I work in a position where I interact with “customers” and help them resolve problems (not tech). A while back I had a very bad day and decided to get a better job, but all of them required a B.A. (even the admin jobs) and I only had an A.A.
So I enrolled in the local State U and I’m almost done with a B.A. in Behavioral Science, and yesterday in a class lecture I had an epiphany when I realized three things about myself:
I don’t really like people.
I don’t really care about their problems.
I was wrong when I thought I wanted to make it my life’s work to help people solve their problems.
So now that I’m aware of what I don’t want to do I’m left trying to figure out what I *do *want to do instead.
Although I don’t like the “public” aspect of my current job I do very much enjoy the paperwork and the database and redesigning procedures to make them more efficient. Some days I like being a manager and some days I hate it. I also work in a very creative environment and I like that a lot.
And since there’s such a wide range of people here doing so many different jobs I wonder if anyone has any ideas about how I might turn this -oh no have I made a huge mistake spending all this money on a stupid degree for nothing- into a good plan for the future?
I shouldn’t have gone into helpdesk and customer service. I should have been… a botanist! Plants are quiet. Plants do what they’re told. All they do is sit around and look pretty, and give you good things to eat. And if they give you any shit, you can chop them up in a rage and bury them in the backyard as a lesson to the others.
The good news about things like behavioral science is that it’s transferable to other areas.
I have my Master’s degree in Counseling Psychology. I worked as a therapist for a while and loved it for some of the time. I left the field 6+ years ago and there’s not much that would make me go back. I have, however, wandered through a number of related, but very different, fields. I went into Career Counseling, then got a job training people who work as employment specialists and job coaches for people with disabilities. Then I did something or other in nonprofit project management (a year-long stint that was both not quite related and not a good fit), and now I work in Training and Development in the HR department of a large medical center.
10 years ago, I would have thought that a counseling degree made me qualified to be a counselor and not much else.
I would suggest thinking of people you know who have jobs that have some of the components that you do think are a good fit for you and having some informational meetings with those people. How did they get where they are? What would they suggest for someone trying to move in that direction?
If you have any electives free for what’s left of your degree requirements, that might be a good way to explore.
Well, now you have a college degree so that’s removes the “no degree, can’t consider you” issue.
If you now have a better understanding of what makes people do what they do, you can apply that in all sorts of ways. if nothing else, making some of your work interactions as an on-going experiment.
Frankly, given your degree and the 3 bullet points, you’d probably go far in HR. And I’m not being snarky. Your major will probably be seen as a plus. Downside is that the majority of HR are women, and you need to be happy in that dynamic. Remember, most HR departments are there to
prevent the company from being sued
do the bureaucratic part of getting candidates through the hiring process
and based on my life experience at several multinational corporations, have nothing to do with solving people’s problems.
Let’s see … jobs for people who don’t like people…
OK, law enforcement, military, Republican politician, terrorist come to mind first, but maybe that’s not practical.
Many computer related jobs, especially computer operations on the night shift will have you working alone. Debt collection is great if you don’t like people. Forest ranger is what the test in high school recommended for me.
China Guy, you forgot:
4. keeping qualified applicants from getting through the hiring process
5. gossiping about the private personal info about employees
6. making incomprehensible, pointless changes to procedures
7. doing things the old way instead of using the changes in 6.
There are surprisingly few jobs in the military were you do that. Most jobs are support. And yeah, you get a chance to kill people but they have a bad habit of trying to kill you back.
Unless you’re a UAV operator, but then you’re stuck in a small room with someone else your entire shift.
moejoe: You see, this is an important point because is it that you just don’t affirmatively like people or is it more accurate to say that you affirmatively dislike them? That could be 2 very different . . . ummm . . . ‘career paths’, you might say.
You’re probably just choosy about the type of people you have to associate with. If you like a creative environment but not necessarily direct involvement, I’m sure there are plenty of options. I would suggest systems analysis but I don’t think that really exists anymore as a separate job title. Now it’s normally something like ‘programmer/analyst.’
I would consider taking the Myers Briggs inventory. You might be able to take it online.
Here is a web site that might help - http://www.careertest.net/
Thanks dzero, that was pretty cool. Turns out I am ISFJ, and the descriptions sound pretty close. Service/work oriented, on time, loyal, need peace and quiet.
As to your question I wouldn’t say that I dislike people as much as I could mostly take or leave them and I think many of them are just causing their own problems and then complaining about them instead of solving them.
My job involves a lot of small talk, and I seem to be good at that since people stop by to chat all the time and seem to be happy when they leave. The thing is I very seldom actually care about whatever it is they’re telling me, mostly I’m just faking it and thinking about other things.
Also when people talk about their personal problems I’m internally thinking well, why don’t you just stop/start doing that thing or dating that person or dealing with that issue? I just don’t have a lot of sympathy for what seem to be easily resolved problems and I imagine that would make me a very bad counselor/social worker/therapist etc.
And you know, y’all might throw pointy hard things at me for admitting this, but after reading the replies here I’m starting to think HR might be right up my alley. I wonder what kinds of organizations pay the most for that type of work?
You could always keep going to school, become a psychologist, and do a bunch of studies, rather than actually helping people directly.
And if you are really good at small talk, you could apply that to shmoozing people, rather than helping people out. Unfortunately, I can’t help you in that regard, but I’m sure other Dopers can.
Not all HR folks are the Neanderthals that some people are trying to make them out to be. There are different functions within HR—staffing and recruitment, generalist, training and development (my role). I don’t even have access to the confidential stuff and the gossip, let alone spread it around.
