The 5 Best (High-Paying) Jobs for Career Changers in 2019
Changing your career can be one of the most daunting, but rewarding, decisions you make in your professional life. Your first job often dictates much of your career and it doesn’t seem like many people believe their first job is their dream job. Everyone who changes their career decides to do so for a very personal reason, but there are some standard categories. LinkedIn surveyed over 10,000 people and found the most common complaints that led to a job change were:
- Lack of career advancement
- Poor senior leadership
- Unhappiness with work culture
- Wanting more of a challenge
- Dissatisfaction with their current salary
Sound familiar? It’s easy to identify with the above categories at some point in your life, and for some that’s enough to make the switch! The adage of “fortune favors the bold” certainly applies to career changers and, in particular, benefits those who see a salary bump after doing so. Ever heard of compound interest? It applies just as much to your future salaries as it does to your stock portfolio.
An increase to your salary of just $10,000 (fairly easy to accomplish from changing your career or company) will net you an extra $490,000 over a 30 year career).
Even if you take a bit of a pay cut for your first role in a new vertical, be sure to pay attention to the average and median salaries of that roles to predict your future earnings. It definitely pays to think a few years in advance when changing careers.
Despite all of the above benefits, deciding to change careers is often seen as risky and can lead to a whole host of insecurities. Changing careers, like everything else, isn’t a guaranteed way to find a better job — not to mention it’s difficult to stop working somewhere that pays the bills. As it turns out, the most common fears that keep people from changing careers really aren’t all that surprising:
- Fear of not finding a job
- Concerns that past experience won’t apply
- Not wanting to spend time learning a new skill
- Difficulty in deciding to make a major life change
To be more realistic for the average career changer, the focus here is on positions that require almost zero industry experience and have an educational ramp time of one year or less. The positions in this article were chosen based off of an evaluation of 4 criteria, ranked as Poor, Good, or Great. These criteria are:
- Number of Job Openings (over the next 10 year period)
- Salary (Starting Salary as well as Median Salary )
- Skill Acquisition Difficulty
- Ease of Industry Access
Let’s dive in! 🚀
Software Engineer
As the darlings of Silicon Valley and the fastest growing position on this list, Software Engineers are known for being in high demand. Most companies need Software Engineers to build their websites, internal tools, and database infrastructure. Software Engineers write code to accomplish these tasks and can specialize in any of hundreds of programming languages. Many of the most famous tech titans (Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak, Jack Dorsey) were originally software engineers and launched their companies as such. People like Daniel Baker at DojoMojo show that even people living out of their cars can make the switch.
Main Takeaway
No software engineer would tell you that it was easy to gain their skill set, but coding is nowhere near as intimidating as TV might make it seem. While bachelor’s degrees are preferred in Software Engineering roles, Stack Overflow found that 48% of current software engineers didn’t major in Computer Science before becoming a Software Engineer. Even more shocking, 41.8% of them are self taught. You can learn these skills particularly fast when attending coding bootcamps such as App Academy, where students can learn everything they need to get an entry-level position in just 13 weeks (and get a guaranteed job or the program is free). Best of all, the demand for Software Engineers is so great that many Software Engineers decide between multiple job offers and use this to negotiate higher salaries.
Advice
As Nike would say, just do it! Start writing some simple lines of code for free at resources like this to see if you’re interested in problem solving. If you get stuck, keep in mind that almost every other person got stuck in the same place! Keep pushing through until you have a better grasp of whether or not you like programming. Out of all the positions on this list, Software Engineering is the most accessible by not requiring any money upfront or course fees.
Market Research Analyst
Per the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a Market Research Analyst “helps companies understand what products people want, who will buy them, and at what price”. Sounds straightforward, right? Luckily most of these positions only require a bachelor’s degree and not much formal training. It’s a better fit, though, for people who are inclined towards math and analytics. The market (no pun intended) for this position is on fire and has the second fastest growth potential on this list. If you’re still wondering what this position actually does, Dave Parker has some great advice on how to perform market research for your startup idea.
Main Takeaway
This is a position that can be found within almost every single industry. You’ll be able to pivot between different companies and verticals with little issue and have a respectable level of job security. The salary for this position isn’t the best in this list, but it’s certainly not low. The biggest issue in vying for a Market Research Analyst role is the level of analytical prowess required to be hired. If you can prove that your stats knowledge goes beyond that entry level class you took in college, you might have a real shot at landing a job in this sector.
Advice
Crack back open the statistics books and figure out if data is a good direction for you. There are many data sets that are publicly available and even (gasp) fun to go through, so feel free to take a stab at finding some correlations. Start thinking about why pricing is set the way it is and have some internal debates about why Apple (and other companies) charge what they do. Does price always directly reflect quality?
Financial Planner
If you’ve already thought hard about your own retirement and planned out ways to maximize your savings, becoming a financial planner might be a natural fit. Financial planners organize, budget, and create projections for their clients’ money and set them up for success. Particularly in a time where more people are hoping to retire early and becoming financially independent, financial planners are more important than ever. With an aging workforce and a population of people who are living longer (and thus need to rely on their cash reserves for longer), the need for financial planners has never been higher.
Main Takeaway
Financial Planners (or Financial Advisors, by another name) use predictive modeling and an extensive knowledge of the financial industry to make sure that their clients are making money. Deciding when and where to utilize a 401k, Roth IRA, brokerage firm, or investment options occupies a large part of the role of a financial planner. Creating wealth is the main objective in this position, and the skill set that you acquire will help your own retirement planning as well. Finding your way into this position from another industry can be a little difficult and there are multiple certifications required, but financial planners are becoming harder and harder to find. Not to mention, this is an industry that has a greater demand with the Baby Boomer generation getting close to retirement. Financial planners are generally paid either on commission or via retainers, so you need to be comfortable having an income that can vary from paycheck to paycheck. Landing a huge client will be a great boon to your income, but losing that client will take you in the opposite direction.
Advice
Find a financial planner and ask them about their position and the benefits that come along with it. Research into the compensation structure of the role and see if you’re comfortable with a variable salary. If you haven’t already started planning for your retirement, start doing so and learn about the industry while setting yourself up for retirement success. You can be your own financial planner to see if you’d like being in this role long term!
Data Scientist
Data Scientists are some of the most sought after employees in the tech world. Day in and day out, a Data Scientist is finding data, graphing it, cleaning it, refactoring it, re-organizing it, and performing quality assurance checks. If you’re comfortable staring at numbers all day long and finding the outliers that threw off your calculation, this could be the role for you! The high pay of this position is correlated to the great value that a Data Scientist can bring an organization.
Main Takeaway
Data Scientists shoulder a heavy burden. Holding the responsibility for finding the next business direction or analyzing how the company operates can make this a stressful position, but also a rewarding one. You’ll have to be comfortable spending the vast amount of your time prepping data and making sure the sources are accurate. While generating the final result is an infrequent part of the position, ensuring that your company is well-informed can make it all worth it. Keep in mind that many Data Scientists are extremely well educated — in fact, Data Scientists are far more likely to have PhD than Software Engineers.
Advice
Check out some of the public data sets that are available to you and try to find correlations amidst the data. You’ve probably heard many times that “correlation does not equal causation”, but finding even casual correlations in a data set can be a fun beginning. If you’ve settled on becoming a Data Scientist, check out some of the bootcamps that teach these skills. As always, bootcamps are a quick way to learn industry skills and circumvent a multi-year official degree.
Public Relations Specialist
Who doesn’t love a good Instagram brand? While you might not be the next Kylie Jenner, social media accounts are becoming more important every year to both large and small companies alike. From Wendy’s viral social media trolling to iHeartDogs running a 0% off campaign on Cyber Monday, a good public relations manager can make or break how a company is perceived. Not everyone can straddle the line between professional and gimmicky, but those who can have a good chance of success. An extra bonus is that many of these positions can be performed from home. Buffer has a great article on the day-to-day of a position in the public relations realm.
Main Takeaway
Public Relations Specialist positions require almost zero, if any, formal training and many job functions can be performed remotely if necessary. This makes the position extremely accessible and the number of upcoming vacancies for this position is in line with the industry average. The catch is that the salary isn’t as high as some other positions and it’s more difficult to prove that you’re more capable than the next person. You’ll need to be extremely detail-oriented to keep track of when you’re posting what and how each post corresponds to your overall media strategy.
Advice
If you think this is the path for you, try building up your personal brand or doing some pro-bono work for a local small business. Working with small budgets and accomplishing big results could be a great way to prove to hiring managers that you have what it takes to succeed in this role!
Overview
If you look at “standard” lists of high-paying salaries, you’ll see a whole host of medical positions at the very top. The medical industry is full of lucrative positions and intelligent professionals, but even those of you with a 4+ year degree will need additional classes, four more years in medical school, and a residency period before starting to earn one of those salaries. If you take into account the verging-on-crippling debt of schooling (ranging from $200k-$400k) and opportunity cost (4–6 years multiplied out by your current salary every year), most medical positions just don’t make sense to pursue. The positions in this article can be much more lucrative in the long run after taking the above into account.
There you have it! There are many other great roles that career changers can access, but the roles above are uniquely accessible and profitable. Have you changed careers already? Drop a line in the comments about your experience!
Sources: https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/financial-advisor, https://www.bls.gov/ooh/business-and-financial/personal-financial-advisors.htm, https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/public-relations-specialists-salary-SRCH_KO0,28.htm, https://www.bls.gov/ooh/media-and-communication/public-relations-specialists.htm
