For a lot of people starting off in the world of work or looking for a new career, financial rewards are not the number one thing they are looking for. Instead, they want a job that provides a sense of personal satisfaction through the feeling of helping others. There are a whole host of options out there that put you in direct contact with those in need, whether this is through healthcare, education, charity or another option. And then there are the jobs that provide a broader contribution to society including science and engineering. So, let’s go through a list of potential options if you are looking for a job that prioritizes helping others.
Teaching and Education
Education is a broad field that gives you the opportunity to impart your skills and knowledge onto others, whether these are children or adults. Beyond the traditional primary and secondary school paths, there are also opportunities to teach at further education colleges or else children with special needs. There are also opportunities such as youth work, childcare, becoming a teaching assistant or to teach chemistry online. Essentially, the knowledge that you are having a direct impact on people’s lives and you are helping them to develop themselves is immensely rewarding.
Nursing and Healthcare
As well as being a career path that is rewarding, nursing is also a field that is always looking for new staff members, so there will be no shortage of job opportunities. Beyond the range of hospital jobs that you can choose from, you could also find yourself working in a GP surgery, adult care centres or people’s homes, to name a few. The launch of the nursing degree apprenticeship has been designed to make the career easier for people to enter, but obtaining a degree is still required to progress in this field. Otherwise, there are plenty of other careers in healthcare apart from being a nurse including physiotherapy, midwifery or pharmacy.
Senior care
Senior care could be another rewarding career to consider if you enjoy helping others. This involves looking after elderly individuals with mobility issues or mentally degenerative issues that find it hard to look after themselves. You can find job vacancies through sites like Care.com. This includes live-in career jobs and care home vacancies. There are typically no qualifications required to get into this line of work – unless you’re exploring certain areas of palliative care.
Medicine
Although it takes a great deal of hard work and commitment to enter this career path in the first place, there is no doubt that working in medicine is one of the most rewarding options out there. After all, you are helping people with their most important commodity; life. As well as becoming involved in the day to day treatment of patients, there is also the option to go into the research side of the field and help develop groundbreaking medicine. And there are also a wide range of medical specialisms to choose from so you can decide on one that perfectly suits your interests. On the down side, this tends to be a very demanding option that requires a lot of dedication to the role which can often impact work-life balance.
Social Work
Social work is a career that brings you into direct contact with some of the most vulnerable people in society. Some of the most common include elderly people, adults with mental health issues and people with learning difficulties. You will probably be required to get involved in some very tough situations including child protection, adoption or working with offenders. To become a full social worker, you will need to obtain a degree, but there are other non-degree options that give you the opportunity to work in this field in other capacities. On the downside, many of these jobs come along with high levels of stress and the need to work in some very challenging situations which some people struggle to deal with.
Emergency Services
Composed of the police, ambulance and fire and rescue, the emergency services are three different career paths that have in common that they all directly respond to people in their time of need. These tend to be very community-oriented jobs, as well as ones in which the tasks vary greatly. There are a wide range of different options and entry levels for each of the three sectors we have mentioned. The downside is that the working hours tend to be unstable and you are also likely to find yourself working on call. But there is also a great sense of satisfaction in knowing that you are making a genuine difference to society.
Charity Careers
There are all kinds of career paths that are directly linked to the charity sector from fundraising to marketing. You may find yourself directly interacting with people or you may be in a more office-based role, but either way, you will have the knowledge that you are closely involved in helping others. Jobs are open for both graduates and non-graduates, and there are also plenty of voluntary opportunities as well. If you know that you are directly involved in a field that you are passionate about, this is a fantastic and motivating feeling that can give you immense job satisfaction. You may have to work your way up from the bottom to get there or come into the sector from a different career path entirely.
The career paths we have talked about are just some of the potential options you have if you are looking to get into a career that involves helping others. While some require a great deal of training and study, others can be entered at any stage. Essentially, you should think about where your passions lie before matching yourself up to one of these options. It may be that you want to come into contact with people directly and feel like you are helping people in this way. It may be that you like the idea of contributing to wider societal changes that help people in the long-run. Whatever the case, many people find that personal rewards and job satisfaction from one of these types of careers outweigh the financial incentives of other paths. However, if you work your way up, you still have the opportunity to strike the perfect balance of finding a job that is rewarding in both senses of the word.