewhere: innovation and market research, for example. Conversely, large numbers of people from impoverished countries are immigrating to the United States.
So, immigration specialists of all types, expert in everything from marketing to education to criminal justice, will be needed to attempt to accommodate the unprecedented in-migration.
The dawn of clinical genomics. Decades of basic research are finally starting to yield clinical implications. In 2007, it cost $1 million to fully sequence a person's genome. By mid-2009, Complete Genomics says it will do it for $5,000, and some experts predict that, within five years, the cost will decline to $100. That decline will greatly accelerate medical discoveries and already enables a person to determine if he or she is at increased risk of diabetes, cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer's, and 15 other conditions.
Within a decade, we will probably understand which genes predispose humans to everything from depression to violence, early death to centenarian longevity, retardation to genius. Such discoveries will likely give rise to ways to prevent or cure our dreaded predispositions and encourage those in which we'd delight. That, in turn, will bring about the reinvention of psychology, education, and, of course, medicine. In the meantime, the unsung heroes who will bring this true revolution to pass will include computational biologists and behavioral geneticists.
Environmentalism. Alarm about global warming has made environmentalism this generation's dominant initiative. The environmental wave is creating jobs in everything from sales to accounting in companies making green products, regulatory positions in government, and grant writing, fundraising, and litigation work in nonprofits. Among the more interesting green careers, engineers are working on such projects as hydrogen-powered cars, more efficient solar cells, and coal pollution sequestration systems. But those jobs require very high-level training and skills and are at risk of being off-shored. In contrast, the so-called green collar specialist is off-shore resistant and often needs less demanding training (for example, learning how to do green-building audits). Hands-on greenies might consider a career as a solar installer, a career that will likely enjoy increased demand because of government tax incentives.
Terrorism. The expert consensus is that the United States will again fall victim to a major terrorist attack. Jobs in the antiterrorism field have already mushroomed since 9/11, but if another attack were to occur, even more jobs would surely be generated.
Demand should particularly grow in such areas as computer security and Islamic-country intelligence, but their required skill sets are difficult to acquire. More accessible yet also likely to be in demand is emergency planning.
For more career options, consult U.S. News profiles of 30 Best Careers.
Best Careers 2009
What's new in 2009...and some advice on picking a career
By Marty Nemko
In the Ahead-of-the-Curve Careers section, we describe 13 careers with a bright future that are too narrow or yet too small to be considered a Best Career. Examples: data miner, wellness coach, and, new this year, solar energy system technician.
A new section for 2009, Best-Kept Secret Careers, profiles 10 occupations that scored just below Best Career level but, because they're little known, may be easier to land a job in. Besides, we thought you'd enjoy hearing about the best careers you've never heard of. For example, do you know what a child-life specialist is? When a child faces an extended hospital stay, he's often greeted by a child-life specialist who helps acclimate the child to the hospital, role-plays scary medical procedures, gets the child some education, and injects, so to speak, a little fun into hospital life.
The Overrated Careers section profiles 13 careers that aren't bad, just overrated relative to their popular perception. Perhaps surprising inclusions: physician, lawyer, medical scientist, teacher, and chef. We deleted clinical psychologist from last year's list of overrated careers because ever more therapists are being trained in the more effective cognitive-behavioral approaches and because the recently passed Mental Health Parity Act could become be a full-employment act for psychologists. In place of clinical psychologist, we added farmer because growing numbers of people have romanticized visions of what it's like to run a small organic farm. For each overrated career, we suggest an alternative. For example, instead of being an attorney, consider being a mediator.
Career information changes rapidly, so all the career profiles in last year's package have been fully updated.
A Bit of Career Advice
Even if you or someone you love isn't looking for a new career, we hope you'll find the Best Careers 2009 package to be of value. It will bring you up to speed on today's and tomorrow's world of work and its most intriguing careers. That can be helpful in whatever occupation you're in.
And if you are searching for a new career, you're likely to find at least one worthy prospect among the 54 occupations profiled in the Best Careers 2009 package.
Choosing a career is one of life's most important decisions, so, of course, Best Careers 2009 is just a starting place. That's why each career's profile concludes with one or more websites and/or books for obtaining more information. You might also browse a textbook used in training for a candidate career. Would you be good at that stuff?
If none of the careers feel right, scan other annotated lists. For example, the Occupational Handbook consists of authoritative if dry few-page descriptions of 250-plus popular careers. The book, Cool Careers for Dummies (bias alert: I wrote it), contains lively but substantive one-paragraph introductions to 500-plus careers and self-employment opportunities, including many under-the-radar ones.
In the Ahead-of-the-Curve Careers section, we describe 13 careers with a bright future that are too narrow or yet too small to be considered a Best Career. Examples: data miner, wellness coach, and, new this year, solar energy system technician.
A new section for 2009, Best-Kept Secret Careers, profiles 10 occupations that scored just below Best Career level but, because they're little known, may be easier to land a job in. Besides, we thought you'd enjoy hearing about the best careers you've never heard of. For example, do you know what a child-life specialist is? When a child faces an extended hospital stay, he's often greeted by a child-life specialist who helps acclimate the child to the hospital, role-plays scary medical procedures, gets the child some education, and injects, so to speak, a little fun into hospital life.
The Overrated Careers section profiles 13 careers that aren't bad, just overrated relative to their popular perception. Perhaps surprising inclusions: physician, lawyer, medical scientist, teacher, and chef. We deleted clinical psychologist from last year's list of overrated careers because ever more therapists are being trained in the more effective cognitive-behavioral approaches and because the recently passed Mental Health Parity Act could become be a full-employment act for psychologists. In place of clinical psychologist, we added farmer because growing numbers of people have romanticized visions of what it's like to run a small organic farm. For each overrated career, we suggest an alternative. For example, instead of being an attorney, consider being a mediator.
Career information changes rapidly, so all the career profiles in last year's package have been fully updated.
A Bit of Career Advice
Even if you or someone you love isn't looking for a new career, we hope you'll find the Best Careers 2009 package to be of value. It will bring you up to speed on today's and tomorrow's world of work and its most intriguing careers. That can be helpful in whatever occupation you're in.
And if you are searching for a new career, you're likely to find at least one worthy prospect among the 54 occupations profiled in the Best Careers 2009 package.
Choosing a career is one of life's most important decisions, so, of course, Best Careers 2009 is just a starting place. That's why each career's profile concludes with one or more websites and/or books for obtaining more information. You might also browse a textbook used in training for a candidate career. Would you be good at that stuff?
If none of the careers feel right, scan other annotated lists. For example, the Occupational Handbook consists of authoritative if dry few-page descriptions of 250-plus popular careers. The book, Cool Careers for Dummies (bias alert: I wrote it), contains lively but substantive one-paragraph introductions to 500-plus careers and self-employment opportunities, including many under-the-radar ones.
When you've narrowed down to one or two candidate careers, visit a few practitioners at their workplace. Check out the feel of the place. Could you see yourself happy there? Also, ask probing questions like: "Would you walk me through your career from the moment you chose it up to today? What's good and bad about the career that might not appear in print? In the end, what ends up being key to being good at this career? Why do people leave this career?" For a final check on your No 1 candidate career, volunteer to work alongside someone in this career for at least a week.
If you're still excited about that career, you've probably found one in which you'll be happy, successful, and make a contribution to society. Congratulations!
6 Tips on Planning a Second Career
Moving into a new field later in life can be fulfilling. Here's how to do it
By Kerry Hannon
A New York investment banker becomes a small-town chef. A techie turns acupuncturist. An entrenched corporate exec accepts an early retirement package and converts to the ministry. Longer life spans, concerns about outliving retirement savings, and a desire to stay productive are inducing more and more workers nearing or in retirement to launch second careers.
As many as 8.4 million Americans between the ages of 44 and 70 have already launched "encore careers," positions that combine income with personal meaning and social impact, according to a recent survey on boomers, work, and aging by the MetLife Foundation and Civic Ventures, a San Francisco think tank. Of those workers surveyed who are not already in second careers, half are interested in them.
People are working well beyond the traditional mid-60s retirement age for a variety of reasons. "Very few retirees start a second career purely for the money," says Marc Freedman, founder and CEO of Civic Ventures and author of Encore: Finding Work That Matters in the Second Half of Life. "They're searching for work that is fulfilling and gets them out of bed in the morning." For some, the income is essential. For others, it's an added insurance policy against dwindling retirement accounts.
While many of these work transitions involve following a dream or a calling, you don't want to get caught up in the romance of it all. "There is a blitheness that all you have to do is embrace your passion and the rest happens magically," Freedman says. "It's not that easy. You don't open the doors to your bed-and-breakfast and the cheering crowds arrive." Here are six key steps to planning your next career.
1. Prepare yourself. Many people know they want to keep working or even need to, yet they wrestle with just what it is they're looking for in their job and life. Start by making an honest appraisal of your skills and interests. Much of what you already know is transferable to your next undertaking. The key is to match your next job or career to your interests and personality. To help get you started, toss around ideas for career alternatives with friends and family. Check out self-assessment quizzes at CareerPath.com and Monster.com's career advice section.
If you're not sure what you want to do, don't despair. "The hard part for some people is figuring out what it is that interests them," says Betsy Werley, executive director of the Transition Network, a New York City-based networking group for women over 50, which offers lectures on career change. "They dabble with vague ideas, but it's important to really work toward something to make it happen."
Many late-life career jumpers are eager to start their own entrepreneurial adventure. But if you aren't ready to put yourself out there financially or personally, that can be risky, Werley says. "It all comes down to your mind-set."
It's important not to think of your new career as a brief hiatus before you retire in earnest. Approach the venture as if you would be doing it for the next 10 or even 20 years, if you opt for an early retirement payout. It will take groundwork and fortitude to get it right. Ideally, you should plan this transition in your 50s and early 60s, before you leave your current job.
Things rarely fall into place right off the bat. The longer your time horizon is, the better your chances of success. You will have time to weather the setbacks and ups and downs of learning the ropes in a new field or even testing out a few careers before you find the one that clicks.
2. Research where the jobs are. It helps to look in fields where there's strong job growth. The current housing slump and economic uncertainty may make this a miserable time to try out a career in real estate or retail. But fields like healthcare, education (particularly preschool through 12th grade), and technical consulting services are growing rapidly, with new niches and specialties popping up all the time.
You'll find useful details about specific jobs in the Department of Labor's Occupational Outlook Handbook. In healthcare, for instance, there are home and personal care jobs helping people with special needs such as autistic children and Alzheimer's patients, as well as a growing need for elder care. The aging population is also driving up demand for nutritionists, physical therapists, speech and language specialists, and activity aides.
The need is such that it's not unusual to find streamlined training, including train-while-you-work positions, says Ellen Freudenheim, author of "The Boomers' Guide to Good Work," available at civicventures.org.You can also score flexible schedules and opportunities to run your own business. The latter might sound tempting, but many people who start their own businesses find themselves working longer hours than they ever did in their first career.
Careerbuilder.com is a great place to start your job search. But job sites for seniors like Workforce50.com, Seniors4Hire.org, RetiredBrains.com, and AARP's annual list of the Best Employers for Workers Over 50 can direct you to workplaces that are particularly friendly to aging boomers. You might also tap into the Encore career finder for openings at nonprofits. "Small and midsize companies typically are more likely to see you as an individual and value your experience than a large corporation," Werley says.
When it comes to getting a new job, be forewarned: Age discrimination is real. There's a perception that people over 50 or 60 will be just passing through as a transition into retirement. "Employers are loath to hire someone who they think will be out the door in a year or two," Freedman says.
3. Connect with a network. It helps to find a group of like-minded people who have already gone through late-life career change. You can learn from their firsthand experiences of how they made the move. It's critical to soak up as much as you can about the businesses that appeal to you. Talk with people who work in those fields. Apply for an internship or fellowship. Consider volunteering or moonlighting to get a sense of what the job entails.
Questions to ask: What are the challenges and rewards? How about pay, hours, and the work climate? What training or education will you need? What opportunities might be out there for someone with your background?
4. Upgrade your skills and education. Chances are you'll need to learn new skills and maybe even earn a degree in a new field. If possible, take mandatory courses before retiring or leaving your current job. Professional programs, grad schools, and community colleges offer evening and weekend classes that you can squeeze into your current schedule. Your current employer might pay part of the bill, but make sure you check the fine print; you might have to reimburse tuition expenses if you leave your job within a set time frame.
5. Evaluate your finances. Your new salary may be far less than you were earning in your first career if, say, you choose to work in a more philanthropic field or have a more flexible schedule. As a result, you may need to adjust your lifestyle if you're relying on the income for living expenses. If you're already receiving Social Security benefits, keep in mind that earning income may reduce them. If you decide to embark on an entrepreneurial path, you might have to dig into savings or even take out a loan for start-up expenditures. And it's quite possible that you could be saddled with a tuition bill or even go without income for a year or so while you gain necessary training for a new line of work.
If you're going back to school, seek financial aid. You don't need to be college age to get a subsidized loan—there's no age limit—and you're eligible as a part-time student, too. Scholarships and grants are available for older students. Try sites such as FastWeb.com to scout out what's available.
Take advantage of educational tax breaks. Depending on your income, you might qualify for the lifetime learning credit, worth up to $2,000 each year. If you make too much to qualify, you still might be able to claim a deduction associated with tuition and fees, up to $4,000. You can get details at IRS.gov or the tax benefits guide at NASFAA.org.
6. Don't let your age get in the way." I don't think it is ever too late to start a second career," Werley says. "The issue is not age but personal health, energy level, and having an entrepreneurial spirit." After all, you always have to be prepared to meet the challenge of selling yourself, whether you're starting anew as an employee or opening your own business.
Job Universe: Pilot
A career track with a bevy of options
The job: Pilots are highly trained professionals who fly either airplanes or helicopters to carry out a wide variety of tasks. Most are airline pilots, copilots, and flight engineers who transport passengers and cargo. However, 1 out of 5 pilots is a commercial pilot involved in dusting crops, spreading seed for reforestation, testing aircraft, flying passengers and cargo to areas not served by regular airlines, directing firefighting efforts, tracking criminals, monitoring traffic, and rescuing and evacuating injured persons.
Outlook: Employment of aircraft pilots and flight engineers is projected to grow 13 percent from 2006 to 2016, about as fast as the average for all occupations. Job opportunities are expected to continue to be better with the regional airlines and low-cost carriers, which are growing faster than the major airlines. Opportunities with air-cargo carriers also should rise because of increasing security requirements for shipping freight on passenger airlines, growth in electronic commerce, and increased demand for global freight. Business, corporate, and on-demand air taxi travel also should provide some new jobs for pilots.
Experience: All pilots who are paid to transport passengers or cargo must have a commercial pilot's license with an instrument rating issued by the FAA. Although some small airlines hire high school graduates, most airlines require at least two years of college and prefer to hire college graduates. Pilots also need flight experience to qualify for a license.
The not-so-good: Most pilots spend a considerable amount of time away from home because the majority of flights involve overnight layovers. Commercial pilots face other types of job hazards. The work of test pilots, who check the flight performance of new and experimental planes, may be dangerous. Pilots who are crop-dusters may be exposed to toxic chemicals and seldom have the benefit of a regular landing strip.
Helicopter pilots involved in rescue and police work may be subject to personal injury.
Pay: Earnings of aircraft pilots and flight engineers vary greatly depending on whether they work as airline or commercial pilots. Earnings depend on factors such as the type, size, and maximum speed of the plane and the number of hours and miles flown. For example, pilots who fly jet aircraft usually earn higher salaries than pilots who fly turboprops.
Learn more: http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos107.htm
This information is from the Occupational Outlook Handbook, published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
11 Best-Kept-Secret Careers
In a competitive environment, it's worth taking a look at these little-known jobs
By Marty Nemko
Job seekers have it tough in these troubled times, especially in going after big-name careers. It's a great time to consider these hidden gems, which score well on the Best Careers 2009 selection criteria.
The 11 Best-Kept-Secret Careers are:
Accent-reduction specialist
Casting director
Child life specialist
Creative perfumer
Health informatics specialist
Orthoptist
Orthotist/prosthetist
Program analyst
Program evaluator
Prospect researcher
Surgical technologist
Ahead-of-the-Curve Careers
Here's a look at 13 cutting-edge careers, viable now and poised for future growth
By Marty Nemko
Cutting-edge careers are often exciting, and they offer a strong job market. Alas, the cutting edge too often turns out to be the bleeding edge, so here are some careers that, while relatively new, are already viable and promise further growth. They emerge from six megatrends:
Growing healthcare demand. The already overtaxed U.S. healthcare system will be forced to take on more patients because of the many aging baby boomers, the influx of immigrants, and the millions of now uninsured Americans who would be covered under Barack Obama's promised healthcare proposals. Jobs should become more available in nearly all specialties, from nursing to coding, imaging to hospice. These healthcare careers are likely to be particularly rewarding. Health informatics specialists, for example, will develop expert systems to help doctors and nurses make evidence-based diagnoses and treatments. Hospitals, insurers, and patient families will hire patient advocates to navigate the labyrinthine and ever more parsimonious healthcare system. On the preventive side, people will move beyond personal trainers to wellness coaches, realizing that doing another 100 pushups won't help if they're smoking, boozing, and enduring more stress than a rat in an experiment.
The increasingly digitized world. Americans are doing more of their shopping on the Internet. We obtain more of our entertainment digitally: Computer games are no longer just for teenage boys; billions are spent by people of all ages and both sexes. Increasingly, we get our information from online publications (just look where you're reading this), increasingly viewed on iPhones and BlackBerrys. An under-the-radar career that is core to the digital enterprise is data miner. Online customers provide businesses with high-quality data on what to sell and how to individualize marketing.
Another star of the digitized world is simulation developer. Ever faster Internet connections are helping entertainment, education, and training to incorporate full-motion video simulations of exciting, often dangerous experiences. For example, virtual patients allow medical students to diagnose and treat without risking a real patient's life. A computer game, Spore, allows you to simulate creating a new planet, starting with the first microorganism.
Globalization, especially Asia's ascendancy. This should create great demand for business development specialists, helping U.S. companies create joint ventures with foreign firms. Once those deals are made, off-shoring managers are needed to oversee those collaborations and the growing number of off-shored jobs. Quietly, companies are off-shoring even work previously deemed too dependent on American culture to send elsewhere: innovation and market research, for example. Conversely, large numbers of people from impoverished countries are immigrating to the United States.
So, immigration specialists of all types, expert in everything from marketing to education to criminal justice, will be needed to attempt to accommodate the unprecedented in-migration.
The dawn of clinical genomics. Decades of basic research are finally starting to yield clinical implications. In 2007, it cost $1 million to fully sequence a person's genome. By mid-2009, Complete Genomics says it will do it for $5,000, and some experts predict that, within five years, the cost will decline to $100. That decline will greatly accelerate medical discoveries and already enables a person to determine if he or she is at increased risk of diabetes, cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer's, and 15 other conditions.
Within a decade, we will probably understand which genes predispose humans to everything from depression to violence, early death to centenarian longevity, retardation to genius. Such discoveries will likely give rise to ways to prevent or cure our dreaded predispositions and encourage those in which we'd delight. That, in turn, will bring about the reinvention of psychology, education, and, of course, medicine. In the meantime, the unsung heroes who will bring this true revolution to pass will include computational biologists and behavioral geneticists.
Environmentalism. Alarm about global warming has made environmentalism this generation's dominant initiative. The environmental wave is creating jobs in everything from sales to accounting in companies making green products, regulatory positions in government, and grant writing, fundraising, and litigation work in nonprofits. Among the more interesting green careers, engineers are working on such projects as hydrogen-powered cars, more efficient solar cells, and coal pollution sequestration systems. But those jobs require very high-level training and skills and are at risk of being off-shored. In contrast, the so-called green collar specialist is off-shore resistant and often needs less demanding training (for example, learning how to do green-building audits). Hands-on greenies might consider a career as a solar installer, a career that will likely enjoy increased demand because of government tax incentives.
Terrorism. The expert consensus is that the United States will again fall victim to a major terrorist attack. Jobs in the antiterrorism field have already mushroomed since 9/11, but if another attack were to occur, even more jobs would surely be generated.
Demand should particularly grow in such areas as computer security and Islamic-country intelligence, but their required skill sets are difficult to acquire. More accessible yet also likely to be in demand is emergency planning.
For more career options, consult U.S. News profiles of 30 Best Careers.
Best Careers 2009
What's new in 2009...and some advice on picking a career
By Marty Nemko
In the Ahead-of-the-Curve Careers section, we describe 13 careers with a bright future that are too narrow or yet too small to be considered a Best Career. Examples: data miner, wellness coach, and, new this year, solar energy system technician.
A new section for 2009, Best-Kept Secret Careers, profiles 10 occupations that scored just below Best Career level but, because they're little known, may be easier to land a job in. Besides, we thought you'd enjoy hearing about the best careers you've never heard of. For example, do you know what a child-life specialist is? When a child faces an extended hospital stay, he's often greeted by a child-life specialist who helps acclimate the child to the hospital, role-plays scary medical procedures, gets the child some education, and injects, so to speak, a little fun into hospital life.
The Overrated Careers section profiles 13 careers that aren't bad, just overrated relative to their popular perception. Perhaps surprising inclusions: physician, lawyer, medical scientist, teacher, and chef. We deleted clinical psychologist from last year's list of overrated careers because ever more therapists are being trained in the more effective cognitive-behavioral approaches and because the recently passed Mental Health Parity Act could become be a full-employment act for psychologists. In place of clinical psychologist, we added farmer because growing numbers of people have romanticized visions of what it's like to run a small organic farm. For each overrated career, we suggest an alternative. For example, instead of being an attorney, consider being a mediator.
Career information changes rapidly, so all the career profiles in last year's package have been fully updated.
A Bit of Career Advice
Even if you or someone you love isn't looking for a new career, we hope you'll find the Best Careers 2009 package to be of value. It will bring you up to speed on today's and tomorrow's world of work and its most intriguing careers. That can be helpful in whatever occupation you're in.
And if you are searching for a new career, you're likely to find at least one worthy prospect among the 54 occupations profiled in the Best Careers 2009 package.
Choosing a career is one of life's most important decisions, so, of course, Best Careers 2009 is just a starting place. That's why each career's profile concludes with one or more websites and/or books for obtaining more information. You might also browse a textbook used in training for a candidate career. Would you be good at that stuff?
If none of the careers feel right, scan other annotated lists. For example, the Occupational Handbook consists of authoritative if dry few-page descriptions of 250-plus popular careers. The book, Cool Careers for Dummies (bias alert: I wrote it), contains lively but substantive one-paragraph introductions to 500-plus careers and self-employment opportunities, including many under-the-radar ones.
In the Ahead-of-the-Curve Careers section, we describe 13 careers with a bright future that are too narrow or yet too small to be considered a Best Career. Examples: data miner, wellness coach, and, new this year, solar energy system technician.
A new section for 2009, Best-Kept Secret Careers, profiles 10 occupations that scored just below Best Career level but, because they're little known, may be easier to land a job in. Besides, we thought you'd enjoy hearing about the best careers you've never heard of. For example, do you know what a child-life specialist is? When a child faces an extended hospital stay, he's often greeted by a child-life specialist who helps acclimate the child to the hospital, role-plays scary medical procedures, gets the child some education, and injects, so to speak, a little fun into hospital life.
The Overrated Careers section profiles 13 careers that aren't bad, just overrated relative to their popular perception. Perhaps surprising inclusions: physician, lawyer, medical scientist, teacher, and chef. We deleted clinical psychologist from last year's list of overrated careers because ever more therapists are being trained in the more effective cognitive-behavioral approaches and because the recently passed Mental Health Parity Act could become be a full-employment act for psychologists. In place of clinical psychologist, we added farmer because growing numbers of people have romanticized visions of what it's like to run a small organic farm. For each overrated career, we suggest an alternative. For example, instead of being an attorney, consider being a mediator.
Career information changes rapidly, so all the career profiles in last year's package have been fully updated.
A Bit of Career Advice
Even if you or someone you love isn't looking for a new career, we hope you'll find the Best Careers 2009 package to be of value. It will bring you up to speed on today's and tomorrow's world of work and its most intriguing careers. That can be helpful in whatever occupation you're in.
And if you are searching for a new career, you're likely to find at least one worthy prospect among the 54 occupations profiled in the Best Careers 2009 package.
Choosing a career is one of life's most important decisions, so, of course, Best Careers 2009 is just a starting place. That's why each career's profile concludes with one or more websites and/or books for obtaining more information. You might also browse a textbook used in training for a candidate career. Would you be good at that stuff?
If none of the careers feel right, scan other annotated lists. For example, the Occupational Handbook consists of authoritative if dry few-page descriptions of 250-plus popular careers. The book, Cool Careers for Dummies (bias alert: I wrote it), contains lively but substantive one-paragraph introductions to 500-plus careers and self-employment opportunities, including many under-the-radar ones.
When you've narrowed down to one or two candidate careers, visit a few practitioners at their workplace. Check out the feel of the place. Could you see yourself happy there? Also, ask probing questions like: "Would you walk me through your career from the moment you chose it up to today? What's good and bad about the career that might not appear in print? In the end, what ends up being key to being good at this career? Why do people leave this career?" For a final check on your No 1 candidate career, volunteer to work alongside someone in this career for at least a week.
If you're still excited about that career, you've probably found one in which you'll be happy, successful, and make a contribution to society. Congratulations!
6 Tips on Planning a Second Career
Moving into a new field later in life can be fulfilling. Here's how to do it
By Kerry Hannon
A New York investment banker becomes a small-town chef. A techie turns acupuncturist. An entrenched corporate exec accepts an early retirement package and converts to the ministry. Longer life spans, concerns about outliving retirement savings, and a desire to stay productive are inducing more and more workers nearing or in retirement to launch second careers.
As many as 8.4 million Americans between the ages of 44 and 70 have already launched "encore careers," positions that combine income with personal meaning and social impact, according to a recent survey on boomers, work, and aging by the MetLife Foundation and Civic Ventures, a San Francisco think tank. Of those workers surveyed who are not already in second careers, half are interested in them.
People are working well beyond the traditional mid-60s retirement age for a variety of reasons. "Very few retirees start a second career purely for the money," says Marc Freedman, founder and CEO of Civic Ventures and author of Encore: Finding Work That Matters in the Second Half of Life. "They're searching for work that is fulfilling and gets them out of bed in the morning." For some, the income is essential. For others, it's an added insurance policy against dwindling retirement accounts.
While many of these work transitions involve following a dream or a calling, you don't want to get caught up in the romance of it all. "There is a blitheness that all you have to do is embrace your passion and the rest happens magically," Freedman says. "It's not that easy. You don't open the doors to your bed-and-breakfast and the cheering crowds arrive." Here are six key steps to planning your next career.
1. Prepare yourself. Many people know they want to keep working or even need to, yet they wrestle with just what it is they're looking for in their job and life. Start by making an honest appraisal of your skills and interests. Much of what you already know is transferable to your next undertaking. The key is to match your next job or career to your interests and personality. To help get you started, toss around ideas for career alternatives with friends and family. Check out self-assessment quizzes at CareerPath.com and Monster.com's career advice section.
If you're not sure what you want to do, don't despair. "The hard part for some people is figuring out what it is that interests them," says Betsy Werley, executive director of the Transition Network, a New York City-based networking group for women over 50, which offers lectures on career change. "They dabble with vague ideas, but it's important to really work toward something to make it happen."
Many late-life career jumpers are eager to start their own entrepreneurial adventure. But if you aren't ready to put yourself out there financially or personally, that can be risky, Werley says. "It all comes down to your mind-set."
It's important not to think of your new career as a brief hiatus before you retire in earnest. Approach the venture as if you would be doing it for the next 10 or even 20 years, if you opt for an early retirement payout. It will take groundwork and fortitude to get it right. Ideally, you should plan this transition in your 50s and early 60s, before you leave your current job.
Things rarely fall into place right off the bat. The longer your time horizon is, the better your chances of success. You will have time to weather the setbacks and ups and downs of learning the ropes in a new field or even testing out a few careers before you find the one that clicks.
2. Research where the jobs are. It helps to look in fields where there's strong job growth. The current housing slump and economic uncertainty may make this a miserable time to try out a career in real estate or retail. But fields like healthcare, education (particularly preschool through 12th grade), and technical consulting services are growing rapidly, with new niches and specialties popping up all the time.
You'll find useful details about specific jobs in the Department of Labor's Occupational Outlook Handbook. In healthcare, for instance, there are home and personal care jobs helping people with special needs such as autistic children and Alzheimer's patients, as well as a growing need for elder care. The aging population is also driving up demand for nutritionists, physical therapists, speech and language specialists, and activity aides.
The need is such that it's not unusual to find streamlined training, including train-while-you-work positions, says Ellen Freudenheim, author of "The Boomers' Guide to Good Work," available at civicventures.org.You can also score flexible schedules and opportunities to run your own business. The latter might sound tempting, but many people who start their own businesses find themselves working longer hours than they ever did in their first career.
Careerbuilder.com is a great place to start your job search. But job sites for seniors like Workforce50.com, Seniors4Hire.org, RetiredBrains.com, and AARP's annual list of the Best Employers for Workers Over 50 can direct you to workplaces that are particularly friendly to aging boomers. You might also tap into the Encore career finder for openings at nonprofits. "Small and midsize companies typically are more likely to see you as an individual and value your experience than a large corporation," Werley says.
When it comes to getting a new job, be forewarned: Age discrimination is real. There's a perception that people over 50 or 60 will be just passing through as a transition into retirement. "Employers are loath to hire someone who they think will be out the door in a year or two," Freedman says.
3. Connect with a network. It helps to find a group of like-minded people who have already gone through late-life career change. You can learn from their firsthand experiences of how they made the move. It's critical to soak up as much as you can about the businesses that appeal to you. Talk with people who work in those fields. Apply for an internship or fellowship. Consider volunteering or moonlighting to get a sense of what the job entails.
Questions to ask: What are the challenges and rewards? How about pay, hours, and the work climate? What training or education will you need? What opportunities might be out there for someone with your background?
4. Upgrade your skills and education. Chances are you'll need to learn new skills and maybe even earn a degree in a new field. If possible, take mandatory courses before retiring or leaving your current job. Professional programs, grad schools, and community colleges offer evening and weekend classes that you can squeeze into your current schedule. Your current employer might pay part of the bill, but make sure you check the fine print; you might have to reimburse tuition expenses if you leave your job within a set time frame.
5. Evaluate your finances. Your new salary may be far less than you were earning in your first career if, say, you choose to work in a more philanthropic field or have a more flexible schedule. As a result, you may need to adjust your lifestyle if you're relying on the income for living expenses. If you're already receiving Social Security benefits, keep in mind that earning income may reduce them. If you decide to embark on an entrepreneurial path, you might have to dig into savings or even take out a loan for start-up expenditures. And it's quite possible that you could be saddled with a tuition bill or even go without income for a year or so while you gain necessary training for a new line of work.
If you're going back to school, seek financial aid. You don't need to be college age to get a subsidized loan—there's no age limit—and you're eligible as a part-time student, too. Scholarships and grants are available for older students. Try sites such as FastWeb.com to scout out what's available.
Take advantage of educational tax breaks. Depending on your income, you might qualify for the lifetime learning credit, worth up to $2,000 each year. If you make too much to qualify, you still might be able to claim a deduction associated with tuition and fees, up to $4,000. You can get details at IRS.gov or the tax benefits guide at NASFAA.org.
6. Don't let your age get in the way." I don't think it is ever too late to start a second career," Werley says. "The issue is not age but personal health, energy level, and having an entrepreneurial spirit." After all, you always have to be prepared to meet the challenge of selling yourself, whether you're starting anew as an employee or opening your own business.
Job Universe: Pilot
A career track with a bevy of options
The job: Pilots are highly trained professionals who fly either airplanes or helicopters to carry out a wide variety of tasks. Most are airline pilots, copilots, and flight engineers who transport passengers and cargo. However, 1 out of 5 pilots is a commercial pilot involved in dusting crops, spreading seed for reforestation, testing aircraft, flying passengers and cargo to areas not served by regular airlines, directing firefighting efforts, tracking criminals, monitoring traffic, and rescuing and evacuating injured persons.
Outlook: Employment of aircraft pilots and flight engineers is projected to grow 13 percent from 2006 to 2016, about as fast as the average for all occupations. Job opportunities are expected to continue to be better with the regional airlines and low-cost carriers, which are growing faster than the major airlines. Opportunities with air-cargo carriers also should rise because of increasing security requirements for shipping freight on passenger airlines, growth in electronic commerce, and increased demand for global freight. Business, corporate, and on-demand air taxi travel also should provide some new jobs for pilots.
Experience: All pilots who are paid to transport passengers or cargo must have a commercial pilot's license with an instrument rating issued by the FAA. Although some small airlines hire high school graduates, most airlines require at least two years of college and prefer to hire college graduates. Pilots also need flight experience to qualify for a license.
The not-so-good: Most pilots spend a considerable amount of time away from home because the majority of flights involve overnight layovers. Commercial pilots face other types of job hazards. The work of test pilots, who check the flight performance of new and experimental planes, may be dangerous. Pilots who are crop-dusters may be exposed to toxic chemicals and seldom have the benefit of a regular landing strip.
Helicopter pilots involved in rescue and police work may be subject to personal injury.
Pay: Earnings of aircraft pilots and flight engineers vary greatly depending on whether they work as airline or commercial pilots. Earnings depend on factors such as the type, size, and maximum speed of the plane and the number of hours and miles flown. For example, pilots who fly jet aircraft usually earn higher salaries than pilots who fly turboprops.
Learn more: http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos107.htm
This information is from the Occupational Outlook Handbook, published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
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