5 Career Ideas You Can Start on the Side
Thinking about a career change or getting back into the workforce? Are you stuck in a job that you don’t enjoy? There are options!
One way we like to think about it is this: your next career choice should not only be in demand today, but it should still be in demand 5/10/20 years from now. The world is changing at a rapid pace, and you don’t want to put yourself in a position where you’re going to have to make another transition in the near future.
Below we’ve listed five ideas of careers that will still be in vogue 10 years from now, where you can learn many of the necessary skills from the comfort of your living room or office. Each idea comes with a quick quiz to take stock of whether the career is going to be good fit for you in the longer term, as well as some suggestions on where to start. Don’t fret, even if the quiz says no, we’ll still show you some ways to get more information!
Entrepreneur
Entrepreneurship will always be an available option, but it’s not for everybody. Whether you have an idea you think will change the world, or you’re good at doing something that people will pay money for, the barriers to starting a business and finding out for yourself have never been lower.
Ideas are worth nothing, however – it’s all about your ability to execute. If you’re willing to put in the time, you can test the waters without leaving your current job. There are endless ways to approach this, it just comes down to one question: are you creative and driven enough to make it happen?
How To Start Being an Entrepreneur on the Side
You’ve either recently had that “killer idea,” or there’s something that you like doing and are good at that people might be interested in. Explore this! There are usually ways to start bringing your idea to life without giving up your day job.
We’ve set up a 2 minute quiz to see if entrepreneurship is right for you.
Software Developer
Wait! You saw ‘developer,’ rolled your eyes and started to move on, didn’t you? Think about it though – software is everywhere in our daily lives now, and we’re barely scratching the surface on what it could be. Plus, when our artificial intelligence overlords take over the world, you may want to know a thing or two so you can defeat them.
No seriously, a little knowledge goes a long way here. Learning some basic programming skills will unlock ideas you didn’t know you had. That knowledge is much easier to come by now, as software developers(!) have developed tools to make learning software development even easier! See?
How To Start Being a Software Developer on the Side
Take our quiz to see if software development is right for you. If it is, we’ll give you some places to start learning, and then you can try replicating what other people have done – it will challenge you and open your mind to the possibilities! You can then start tweaking existing ideas or even attempt to build your own.
We’ve set up a 2 minute quiz to see if software developement is right for you.
Finance/Data Analyst
You know what’s a really powerful tool? Microsoft Excel. You know what can be reasonably easy to learn if you give it some time and practice? Microsoft Excel. If you master the basics and a handful of tools and functions, you can blow people away with what they think is dark data sorcery. Combine this with a strong grasp of business fundamentals, and you’ve got the foundation for a career in being a financial analyst.
The kicker is, you need to do this for yourself. Someone needs to handle the business of you – meaning your personal finances. You’d be surprised what downloading and analyzing the transactions from your checking account will show: there really should be a limit to how much Chinese food you order per month!
How To Start Being a Financial Analyst on the Side
Start with your personal finances – treat yourself as a business. You have revenue (your income) and expenses – you can categorize your spending and analyze the trends. Grab the data from your banking/credit card accounts to do this. You can expand from there and start studying public companies and how they categorize themselves.
We’ve set up a 2 minute quiz to see if financial analysis is right for you.
Network Administrator
Let’s see – more and more things are benefiting from technology. First it was just your desktop computer. Then laptops. Wifi. Your smart phone. Wearable devices. Soon – more than likely – you will be part robot. For businesses, someone has to make sure that all of this gear is properly set up, secure, and that people can access it with no frustration.
The demand for this – especially the security piece – is exploding. While those slots will likely be filled by more experienced administrators, that means positions are going to open up for people that do the basic blocking and tackling of network administration. That could be you.
How To Start Being a Network Admin on the Side
You’re reading this from a device that’s connected to the internet somehow, so start by learning more about your own setup and how it works. As you learn the ins and outs of network administration from the classes that are available, you can test the concepts at home in real time.
We’ve set up a 2 minute quiz to see if network administration is right for you.
Data Scientist
How is this different from the finance/data analyst above? Here’s an analogy: that analyst above is your really good high school football player. Maybe he could be a good college player, perhaps even make the pros. But you can’t take that player from high school and put him on a pro team. There’s too much complexity, and the high school player has a lot more to learn to get to that next level and be effective. The pro player that’s gone through that path is your data scientist.
Data science deals in large, often disconnected data sets that require a lot of work just to make the data useful for analysis. Excel simply can’t handle this. On top of that, advanced statistical methods are applied to the data to draw out powerful insights into what’s really happening. There are tools and approaches you need to learn to get here – but if you make it, you’ve set yourself up for one of the hottest careers for right now and into the future!
How To Start Being a Data Scientist on the Side
Think about something you’re interested in. Fantasy sports, the stock market, the environment, politics, exercise, or whatever. Most things these days have a large amount of data being collected. Figure out where this data is stored, and as you learn the techniques behind data science, imagine how you might use them against the data you’re actually interested in.
We’ve set up a 2 minute quiz to see if data science is right for you.
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