I need to be making $90,000
So I've hit on this a bit before here, but it's been a while—I stopped looking for jobs last summer & spent the rest of 2024 getting some things sorted in my own head about what I actually wanted to be doing, what I valued, and why I wanted to change anything in the first place. I love my job, not just because it's remote but honestly mostly because it's remote, but it does not pay enough & may not for a long time, so I have sort of collected together online weekend/evening/contractor part-time gigs on top, which altogether come out to around 90k. After all my soul-searching (& getting on the millenial ADHD meds train, whew), I'd reeeeally love to focus all of that into one job instead, as the downfall of the gig economy approach is not just the time investment required, it's that there's no opportunity for advancement—if I could keep one or two side hustles going, great, but that way I'd be free to let them go as needed as well, which would be a huge relief.
So that's the source for my very specific number; I would of course take more money lol.
I have experience in: adult training/instruction, CRM management, writing/editing, process analysis/efficiency/optimization, video/content creation (doesn't really fit with the rest but my resume is kind of nuts unfortunately)
I am really good at: soft skills/written & verbal communication, IT support, learning new things real quick but also very thoroughly & being able to teach them to others, making things work better/faster
I have degrees in: library science/research, education (no comp sci : / feel like that was my big mistake career path-wise, I've tried some online options more recently & am currently making headway with claude as a coding partner lol).
The real sticking point is I am currently remote & would have to make way more than 90k to be willing to go back to an office every day. My current job was an out-of-left-field career move that I wouldn't have even guessed existed, so I am open to literally any suggestions.
What does your professional network look like? Making a totally lateral move is super difficult endeavor and harder if you’re just randomly applying to places.
You also need to rethink how you’re pitching your skills. “Learning new things quickly” doesn’t really translate to anything in the workplace. Neither does being “good at communication.” (What jobs don’t need you to be good at communication?). This is especially true since you’re shooting for 90k jobs, which are going to be more competitive than being a manager at Spoons or something.
So: think in terms of deliverables. Making a company more money; reducing costs; etc. Think as specifically as possible. For example, I think you could make a compelling story combining your library science degree with your CRM management experience. Can you help a company streamline their Salesforce database, uncovering new insights that will double their lead generation? That’s a compelling pitch, that’s a 90k job, and you can probably do it remotely. But you need to learn to sell yourself first.
Hey, so glad you're here lol—you nailed what I have thought is my biggest weakness in <3 paragraphs: I am not a self-promoter. I want to be! I think I could do it! But like I was saying to @elight, while I could do sales with a script, selling myself—boy, I need to work on that for sure. Any advice on that?
Network-wise: good not great, I'm definitely getting the word out but another issue I'm running into that you pointed out is that the things I have down as strengths are kind of basic expectations, except I am really good at them. But I don't know how to get that across without sounding like an asshat, which is prob why it seems like they are just basic skills. I feel like part of it is that I don't know the preferred nomenclature for these concepts for individual fields, or if they vary at all, etc. Like "soft skills" is going to be the same, except I'm finding out that most people who do spreadsheets aren't so big on soft skills, and I can do both. But I definitely see & agree with what you're saying—I could give specific examples? I'm sure that taking a defensive position on my resume is not the way but I don't know what is.
I feel like I don't even know what I don't know, honestly; I've been in state/educ. work mostly, so org charts alone were pretty mind-blowing. But you know what you're talking about & if you tell me I should do something I'm going to go do it lol
IMO there is simply no place for "soft skills" on a resume. You have to have some hard skills to get you in the door, then your soft skills carry you across the finish line.
I mean i get that. But if you're an event speaker, or a speechwriter, those are basically max-level soft skills, right? But of course I'm not a speechwriter lol, so is there some middle ground there.
I think an important distinction is both of those examples produce something. By all means, if your current level of soft skills results in a concrete production, it's worth including that. But if it doesn't, you just have to sell your communication and personability at the interview and other small interactions.
Re: not being a self-promoter:
ChatGPT has helped me quite a bit here. You can dump in your resume, your list of skills from this post, and a couple of job posts that look interesting then ask it to give you a description of yourself that will highlight your skills. You can also ask it to interview you to gain more information and refine the description.
It will sound like mealy-mouthed AI slop, but you can edit it or rewrite it to give it your voice. The main thing is that it sees you more objectively and gets around the bias away from self promotion.
I hadn't thought of that as good for practice rounds, I'll try it out, thanks! I keep thinking one of the bots will be able to actually find the job posts, but we are not quite there yet haha
It’s tough for sure, it’s probably the thing I’m least comfortable with when applying for jobs (although I think I’ve managed to get fairly good at it). The advice that worked for me is to just write things down that I believe are true about myself for draft one (dot points maybe?), and then for draft two I twist each true statement into a skill that matches wording on job ads without turning false, and then for the third draft I pick out a list from my general job-application statements to closely or exactly match the wording on a job ad.
For example, my draft one might be:
• good at recognising when someone is frustrated
• generally comfortable and confident in slightly complicated computer stuff
• pretty good with numbers and maths and science stuff
• I seem to notice stuff that other people don’t
Draft two might turn these into:
• customer service skills
• stakeholder management
• considerate and empathetic coworker
• works well in a team environment
• advanced computer literacy
• troubleshooting and IT support
• proficient with <insert software suite here>
• data entry
• analysis and reporting
• critical thinking and logic
• high attention to detail
• detail oriented
• high standards of precision
And then draft three will start to align these soft skills with the job ad more directly, and/or list as achievements rather than skills.
Another thing that’s worked for me is to simply describe the responsibilities I’ve had and the tasks I’ve done before, rather than listing as skills. And if possible, try to turn them into the most ambitious-sounding version of that task. For example:
• I helped close up shop at the end of the day in a retail job
Becomes:
• responsible for closedown procedure
• locking all doors and setting security system
Which then further becomes:
• ensured end of day procedure was accurately followed
• responsible for maintaining secure site access
• primary security liaison
That's a beautiful process, thanks—yeah I managed to get stats in my resume items, felt good about that, but i think something like this is what I'm missing: I am definitely for sale, but I'm not really convincing anyone at the moment lol. This seems like a good way to translate saying "I can do soft skills better than most people who can also do the other stuff I do" into something more useful/actionable/resume-worthy, for sure.
Pre-edit: I wrote all this out, but then doubted myself and double checked your post, and now I can’t find if you’re switching careers or if I’ve got my wires crossed, so this may not be relevant.
But if someone else is switching careers and stumbles across this thread, then I hope this can offer some advice.
Another thing to consider as well, that I don’t think I properly touched on in my comment above, is that if you’re switching careers then you need your base level resume to be incredibly broad. You don’t have the experience of the new industry and therefore don’t have the niche already carved out for you, so it’s going to be harder to word-match the job ads.
I switched careers toward the end of 2022 and even though it was absolutely an employee’s market at the time, I still just barely got myself an almost entry-level position which I’ve now solidified into a career. It’s tough, I think it’s more difficult than just job searching (which is frustrating as-is), because a lot of hiring managers will not actually give your resume a proper read over, since they don’t immediately see the aligned work history that they might be expecting.
If you’re willing to take a few years to set yourself up, my advice (that worked for me so far) is to not be intimidated by short term roles, if they’re available. It’s a shortcut to getting that oh-so-desired “experience” in the field you’re looking for, and I think you could even strategically highlight it positively in interviews (“my resume has gaps and short term contracts in the past year, because I’m passionate about entering the industry, and I’m enjoying picking up this experience with businesses that have had short term requirements recently”)
I wish you the best of luck, and I hope you land somewhere that you want to be!
Thanks so much! I am not specifically seeking a career change, but I also just did it a few years ago like you're describing & would certainly be willing to do it again; I just ended up somewhere that is like most everywhere else, I think, where there is a lot of promising of advancement but really just outside hires. So I probably need to go be one of those outside hires somewhere else lol.
And boy do I have a broad resume. That's what I was trying to work out with @F13 and others: "quick learner" is pretty bleh, like gosh I hope you can learn things if you want a job, geez. But literally I could be up to speed in a new position in a couple weeks, which seems like a big deal when changing industries, but I don't know how to quantify that—especially without setting off alarms like "It takes decades to learn this general piece of software," etc. I want to stir the pot in a positive fashion only lol
Oh and one other detail: keep the rough copies of each draft, don’t overwrite the first draft to make the second one. Turning a few applications into a comprehensive database of dot-point skills will make future applications faster and faster!
Pretty soon, an application will be less “write out a whole new application” and more “take the master list, remove all the bits that aren’t relevant to this particular job, and give it a once-over before submitting” which is a much faster process.
I can’t take credit for this idea — my friend told me about it when I was applying for jobs, and she developed it to assist her AuDHD brain — makes the overall task feel a lot smaller and easier to work with because it’s broken up.
I'm with @F13: there's no place for soft skills unless you can point to specific things that have come from them, and even then it's probably best for the cover letter. Meaning that unless you've received some sort of award for communication, or been assigned special duties because of how good at communicating you are, or can point to a personal blog with 100k visitors/month or something, it doesn't count, you can't put it on your resume, and if you do it will actively hurt you.
Selling yourself is easy. Find a problem, figure out how you could fix it, and then tell people that. It doesn't require arrogance or being a blowhard. And note that all problems should be simplified to reducing costs or making more money. If you can explain how you will help the company do one of those two things, they will be interested.
People get uncomfortable with the idea of selling themselves because they think it should be something like "I'm the greatest, and I'll be taking no questions." No! It's not about you; it's about the problem you've identified and how you can fix it. You only sound like an asshole if you can't point to concrete results. (Just like the soft skills - sound familiar?)
You may be struggling in part because this is harder in a vacuum. It'll be easier if you find some companies you're interested in (and that have openings), do a bit of research to understand their business, and then craft your resume and cover letter appropriately. You should also find someone in the company to talk to (ideally the manager of the listed position) - ask about what challenges the job is facing and ask about company culture.
(A note, because people get extremely weird about this. Put yourselves in the shoes of a manager. Imagine you get an email from someone saying "hi, I'd like to understand this job posting better to see if it's a position where I could add value, before I apply." Do you now think less of this person?)
It's hard and time-consuming, no doubt - but sending out resumes blindly is a sucker move. Especially from other parts of the world.
Stanford has a great Life Design Lab for this sort of thing, and there's a book that asks readers to imagine their future as a design problem.
Check it out - it's what we use to get undergraduates thinking about how their personal goals and ambitions can be distilled into career trajectories.
http://lifedesignlab.stanford.edu/
The course is $99 with the intro and first session available freely here.
I'm watching now.
There are plenty of resources available on the web that revolve around the course, too. Namely, the Designing Your Life book.
It's findable in audiobook form or pdf if you look hard enough ;). Good luck!
https://designingyour.life/books-designing-life-original-book/
Oh cool! I'll check it out!!
Looks amazing, thanks! Will definitely give it a shot, as I can basically only think about things that way as it is lol
Hah, I get it. Good luck
Can you create some sort of product offering? That's the route that I'm looking toward.
My wife is receiving professional coaching training. She walked me through an exercise that literally brought me to tears (yes, really) by helping me see a path forward congruent with my values with the potential to at least earn somethjng resembling an income. The session looked somethjng like this:
Consider what matters to you personally as a human being. What problem(s) in the world tug at your heart. Envision several lives, one at a time, where you've throughly solved each one of these problems in a separate life. How do you feel about this vision? About yourself in each of these lives after achieving that end?
FWIW, it's possible that she may need more guinea pigs as part of her training (I'm guinea #1). I can note interested parties for possible future guinea pigs. She has colleagues who she can work with but she may appreciate and likely benefit from having people who are as yet unknown to her.
100% I would guinea pig that—it's a fantastic thing to be trying to do, and if it helps me along the way then all the better. I've talked with a couple of IRL contacts about this, but it's been a while & now that I have a better idea of what the point is, I think it would prob be super useful.
As far as having something to sell, that's definitely the best way to make money, right? Because you aren't having to convince anyone to hire you or give you a raise/promotion/etc—you just sell more/make better things. The trouble is, I'm already underwater commitment/free time-wise, so adding "Starting a business" to that seems like actually drowning lol. And while I think I could do sales with training, I don't know that I have anything I'm passionate enough about to just start selling to people, on my own.
Your wife's different lives version really is fascinating—typically I can only picture where I'd want to be after the next part of things, whatever that may be, and the step right in front of me seems totally void & mysterious. So yeah put me down as interested, for sure!
I mentioned this to my wife. She's considering taking on victims^H^H^H^H^H^Hguinea pigs who she has no prior relationship with. Will update here when she figures more out!
Re: a product, I hear ya. It's not for everyone. Solopreneuring product is scary unless you have a huge safety net. The bulk of the rich successful entrepreneurs came from wealthy families: it's a proven fact. For me, instead, it's savings from my stint in Big Tech, preparing for yet another DotBust (TM) after living through 2 priors!
From my time as a freelancer, sales is tough! For me. I had to believe hard in what I was offering. For me, that meant working congruently with my values. For isntance, I was representing myself as an "honest freelancer": one who will come in and Do It Right while representing the state of the work exactly as I saw it. Even so, marketing (getting people to know about your offering and generating leads/potential customers) and sales (closing the deal) was very very stressful for me. I found that the need to keep work coming in infected every relationship I had. I caught myself using them to connect with more work. While this may be acceptable to some, it felt hideous to me. Of course, YMMV.
FWIW, the "different lives" approach (I don't know what she'd call it) is name for how she helped me explore. We quickly narrowed it down to one path. Picturing that end state was the beginning. I've spent a lot of time reflecting and documenting what I know about how to "get there from here". Doing that, I identified a lot of blind spots. Those blindspots helped me see where I needed to get to work. If I can fill in the blanks, I can increase my odds of success! Or, at least, that's my current reasoning.
I'm also trying to network to learn from anyone with prior experience starting a product or product-like business alone. Leverage the wisdom of others as much as possible, I believe. Why make mistakes others have if I can avoid them (and make wholly new mistakes ;-) ).
Beautiful, thanks—looking forward to that possibility! : ) I love research, testing, etc, both sides of it.
Re: safety nets, I feel like the bulk of rich successful
entrepreneurseverybody came from wealthy families lol. And my ideal end state would be having the capacity to be able to provide that for my kids, or to whatever extent that I can; I saw Tim's Vermeer at an impressionable age, & maybe that colored my expectations, but gosh being able to just pursue a passion for the sake of it? That sounds like the dream to me.To be so wealthy enough that your pursuits could just be your passions without need for income? I wish we had that post-scarcity world where it would be possible for all, truly.
The most that I dare hope for is to earn enough of a living on my mission that I just do that and not have to go back to "having a job". Corporate America is one of my ideas of hell. I sincerely hope to never have to return to it. That's among my last resort options.
Yeah that sounds pretty good too lol. I think it's just this 10-15 year span where people can remember regular jobs paying a livable wage, or at least the promise of that, before it's totally hopeless for 98% of us.
As someone else with ADHD, if I was to do it all over again I'd go into the trades. More hands on and satisfying when you complete a job. My dad is a painting contractor and easily clears $150,000-200,000 a year. Of course that isn't starting pay, but at this point the trades can be pretty lucrative. If you're up for more education - like an apprenticeship - that is where I'd start. Unlike college, apprenticeships pay (around $20 an hour) and you'll quickly build the skills you need to make it on your own. I would do some ad hoc painting contracting on my own throughout my 20s and as long as you have the tools, know your craft, and know how to bid (which can be subjective) I've found it pretty easy to find folks looking for work. This would be a big pivot though and you'd need your side hustles to get you to 90k for the first few years.
Yeah if I was a young buck, for sure i'd get into welding or electrical or something, mainly based on what I've had to pay those guys lol. But A) I'd be signing on to however many more years of grinding like I'm doing now, except those side hustles may not be compatible with trade schools/apprenticeships, & then in a few years B) I'd be in the truck, on the jobsite, etc. cause you can't do those remote—that's part of why they pay so well! But that's the goal for me, so unfortunately I'm cutting out a lot of options.
I'm 41, and I recently transitioned from an IT professional for the last 25 years to a diesel field service technician for major construction equipment. I got tired of IT, and I have been suffering from severe burnout for the last few years. With this job, I make as much if not much more then I did at my highest pay in information technology. When a job is complete, it is in the rearview mirror, and I don't have to worry about Jira/agile/scrum/buzzword systems on projects that will never be complete. I went from 25 hours of meetings a week, which caused me to work unpaired overtime to make up for the meetings, to 5 meetings a month, one of which was a monthly cookout. I work 100 hours every two weeks, I make overtime daily for any hour over 8, and 1/4-1/3 of my weekly time is spent traveling from and to job sites. I couldn't be happier.
Yeah it's a dream if you're willing to get out to jobsites, and at your level of IT you were prob already in the field regularly, but I just can't imagine driving to work every day every again lol—it's definitely a limiting factor when you're looking for new jobs! And I did it for two decades, for way less money, but dang idk if I could do it again.
That's awesome! What was the transition like? Did you need to apprentice or anything?
I'm sure it's not as exciting but one area I find that pays well is finance companies. If they are doing well and value the education of the workforce, they will pay a good amount. Larger companies would offer more remote positions, just from my perspective of seeing job postings recently.
If you do not want to go into a larger company you may want to start thinking about getting your foot somewhere that is a good fit culturally, with a lateral pay move. From there work on getting promoted to a leadership position or a role that increases responsibility.
We have a few training staff at our 300 person company and they aren't paid more than 60k as a teacher/creator of content. To me it appears that this an entry level role in that type of company. Hope this helps..
Is this teaching/creating courses for employees at finance companies?
Yes a lot of companies have training departments that create/maintain content for the employees. Some will just purchase it and distribute it, but I've been at a few companies that create custom courses.
Thanks! Yeah I've seen those postings; I've got a doctorate so I'd hope that there's a trainer/instructor/documentation spot out there in my range, but what I've been seeing is pretty much exactly what you're describing. I did the lateral pay move thing once already—hoping to not have to do it again, at that point I might just ride it out where I am, build skills/resume/network, and hope for the best with the traction & inertia I already have. But ugh that sounds terrible lol
I applaud you for sticking it out for a doctorate, good on you. I just don't know if the content creation or instructor lead positions are going to get you the salary you are looking for. If you can pivot to looking at companies that produce content that resell it? Maybe this would be more in your range? Unfortunately having a doctorate doesn't always mean high wages.
When I look at this list, it really strikes me as technical writer producing documentation for tech tools. We had someone like this at my last job:
For complete transparency, the documentation project never got finished because of a series of layoffs, but they were business related, not a result of (IMO) the project lacking value.
Yeah it sounds dreamy honestly! They were hiring for one of these at the last place I worked, but again nonprofits/education/the like, I think the range was 45-55k : / I also don't know if I could get on as a technical writer without any specific technical writing experience, beyond a thesis/dissertation (got one of those at least). But 100% would be great. And adding error messages & try/catch would be able where I could help out, coding-wise lol
In the comments, you mentioned having trouble with selling yourself/convincing prospective employers. Where are you feeling the strain - are you having trouble getting interviews, progressing to the final interview, or both?
mainly getting interviews, yeah—when I can get in front of someone it's always gone well. I think mainly I've felt like I am not good at any one thing to try to convince someone else that I'm good at it, but I've learned after a few years in corporate that that is just not the case.