What do fourth-year university students, managers facing a mid-life crisis (at age 28), disgruntled employees and creative minds with unused potential have in common? They’re probably all job hunting, figuring out what they want to do with their lives or thinking about a career switch. Here are some of the hottest jobs out there—let them be your inspiration.
It’s All About You
When making decisions gets too 1. Confusing, 2. Demanding and 3. Time consuming—you hire someone to make them for you.
The ultimate style of dependence is in the form of a life coach. You could turn from stranger to best friend by the end of a couple of review sessions. A life coach does everything from telling someone how to dress to counseling them on relationship issues. It’s personal—even if you’re dealing with not very personal things like the person’s career. For a better understanding of what the job entails, join one of the Coach for Goal seminars by visiting www.coachforgoal.com.
However, if you’re looking for something a little less wholesome and a bit more specific, then you might want to consider these options. If you’re the person everyone counts on for relationship advice, then you might do well as a matchmaker. If you read BK’s recent relationships issue (May 23), you’ll know just how many people are already in the field of matchmaking—offering relationship counseling and introduction services just in Bangkok alone. Judging by how busy working professionals are these days, you’ll be tied up trying to hook people up all year round. If you’re any good.
If relationships aren’t really your cup of tea then you also have the choice of becoming someone’s personal shopper/stylist. Remember the good ole days where you had to go to three different people to get one perfect look? Not anymore! A personal stylist’s job is about the entire picture—from head to toe. Every big mall (Siam Paragon, Central, Emporium) has one. If everyone turns to you for fashion advice, you might want to give this job a shot.
Finally, if you just want to focus in on health but the thought of becoming another personal trainer at a crowded gym doesn’t appeal, then you might want to consider role of the corporate fitness trainer. It’s all about bringing the blessed boot camp to busy work places! (See Corporate Fitness, this page.) It’ll make you proud to know that the guys already in it were able to increase NASA’s productivity by 12%! Like they say, a healthy worker is a happy worker!
Go Global
A strong trend in the modern workplace is for employers to look for staff that are increasingly inter. Even being bilingual isn’t enough, these days. With all the merging and collaborating being done between East and West, there’s a constant increase in demand for people who are 1. able to work in sync with different cultures, 2. linguistically gifted and 3. willing to pack their bags and travel the world every week or so. If you’re really good at all this, you could be a trans-cultural interfacer. Educate that American guy on how to work with us strange Thai people through workshops, seminars and one-on-one coaching. See Mr. Buffer, below.
Green Collars
You’ve seen An Inconvenient Truth—Planet Earth has officially given us an ultimatum and the response is creating a new breed of worker: the green collared worker.
Although this has yet to pick up in Thailand according to the popular job website managers we consulted, the trend is obvious in Europe and the US. You can choose to be behind the scenes as an environmental consultant; the job involves lots of research, like site investigations and assessments, to eventually come up with solutions on how to turn a not-so-eco-friendly site into one that is doing less harm to the environment. If you want more of a front-line job, then a carbon trader is certainly a growing trend within the green collar industry. Here, you deal with carbon credits—a scheme that is being used globally to reduce CO2 emissions by “capping total annual emissions and letting the market assign a monetary value to any shortfall through trading,” say our friends at Wikipedia.org. These credits are then exchanged, bought and sold between companies and are also used to help finance greenhouse gas reduction schemes around the world.
Work in Bed
Today, working at home is mostly equated with freelancing. But the new trend is for companies to encourage their employees to stay away from the workplace rather than clock in long hours. You’re not dreaming. Last week, a Finance Ministry official anonymously quoted in The Nation spoke of his ministry’s desire to develop a program for his employees to work at the office only four days a week and do a fifth day wherever they please. At the Bank of Thailand, the policy is already in place (and judged a success) and a Total Access Communication’s executive was quoted as saying that his corporation was going to equip employees with headsets, computers, and high-speed connections at home to follow this growing trend.
The rationale behind working at home is to save on transportation costs (for the employees) and office expenses for the employer (smaller offices, lower utility bills). But according to Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It’s authors Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson, the benefits of a flexible schedule are much greater than reduced bills. While working at Best Buy (an American consumer electronics chain) they developed a “results-oriented work environment” (ROWE), which does not make attending meetings compulsory or implement any working hours. Employees were assessed exclusively on their performance, and the results were a reduced turnover for those employees Best Buy wanted to keep.
Whether you’re going to work at home for a company or as a freelancer, writing seems to be one of the top jobs to fit the bill (whether technical, commercial writer or translator), followed by graphic design and, more interestingly, training. It seems e-learning will need its share of e-trainers nonetheless. As an online tutor, you could work in any field: medical, accounting…whatever you’re good at.
Corporate Fitness
The Job: Implementing a fitness program for companies and organizations to encourage a healthy working environment and healthy productive employees.
“The point of every company is to make money and to increase profits,” says Daniel Remon, Managing Director of Fitcorp Asia. “One way to ensure that is to have healthy employees.” So instead of waking up a couple hours earlier to hit the gym before work, you can wait to indulge in a fully-fledged training program with your co-workers. The guys running the training program will first come and form an assessment of the company and its employees. You will then be subjected to a personalized, uniquely designed program that will be created based on the findings. Under corporate fitness, you also have the choice of educating yourself through seminars or participating in what they call the “workstation ergonomics evaluation.” You’ll be surprised at what sitting for eight hours on your far-from-perfect office chair typing away on your keyboard can do to your physical well being. Corporate fitness coaches will also organize events and retreats—entirely tailor made to suit your needs—of course, strictly under the theme “fit and then fun.”
Contact: Fitcorp Asia at 02-661-7900 or visit their website at www.fitcorpasia.com.
Your CV
This is the first thing a potential employer is going to see. All the reasons they should give you an interview—on one side of A4. Needless to say, mistakes are easy to make. Here are some commonly encountered ones that’ll get your resume shredded instantly.
Images and borders—Unless you are applying for a position that entails a great deal of creative license, avoid graphics, fancy borders and elaborate fonts. Also, it is not always necessary to attach a photo to your resume, but if one is required, make sure that it conveys a professional image.
Length—No one has the time or the patience to read a Dostoevsky-esque resume, nor do they want Cliffnotes. Ideally, keep the CV to a single page in length, and make full use of it.
Spelling and grammatical mistakes—Some 50 percent of recruitment consultants regularly encounter these errors—don’t be one of the culprits! Ask someone else to read a printed copy before submitting it; don’t rely on computer spellchecks.
Neglecting the personal profile—This short blurb (anywhere from three to five sentences) gives a brief preview of who you are to the reader. It sums up your career background, areas of expertise, key skills and motivations. Make it good.
Disorganization—Make sure the most relevant information is on the first page of the resume. Consistently put dates in reverse chronological order.
Lack of Basic Info—If you have a non-gender specific name (e.g. John Wayne was born Marion), make sure to include your title or gender as part of the personal information in order to avoid embarrassment, among other reasons. Also, remember to include your phone number and/or e-mail address, which should be professional, containing your name. (e.g. no ilikefatchicks@hotmail.com)
Lack of focus—Focus on the job you’re applying for by tailoring the information to the requirements. This to-the-point style is simple and effective. Tailoring your CV will also convey the message that time and effort has been spent, thus giving the impression that you’re serious about getting the job.
Exaggerating and boasting—While the idea of the CV is to sell yourself, it is unwise to exaggerate or boast. This will come across as arrogant and tactless. And never lie.
Old But Hot
Most of the jobs currently in high demand are not exactly new—which doesn’t mean they’re not red hot. Here are the classics that, till date, have the ability to bring about incomes to support a big ole joint family of 10. You planning on creating your own football team anytime soon?
Information Technology
The Job: Managing the company’s networks and the flow of information within the system.
Starting salary: It varies quite a bit. You can start at anywhere from B15,000-25,000.
How Hot? Sure as hell, IT was and is still up there on the “it” list. However, trends have changed a bit. Statistics show that there’s much more of an interest in the field of networking today when compared to other fields within the same industry. “Unlike computer programming for instance, it’s a bit more straightforward,” says 24-year-old Nopparat Chongvilaiwan, IT Administration Officer at Mizuho Corporate Bank. “You don’t have to sit and think of hard algorithms all day yet at the same time, you feel challenged.”
Engineering
The Job: From designing it, to installing it, to maintaining it and repairing it.
Starting salary: B18,000-25,000
How Hot? “Engineers are a hidden necessity that people fail to recognize and it feels good to know that I’m behind the scene,” says 31-year-old Danai Phattaraphongdilok, Senior Mechanical Engineer at HPC Engineering. They sure make the money and they’re the masterminds behind a lot of things. The fact that they have the knowledge that a lot of us commoners don’t makes this career path pretty hot on the hotness scale.
Public Relations
The Job: Positive publicity is the name of the game. Think—good reputation, brand value and credibility.
Starting salary: It can range between B10,000-15,000 (plus service charge for hotel industry) for fresh graduates.
How Hot? According to jobsthai.com, it’s still a pretty female dominated field. Today, as corporate competition rises, the demand for PR jobs is growing too. “We all know that it is an image-shaper job,” says 26-year-old Nareerat Thongsook, PR Manager for Rembrant Hotel. “A growing organization requires PR people to create publicity and to make their corporation look more outstanding than the others.” All the way from building up a brand to launching new products and services and even networking events where people socialize without a business focus—she says, it all boils down to one thing: PR!
Mr. Buffer
Meet: Stuart Jay Raj, Trans-Cultural Interfacer
Age: 33
The Job: Works as a buffer between local and foreign teams, resolving conflicts and analyzing current work practices. Also coaches foreign staff on language, cultural and other communication issues when working with particular cultures and societies.
Starting salary: No salary here. It all depends on what value you bring to the client and how you negotiate with them. In many instances, you’re looking at rates of between B4,500-15,500 per hour.
What makes the job hot: Getting to travel all over the globe and becoming versed in a wide range of industries—from the Miss Universe pageant to Sustainable Development and on the other side of the fence, Oil and Gas—from FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods) and Modern Trade to Press Freedom and Natural Disasters. This job allows you to rub shoulders with some of the hottest and most powerful people on the planet.
Required skills: Cultural and linguistic fluency in multiple languages and cultures plus great human relationship skills. You also have to love to travel and be willing to be put in unusual situations. “One week you might be dining with Miss Universe and the next week sitting on an Oil Rig off the coast of Indonesia with a bunch of riggers ,” recalls Stu.
Most challenging thing about the job: Finding the right solutions that will put a smile of the client’s face and ensure future business. You can’t just use one cookie-cut solution for every problem.
The big reward: Stu says it’s hearing great feedback from clients and the people he mixes with. “The payoff is after doing it for many years, I have built up a network of literally tens of thousands of people from every imaginable walk of life,” he says, “I’m pretty certain that if I meet someone at random, chances are I know someone that would be of value to them.” Good Karma!
How to Lose Your Job
Need help on an exit strategy? See below.
1 Meetings
Raise your hand every two minutes and say, “Are we almost done—if not, can we wrap this up?”
2 Lunch Breaks
When you leave for lunch, announce that you will be gone “indefinitely.” Return 15 minutes before the end of the day.
3 Children & Pets
Screw the sitters, just bring them to work and hide them under your desk. When asked what that noise is, look your boss straight in the eye and say, “You hear it, too?”
4 Reviews
When asked what your goals are for the remainder of the year, reply, “Get off my back! What are YOUR goals, mister?”
5 Attire
Shower, put pajamas back on and go to work. Better yet, skip the shower, and show up to a regional meeting in your finest Pokemon PJs.
6 Company Outings
At the next barbeque in Lumpini Park, be sure to pinch the boss’s wife’s ass no less than two times. Make sure the big guy sees it.
7 The afternoon Dance Party
Productivity hits a low at 3pm. Why not set up your iPod speakers and invite everyone to shake their bonbons to Ricki Martin’s greatest hits?
8 Personal Days
The plan is to call your boss early in the morning and explain that due to eye trouble you will not be in today. When asked what the problem is, say, “I can’t see myself coming in.”
9 Attitude
Punch people. Hard.
10 Death Threats
Leave a “kill list” in the copy machine.
bk asks: “What’s a job that you’d never do and why?”
Rangsima Srisophon, 31, sales associate
Insurance salesman. Most people don’t care much about their future and I don’t like pestering people.
Chutinun Lukkanasin, 32, shop owner
Accountant—I don’t like math. I always get a headache every time I think about it.
Channarong Thongthuree, 31, shop owner
Window cleaner, especially on a high building. My heart goes to my feet when I look down from tall buildings.
Naphad Poonchinaphad, 27, engineer
An election canvasser—because I don’t want to be in conflict with other people. Nor do I want to be killed.
On the Hot Plate
An industry that was already on fire is set to sizzle even more. Thailand’s hospitality and meetings, incentives, conventions and exhibitions (MICE) industry is short of professionals. The trend is evident not just within Thailand but among all of our South-East Asian neighbors, including Singapore. According to a Bangkok Post article, it is forecasted that over 30,000 new positions will open in the tourism and hotel industry in the next couple of years. However, it is not certain that Thailand will have sufficient manpower to fill them. Solution? Get a Master’s degree in Hospitality.
Master of Management: Tourism and Hospitality Management. People person—check. Service minded—check. Prior degree—check. Apply at www.grad.mahidol.ac.th.
Master’s Degree Tourism Management. Assumption University’s Graduate School of Business will be accepting applications for this program from now through Jul 27. For more information visit www.grad.au.edu.
Exhibition Management Degree. Come out specialized in MICE. The course is launched in Thailand by the European-based UFI, the global association of the exhibition industry. Jun-Nov. Download an application form at www.ufi.org.
