I’m on a million job lists. When I started planning to quit, I had already looked for and even interviewed for some jobs in my field–English professorships and/or instructional technology. So I had those lists/searches and still do. After I quit, though I decided that doing my own thing was the way to go for the foreseeable future, I didn’t want to close off any options. So I subscribed to different lists–things coming from craigslist, a local cultural jobs site, and a general search that included words like “writing,” “technology,” and “blogs.” I see a lot of interesting and sad things. Some observations:
- Jobs in my field are increasingly more like A/V tech than anything to do with education
- Part-time jobs are available if you want to work the desk at a museum or theatre or be a juggler/clown
- There are plenty of jobs for technical/medical writers
- There are plenty of jobs writing proposals of various kinds–sales, grants, etc.
- There are jobs writing curriculum that pay less than minimum wage
- Blogging jobs, ditto. ($2/500 wds.)
- Crappy programming jobs are plentiful and pay well, but probably suck the life force out of you.
- Most of the faculty jobs I see are in the medical field.
- I often see lots of the same positions offered by the same company–big red flag.
If I were really looking for employment seriously, I’d be more focused about my search and probably use good old-fashioned networking in addition to these lists. It’s been interesting to see at least a slice of both where the jobs are and what jobs actually pay a decent salary.
Related posts:
- Springpad Organization tool
- Writing for Nothing, Writing for Next to Nothing
- Opportunity Knocks
- The Body as a Site of Competition
- Calling David Allen
From the perspective of someone who may be attempting to emulate your background and experience over the next few years… this isn’t very encouraging.
Sorry.
Actually, there are some really interesting internships and part-time jobs geared toward recent grads. And your background is probably more solid than mine. I don’t have the ability, for example, to go do research in my field except as faculty, whereas you could probably do research at a think-tank or even in the corporate world thanks to your social science background.
No need to apologize! It’s just a reality check, which is always good. I’m still on the fence about what level of graduate degree I need, so this gives me some food for thought.