Kitabı oku: «Cool Careers»

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Introduction

Part One

Is it time for a cool career?

Part Two

1. In the know

I can keep a secret

I want to be the first to know

I want to get to grips with evidence

2. Past, present and future

I like to live in the future

I like to live in the past

I want to do something this century

I want to have retro cool

3. Outside the mainstream

I don’t want to war a suit and tie

I want every day to be a little different

4. Adrenalin charged

I am driven and ambitious

I want a life on the edge

5. People love

I like to understand people and know what makes them tick

I want to help people change their lives

I love children

I want to make people look or feel better

6. Saving the world

I love the planet

I want to save the people of the world

Animals are my friends

I love exotic animals most of all

7. Sense-able

Sound strikes a chord with me

Taste and smell make me feel good

I want to create something beautiful

8. Living off your wits

I want to look at the big picture

I am fascinated by words and language

9. Down and dirty

I like to get my hands dirty

I like things as much as (or more than) people

I want to make money from my body

10. Striking it Rich

I don’t care what I do, just show me the money

I deserve a six (or seven) figure salary

What I really want is the champagne lifestyle

I want the celebrity life by proxy

11. Up front and out there

I want to schmooze for a living

I love to show off

12. Different from the rest

The unconventional cool 100

Index

Keep Reading

Copyright

About the Publisher

Introduction

Have you ever wanted a different career? Something a little bit different, something fun and exciting? Or that sounds as if it will really keep you interested and happy?

‘If you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life.’ Or so the old saying goes. When you have a career you really love doing, your life as a whole becomes immeasurably happier.

David is a lucky man in the eyes of many of his friends. He directs films for a living. It has taken him a long time to find a career he really loves. First he was a barman, then a professional limousine driver, briefly an electrician and, for several years, a cameraman and freelance assistant director. Finally, he started making music videos as a freelance director and now he makes films. The world of film is undoubtedly cool but, more importantly, he thinks it’s cool. For many years he followed a career path that wasn’t exciting, fun or interesting. Now he is fortunate, or clever enough just to fix his eyes on doing something he truly loves.

Your career, like David’s, is for you alone. A cool career will transcend the mere idea of work and become a job that you can be really passionate about. There really are no obstacles out there that you can’t find your way around. You have to love what you do and go for what you want to do in your life.

Cool Careers contains lots of ideas for some of the coolest and most fascinating careers on the planet right now. There are thousands of careers out there. Most conventional career guides only touch on the headline careers. The aim of Cool Careers is to tease out the little ones … the interesting jobs that you usually only discover when you have been working for a while.

It is not always easy to decide what career you might like. How should you make the decision? Based on what your friends do? Based on what you have done in your life so far? On your current qualifications or skills?

Well, if you are content with any old job, so be it. But if, on the other hand, you are looking for a career that will keep you fascinated, then this is the book for you.

This book came about because, over the last ten years, I have met hundreds of people who were seeking a career. I kept being asked the same question, ‘How do I find a truly satisfying career?’

Some were graduates taking their first steps on the career ladder. Some had lost their job and needed a new one. Many, though, had already held down a job or two before realising that they want something bigger, perhaps better paid, different, more exciting, with more free time or more of a challenge. Many simply felt that their career didn’t really express who they were. They just knew something wasn’t right.

In other words, what they were looking for was not just any old career but a really cool career.

What is a cool career?

Undoubtedly, there are some careers that lots of people in the world think are cool. Others are only considered cool by a select few.

A cool career is basically a career that is in a cool area or is simply cool itself. It is a career that is ‘a little bit more’ or ‘much more’ off the beaten track than the average.

Anybody can get a career. However, if you are creative or unconventional, if you want to do what you love and maybe even inspire others to do what they love, you probably are really looking for a cool career.

If so, look no further. This book contains around 500 of the coolest careers in existence today.

How do I use this book?

Cool Careers is deliberately not laid out like a conventional career guide, even though it contains plenty of ideas to stimulate your thinking about your future career.

This is not an A to Z career guide. A career is not simply something you should pick off the shelf like a tin of baked beans. It is what you are going to spend most of your time doing for the rest of your life!

Yes, you can find lists of careers here. Yes, you can find guidance and career definitions. But you will also find ways of thinking about career choices that are deliberately random and unstructured in order to stimulate your thinking about what matters to you in making your own choice.

Part One of the book takes a brief look at why and how you might find your own cool career – particularly in a rapidly moving global culture. Part Two is full of lists. The lists are selected to fit only one criteria – the areas they cover, and the careers they contain, are cool. See what catches your eye. Pick the book up, scan through it and get some ideas for what you want to do. You can read it all the way through or dip into the odd list.

This is not a definitive guide to every career out there, just the coolest around. Take your time, stimulate your thinking, come up with your own ideas and go and find yourself a really cool career …

Part One

Is it time for a cool career?
So what is cool?

How many of the following words would you use to describe your thoughts and feelings about your current choice of career?

Exciting

Aspirational

Free

Fun

Happy

Easy

Love

Unusual

Powerful

Challenging

Totally me

Joyful

Profitable

If you don’t think any of the above apply, you definitely don’t have a cool career. If you do, you think it’s cool, and it shouldn’t really matter whether other people do too.

Cool careers

You will find many examples of cool careers in the lists in Part Two of the book. Every one of these careers is being done by somebody somewhere. Some careers are so unusual that there is only one person in the world with that job title. Others are derivations of more normal careers, with a twist that makes them much cooler.

Am I ready to be cool?

In each chapter there are examples of careers within the area with varying degrees of cool. It’s up to you how cool a career you choose to pursue. You may agree or disagree with the classifications. It’s true that cool is a very subjective idea. It doesn’t matter if your friends think that you are making eccentric or frivolous choices – let your deepest interests guide you.

Types of career cool

Some areas of work are themselves so cool that any career within them qualifies as a cool career. Creative careers are cool simply because of rarity value; not all of us are creative, so having any creative career is to be recognised as a member of an exclusive club. More recently, green or ethical careers are seen as being very cool.

However, a cool career doesn’t have to be fashionable to be cool. You are ultimately the judge. Difference, exclusivity, eccentricity or an ordinary career in an obscure location can all be enough.

Do I have a cool career?

Possibly – you may indeed have a cool career right now. There is ultimately only one way to know. When you have a cool career, you’ll be proud to tell people what you do at parties. You’ll be one of those people others come up to and say, ‘Can you help me get a job like yours?’ And, more often than not, ‘How did you find out about that career – you lucky *!@@@””$%^&*?’ At which, of course, you will just nod sagely … and quietly hand them your copy of Cool Careers.

Why do you need a cool career?
COOL CAREERS ARE SO THIS CENTURY

In communist China in the 20th century there was an expression to describe the idea of a job for life – the ‘iron rice bowl’. You turned up for work, didn’t always do much but got paid, turned up again, and again, and again, retired, and died. Great for filling in time, but not very cool.

That was the extreme side of work but, even in most of the capitalist West, your parents and grandparents could expect a long career without the need to find a new job. The arrival of the 21st century has changed this world of work. Most of us will have numerous jobs during our lifetime. The conventional career structure with its planned, regular promotions and salary rises is disappearing. This has led to loss of security for many, but, at the same time, does allow us all to get more creative about our careers.

Many of the jobs out there didn’t exist twenty, ten or even two or three years ago. Some may be variations of existing jobs that have been given a modern twist.

For example, there have always been private detectives, but not until recently internet detectives doing purely internet-based investigations. There have always been interior designers, but how many in the past specialised in using feng shui principles in their work?

START THINKING COOL

The 21st century workplace is an arena of uncertainty. The modern workplace will continue to shift and change as new opportunities open up all over the world and new technologies change the shape of companies and careers.

You will need to learn new skills throughout your life and be in charge of your own self-development. Although companies will invest in training their employees, you will be expected to add value in return, keeping up with the pace of change. You are likely to change employers so, even if you are employed, think of yourself as your own self-employed business.

What we want from work is changing too. More of us expect fulfilment at work; we want to be stimulated. If we are bored we will just change careers. Self-realisation is also big this century. Many of us want work–life balance or autonomous work. Some of us want it all, and now: wealth, power and happiness. We have to be prepared to learn skills in our spare time as well as at work to achieve high employability.

All this adds up to the arrival of new types of career. Not all of them are cool, but some of them are very cool!

Ten good reasons why you need a cool career right now

Change is afoot. If you don’t take these factors into account when thinking about your career you could get left behind in a dead-end job or, worse still, become unemployable.

1. Only you are in charge of your career. This is the age of self-responsibility. We each need to take charge of our careers. A career for life will no longer be handed to us on a plate. You need a career you can really embrace with gusto and commitment.

2. Building a lifetime brand – you, inc. Think carefully about every choice you make. Your career choices sell you not only on your experience but, in effect, as a brand. Your CV is not a history of your background as much as a personal marketing document. The cooler the careers on your CV, the more you will be worth as a ‘name-brand’ in the market place – this will give you longevity and reward in your career.

3. Your expectations. We expect our personal life to provide us with enjoyment and meaning. This has now extended to work-life. A good pay cheque alone is no longer sufficient as a measurement of personal satisfaction. Our own personal definition of coolness is part of the package we expect to get with our jobs.

4. New working patterns and opportunities. Nine to five working days are no longer the norm for the whole workforce. There are new ways of working that allow more portfolio careers, short-term contracting, interim employment, telework and self-employment. This gives you more opportunities to choose a cool career.

5. New technologies. Technology is cool. It has given us all the flexibility and freedom to work from home as well as from an office. It has also potentially given us more control over our own time and allowed each of us to be more creative and expressive. We can write our own blogs, set up small businesses on the internet and communicate overseas. It is only in the last few years, for example, that people have actually been able to make their living as eBay traders.

6. Growth of the service economy. The changes in the West towards service-based economies allow us to create new services for others that have not previously been thought of. Who would have thought a few years ago that personal concierge services for the megarich could provide a career? The fastest growing industries could be, for example, personal services, leisure, business and financial services, hospitality and health care. What career could you choose to fit the trends of this century?

7. Personal meaning. This century’s expectation is that we ‘should’ and ‘can’ express our own values and interests in the work we do. If we can’t, we generally expect to change jobs. Choose a career that you consider cool. That choice is available to you.

8. Self-empowerment and lifelong learning are valued. The expectation now exists that we can, and will, change career more than once, so we gain the ability to develop different skills by working in more than one environment or industry. It is OK to choose not just one, but several, cool careers that appeal to you.

9. You are a business. Working in a big, hierarchical company no longer needs to be the norm. We can all set ourselves up as independent entrepreneurs providing a service to others. Ideas and creativity will lead you to establish your unusually cool career.

10. Globalisation. The 21st-century world is one of international movement. We no longer need to work only in the country we grew up in. We can have flexible career plans that include a period of experience overseas that will be valued when we return home. Broaden your thinking. Cool Careers is full of ideas that will take you across the world rather than just on a short commute to a dull grey office block. Think laterally, and find a very cool career.