Will you be happy to find a well-paying job?
April 24, 2009 by admin
Filed under Job Search
Kathleen asked:
Hi,
I have a BA in French and am an alternate route candidate for elementary education teaching. I also have a BA in Baking and Pastry.
Right now I work for a engineering company as an inside technical sales rep.
The problems are:
1 – I’m not getting paid well and I’m not happy at my office job.
2 – I keep applying for teaching jobs and noone will hire me because I’m doing Alternate Route.
3 – I keep looking for pastry job positions, but the pay isn’t enough for me to live on.
Serious help, please. I just want to be happy with what I do and have enough money to survive. I’m not asking to be rich, just happy!
Any hints or tips on what career would help me or where I should be finding them? Newspapers and online career sites aren’t cutting it!
Thank you!
Best Answer:
What a diverse background!
Teaching:
Depending on where you live, the market for teachers varies a LOT. In the Las Vegas area, they don’t seem to mind Alternate Route. Try registering to do temp/fill in teaching. If you are able to get a few weeks worth of in-class experience, most places will overlook how you got them! (of course, this may require you to be suddenly sick at work … not that I would ever suggest such a thing!) Also – pay rates aren’t usually that great – are you sure you could live on this?
Pastry:
You could see if you could do this part-time to start (weekends/evenings maybe? Catering/Events?) This would give you a chance to build your reputation and be able to ask for more $$. You might check around on www.hospitality.net
Finally, just in general, while it’s great to have diverse interests, it sounds like you studied stuff you liked – then after wards tried to figure out how to apply it. Which doesn’t necessarily work out.
You might consider doing some assessment testing (Meyers-Briggs is the big name in this arena) and see what strengths/weaknesses line up with what kinds of work – then, look at the career fields that are suggested.
Figure out what the job market is like before embarking on furthering your education. Sometimes these kinds of tests are offered at local community colleges (or mini versions are linked off of Monster.com)