One of the things you need to consider when you’re choosing a career – either early on, inform subject choices and university decisions, or if you’re looking for a change away from a job that’s grown stale – is the impact it has on other people.
While it might not be the top level consideration in your mind, it’s worthy of as much thought as pay or holiday. The extent to which your job allows you to affect and, ideally, help other people is a key part of how you derive satisfaction from your job, and if you can’t see the effect you’re having as you do your job day to day, it’s easy to lose motivation.
Today we’re taking a look at jobs that visibly help, and hopefully taking in a few less obvious options that you may not have considered.
Prison and Criminal Justice Services
While the NHS is the first place you might think of to look for a job that has a real positive impact on the world around you, but we’re looking at less obvious choices. The Criminal Justice Service is a major employer right across the country, and while you might be thinking they mainly employ prison wardens whose job is to keep prisoners under lock and key, but this is not the case.
In reality, there are a broad range of skills required. Probation service officer jobs are analogous to social workers in many ways: you’re helping offenders create and stick to a structure that prevents them from reoffending. This doesn’t just relieve the pressure on the prison system, it’s a huge change to the life of the released offender and their family. Making changes like that people can create a huge sense of job satisfaction, though of course there is a good deal of stress involved.
Occupation Therapy
If you’re looking for a route into health and caring for people, but don’t have the time or resources to devote to the extensive training required of doctors and nurses, it may be worth looking into occupation therapy.
With a more direct route into work, and the freedom to specialise in different areas and create your own career, this path has plenty to recommend it. The main focus of the occupational therapist is helping people adapt to lives limited by illness, age or injury and help them maximise their. This has a concrete and ongoing effect on people’s lives which means you always know you’ve done a good day’s work.
