The beauty of the division of labor is that it is possible to make money performing a wide array of job roles. This means that finding the right niche that you’re specifically skilled at is completely possible, provided you work hard and are afforded the right opportunities (which mostly consists of making the most of them.) With all of this possibility at your fingertips, sometimes it can be difficult to figure out in what direction you would most like to use it.
For that, it can be useful to figure out what motivations you have. Do you like building and crafting things? Do you enjoy the deft manipulation of numbers? Are you more of a shrewd diplomat, someone who might be able to assert a skillful PR campaign for a top-level corporation? Or are your motivations more simple and wholesome than that? What if you simply want to help people?
This last motivation is what this article will focus on. There are a number of duties you could carry out in order to achieve this goal. Many people assume that in order to make this a mark of your life, you need to give up the pursuit of making money. Of course, that should never (and will never) be the primary focus, but there’s no reason you can’t conduct your life in a way that crafts social good without making a reasonable salary to go along with that. After all, if you’re conducting some form of valuable good, you should be compensated for that. It’s how our societies run, and how they stay maintained.
The following advice could help you tremendously if you hope to enjoy further efforts towards this noble goal, and may even help you prevent making early mistakes in your question for betterment:
Get Qualified
Wanted to do good is a noble goal, but unless you back it up with a form of competence and skillset development, it only exists as a dream in your heart and mind. Getting qualified will give you the pragmatic tools to begin your career in a fundamentally strengthened manner, and many opportunities will spawn because of this.
For example, let’s say you are interested in healing the social rifts in families due to poor experiences you might have suffered during childhood. This is all very well and good, but without the right training and acumen you are simply a concerned citizen who interrupts and largely could make things worse. Instead, reading a guide to counselling degrees that are offered online might connect you to guide to a well-accredited course, lending you your qualification and a great degree of expertise in no time.
It could be that you enjoy the idea of helping people connect with their medical requirements in an emergency, but the scope of training as a Doctor is neither affordable nor desirable. Still, there’s no reason to assume you cannot contribute. Gaining a driving license, a heavy vehicles license or helicopter license and working as a ground or air paramedic could be the most reliable way of helping people out for a career. Both the positions used as examples here can earn you competitive salaries, and do have room for growth. After all, managing a department is only a step up from committing the role, and as you become more familiar with the working pattern and distinguish yourself, who’s to say there’s a fuller upper limit?
Charity Work
Charity work, while amazing, is not always in the business of volunteerism. Being a non-profit is not hand in hand with being unpaid. Unfortunately, there are many examples where corporations have seemingly taken a larger cut of fundraising efforts for their oversized corporate structure, and that is a complete shame. However, working at an administrative level in a charity and taking a salary from that should not be considered evil or wrong, as how else would someone be incentivized to do that work? Simply the act of carrying out management tasks contributes to the entire charitable effort, which might not have existed in the first place.
The great things about working in charities from a career perspective is that despite being non-profit, they do often keep a hierarchical structure and operate in the same capacities as a corporate, except without the expectation of limited growth. It could be you dedicate your time there as a marketing executive, looking for the best new ways to appeal to the public with great causes. It could be your arrange huge charitable events and organizations, such as crafting charitable support with the applicants of large events such as marathons or boxing matches.
Legal
Hear us out. While lawyers do get a bad rap for twisting the truth and trying to play legal limbo, this does not mean all lawyers are like this. Some are often champions of trying to correct social good. If you are truly interested in developing a career with a high salary, and are a very industrious person, then it could be specializing in a law field could be for you.
Not all defence lawyers are people trying to get adults away from DUI charges and domestic abuse cases. Some take care of noble goals, such as child protective litigation. Some take on pro bono cases in order to defend the migration rights of a select individual. The list is endless, and the ethical potential runs along the same lines. If you truly want a role that has a long-lasting effect on people’s lives, and you hope to keep a long list of clients helped behind you, then a legal career could be for you. Of course, the sky’s the limit when it comes to earning as a lawyer, as six-figure salaries are not uncommon, particularly if you open your own practice.
Even in seemingly unhappy and nasty legal specialisms such as corporate law, there are cases to be taken that can help your ethical standing in the world. Protecting the little businesses from copyright abuse, to internal embezzlement disputes, to a whole host of issues that can be solved with nothing but your wit and your will (and a lot of knowledge.)
These three fields could earn you a solid salary and maybe even beyond that. If you hope to set up your life working in something that truly means plenty to you – why not start here?