Jobs for sociophobes?

March 16, 2009 11:01 AM

My friend is a sociophobe with an Arts degree. She wants to find a job with some social interaction, but avoiding high pressure / extroverty jobs.

She suffers from fairly severe sociophobia (some symptoms: sweaty hands, shakes & heart racing, blushing & stuttering, panic building up days before an event etc) as well as extreme lack of confidence & shyness. She is also very bad at small talk and lacks social awareness.
She is finding that a lot of the jobs she would be qualified for (she has a degree in German & comparative literature and languages. She's German btw) are not suitable for her because you're expected to be outgoing / very communicative etc (PR, journalism, new media, all that kinda stuff).

So now she's looking for alternatives. She'd be quite happy doing something fairly mind-numbing (but of course she's afraid of not even being considered due to being "overqualified"). She wouldn't want to be completely locked away (to avoid her issues getting worse), but nothing where being confident and outgoing is a prerequisite of the job. Obviously it would be nice if her degree didn't completely go to waste.

Other qualifications: she's pretty creative, esp. as a writer, she's a great researcher with a lot of varied knowledge, and she has a a deep interest in science (and actually regrets having done an arts degree now). She's also good at languages.

If you're sociophobic yourself and have found a job you like she'd also love to hear about it!

(please do not suggest therapy. she's looking into that atm but that's not what this question is about.)

Thanks!

posted by ClarissaWAM to work & money (11 comments total)

Publishing publishing publishing!!! Academic or scholarly publishing might fit the bill nicely, esp. if she can find a niche that has a wee bit of human interaction but doesn't force her to make first moves. (I'm referring there to acquisitions/sponsoring editors.) Developmental or copyediting? Production editing? Copywriting/marketing/corp communications? Seriously, look into this!
posted by scratch at 11:13 AM on March 16

Translation services? I'm sure there's a better name for it, but I used to work at a job where we'd need a translator all the time due to the language barrier.
posted by trotter at 11:23 AM on March 16

It sounds like (freelance) translation English into German would be a fairly good match, if her English is to degree level. Room for her creativity, research skills, and it should be possible to capitalise on her literary specialisms by translating/proofreading theses etc. (literary translation is really difficult to get into/make a living of, however). You work on your own, either at an agency office, which aren't hyper-social environments, or at home - or a mix of both, ideally, so you have alone time and a bit of people time. She may have to do some telephoning and especially be able to sound professional and confident when receiving calls from clients, but most of the communication can be done by email. I'm on the introverted side and the "lifestyle" suits that pretty well (translating shouldn't be confused of course with being an interpreter, which requires a very different personality).
Good places for a newbie to post a skills profile, bid for jobs and read forums about getting established as a translator are www.proz.com and www.translatorscafe.com
posted by runincircles at 11:25 AM on March 16

Thanks for suggestions so far. Just to reduce further "translation!" suggestions, unfortunately her language skills (incl. English) are not necessarily good enough for that, esp. considering the competition.

I'm liking the publishing suggestion, but we'll see what she thinks... thanks!
posted by ClarissaWAM at 11:49 AM on March 16

What about working in libraries or archives? Academic libraries are chock-full of great people with excellent minds who aren't that comfortable with being "people persons". Going back to school for library sciences might be a really great option...
posted by salem at 12:22 PM on March 16

Academic libraries are highly competitive environments where people skills actually *are* necessary. Academic librarians need to teach, do presentations, to interact with students all day long (some of whom don't want to be there), and sometimes get involved in forms of outreach.

Library school, for the record, is a bad deal all around right now. There are way too many MLIS's in the world, and not nearly enough jobs for all of them. (Yeah, I'm one of them!)

That being said - I'm pretty sociophobic myself and have done fairly well finding gainful employment based on my tech skills. Nobody expects the geek girl to be perky :)
posted by chez shoes at 12:33 PM on March 16

Seconding chez shoes: potential library workers or librarians who are not "people persons" will not be "employed persons".
posted by the dief at 12:36 PM on March 16 [1 favorite]

She could work as a clerk for the IRS. Pay's not great, but you get to push papers around while practically never communicating with anyone.
posted by Citrus at 12:48 PM on March 16

Blimey, I worked part-time for a while as an assistant in the local history dept. of a large public city library and most of the people I worked with were hugely antisocial. Lovely and knowledgeable yes, customer friendly? Hell no. Mind you, most of them had been there 20 + years.

However, these were front line positions so probably not suited to your friend, but there were other people who worked in the office or in the stacks, basically cataloguing and maintaining the archives - they rarely had to interact with anyone.

I also met with book conservationists they worked across a number of libraries and museums and that always seemed a really interesting and creative job to me. There may be lots of interaction but as an assistant it would be pretty low level. She would need to retrain though. There's more info here: http://www.icon.org.uk/.

The only other stuff I can think of is data entry or admin, especially out-of-hours stuff. Over-qualification shouldn't be that much of an issue - especially at the minute.
posted by freya_lamb at 1:07 PM on March 16

As a sociophobe myself who is also an introvert, I had interned at a local newspaper once. They told me I needed to work on my people skills and suggested I join Toastmasters. I don't know if you've heard of it but it is an organization designed to help people develop and practice their public speaking skills and get used to speaking before an audience. This really helped me. It costs some money for a membership (but not too much) and there is a club in nearly every area around the world. The good thing about Toastmaster's is that EVERYONE in the club is there because they suffer from some sort of social anxiety or fear of public speaking. You get gentle, constructive feedback on your performance and if you make a mistake it is not a problem because everyone is so friendly, encouraging and supportive. The people in my club back at home referred to it as a "learning lab."

So I suggest she look into that. Many people in my club were there because they wanted to be able to handle the "social" aspects of their job much better.

Here is their website: http://www.toastmasters.org/

As for a job, I think the suggestions others have made are very good. Freelance web design works well for me, but I am a student at the moment but before going back to school that's what I was doing. It was a good mix for me because I only interacted with my clients via email, phone or chat.

But definitely tell her to check out Toastmasters. Many clubs allow guests to sit in on a meeting to see what it is like before joining!
posted by starpoint at 6:11 PM on March 16

Thanks everyone! I should've said that she was a German in Germany, as some answers were very US-specific, heh.
I'll be back to mark best answers once she's told me which ones she prefers.
posted by ClarissaWAM at 1:30 PM on March 17