Jobs/Careers for the non-leaders and the slow-paced

August 22, 2024 3:24 PM

I'm struggling to find work/jobs that aren't looking for "dynamic leaders in a fast-paced environment." I don't want to be a leader. I'm sick of fast-paced jobs. But, that seems to be what everyone is looking for.

So, I guess what I'm looking for are ideas for jobs/careers where I can just do a job without being a leader and without feeling like I'm at a break-neck speed all the time. I understand upticks in urgency, but having that be the state of affairs at all times in a job just really really doesn't appeal to me. I want a job where I can gather my wits around me before the next deluge of activity. I don't want to lead a team or be a manager. I have a (very) recent BA degree in anthropology and although I know I will utilize what I learned, I am not expecting a job in anthropology (especially since I currently have no plans for a master's or PhD). I have experience as a patient care coordinator/front desk medical and outdated experience as a paralegal legal assistant. I liked those positions for the type of work, but they were all extremely fast-paced, and that grew old. Also, does fast-paced actually mean "short staffed"? Because that's what it felt like. Any ideas on avenues I could pursue or look into?

posted by Sassyfras to Work & Money (27 answers total)

If you don't mind overnight work, you might enjoy night audit at a hotel. Most hotels have someone who's on duty overnight, running reports and helping. I'd imagine that many jobs that are more analytical would be a bit less "fast-paced". Some quality control -type jobs or long-term projects.

Some important questions to consider: do you want 8-5, M-F work? Do you want to work with the public? Do you want to be at a small company or large company? Button-down corporate or start-up or small company? Do you like working at a desk/computer, or do you need to be up and moving? Do you have a preference for remote or in-office or hybrid?
posted by hydra77 at 3:38 PM on August 22

You want USAjobs.gov
posted by leotrotsky at 3:44 PM on August 22

Came to say state job, some of which do want an anthropology degree. I have a slightly weird state job that gets very fast pace because we’re responding to emergencies so you might want to check for that. Otherwise most of my coworkers outside my group have a much more peaceful day than me.
posted by lepus at 3:58 PM on August 22

I think sometimes it's less about the role and more about the workplace/company/organization culture. Look for employers that are slower-paced. That generally won't be in high tech or other prestigious or growing fields.
posted by trig at 4:04 PM on August 22

You want USAjobs.gov

Came to say state job,

...or County job. Like in education.
posted by Rash at 4:29 PM on August 22

A union gig in the trades? Maybe the Post Office? There's a lot of pressure in fields that require safety to not be fast-paced at the expense of getting it right. And the younger (as in my age, where I'm looking at another decade or decade and a half at the desk) retired guys in my neighborhood all came through that path.
posted by straw at 4:46 PM on August 22

It's probably worth remembering that phrases like "dynamic leaders in a fast-paced environment" can just be a thoughtless cliche? Lots of job descriptions will say things of that sort, when it's not even slightly the case.
posted by kickingtheground at 4:47 PM on August 22

Have you considered an administrative position at a university or college? Despite what they might think, universities are *not* fast paced (except for admissions, which have stressful long hours that may not pay adequately). And I don’t just mean as an admin assistant. As you might have noticed, there are program (not only academic program) managers, data analyst positions in hr, finance, sustainability, etc. Check out university job listings on their websites! Maybe temp there first to get a feel for different depts.

Most university/college admin jobs don’t require an advanced degree. Your older job skill sets are transferable, and your familiarity with the academic environment is a plus. A lot of university jobs pay pretty well (even at the non-Ivy privates, as well as state schools -think Cali and the NE), although almost no one is making tech bro or big pharma money. Good luck!

(I have a BA in anthro and ended up in library/archives work, although that meant a masters degree.)
posted by mollymillions at 4:47 PM on August 22

You want USAjobs.gov

My partner and I both have PhDs, were also told this, have collectively applied to ~100 jobs on there in the last couple of years, and this has amounted to....one interview.

Not saying to not try, but don't get your hopes up - especially if you have urgent bills to pay.

Anyway, you might consider university admin jobs - they are kinda boring but they are at least pretty chill and a lot of them have pretty good health care plans.
posted by coffeecat at 4:58 PM on August 22

USAjobs.com has very nitpicking specific ways to do resumes (disclaimer: I was briefly getting help with applying there but never actually went through with it because I got another job), so if you go there, follow it carefully.

In my experience as a former university admin, it absolutely was fast paced, short staffed, all the bad buzzwords. Basically any job involving customer service is going to be fast paced now, and university admin jobs are the nitpickiest ever because after 2 decades of experience I still couldn't get hired at another one. If you can find some quiet office, great, but universities are stress pits a lot of the time.

I'd say look at state employment at anything that looks more like data entry. Do not do any jobs involving general phone answering or front counter.
posted by jenfullmoon at 5:47 PM on August 22

My librarian wife had a very interesting role for a year (in an academic library) sending, tracking, and receiving interloans, this was national and global for students and academics living offshore. A recent science degree would give you much of the experience for a role like this.
posted by unearthed at 6:33 PM on August 22

I’m an evaluator and I was an anthropology major. Look up evaluation associations, there’s an American one (with local chapters) and a European one. Projects are usually not too fast paced.
posted by azalea_chant at 11:01 PM on August 22

in my experience, US state jobs were always overburdened, with a rapidly expanding mission and no budget to support it. corporate is basically the same but you get paid more. fwiw i work in IT, mostly data analytics and engineering.

frankly, i hate everything. the minimum wage food service and retail jobs i worked had the same pressure to constantly perform, or whatever. it all sucks. i wish i could be more help.
posted by AlbertCalavicci at 4:08 AM on August 23

If the job posting says "dynamic leaders in a fast-paced environment" you are smart to give it a miss.

"Dynamic leaders..." means "We don't train and have inadequate documentation, so you have to take initiative and try to figure it all out without sufficient support." When they say leaders but don't mention the people you will be leading and managing, they are definitely not looking for leaders, but front runners.

As you suspected, "Fast-paced environment..." means "We hire insufficient staff, which will not only mean that there is too much work for you to get it done properly in the time allocated, but you will be dinged for incomplete or faulty work, and will almost certainly end up dealing with frustrated and distressed clients or customers or suppliers who will be a misery to work with." Also watch out for wage theft in the form of unpaid time working, such as places that expect you to be clocked in half an hour early but don't pay that half hour.

To be fair, the organization putting out the job posting probably is thinking that "Dynamic leaders..." doesn't mean what I said, but rather, "...People who are not so addicted to their cell phone so that they spent hours a day glued to it instead of working..." This is increasingly a problem from the viewpoint of employers as the cohort of people who regard every job they get as a dead end misery and don't really care if they get fired is not one that is shrinking. Things are steadily working towards the old Soviet norm of "We pretend to work and you pretend to pay us."

I'm going to suggest you ask what the turnover rate is, when it comes time to being interviewed. The more people who quit on finishing training, or are let go at the end of their three month probation period, the less likely it is that you will want to stay in that job any longer than you have to. If they retain a good percentage of each training group then you can make the guess that you might not find the conditions too miserable to stay.

Aim for for a job without too many official hours - that way if you decide you need to keep job searching to find something better you won't be too exhausted to even think about it at the end of the work day, and if the income is sufficient and you decide to stay, you will have the option of more choice in where you live because you can soak a commute to get a better home, or will have time to have a personal life, and the option to look for additional income streams.

You are beginning your job search on the right foot, watching out for red flags. There are still quite tenable jobs out there.
posted by Jane the Brown at 5:08 AM on August 23

Like other folks have said, University/Higher Ed is great for this sort of thing.
posted by gregr at 6:14 AM on August 23

I’ve found one of the keys is to find out how family friendly the company is. The expectations of frenetic activity and selfless dedication to the job are much lower. People have higher priorities.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 6:17 AM on August 23

As a recent escapee from university/higher ed, I’ll throw a bit of a dampener on that. By the time I left my library my 5-person department had contracted to a 2-person department and there were no plans to expand again. No firing, just a refusal of the administration to replace employees who left.

I’d been on a university committee a few years ago where I learned that the administration was planning for the coming demographic crunch, where fewer kids were coming to college, and I believe the pandemic and the staff churn we experienced associated with that enabled them to move up their plans for the crunch, and the streamlining process will continue unless something fundamental changes about the population.

Note this was a private university, which is a sort well-known for being a hedge fund that dispenses education on the side and who preserves the stakeholders’ income at all costs, but I am pessimistic enough to think this is coming for a lot of other colleges and universities.
posted by telophase at 7:19 AM on August 23

Yeah - I’m in marketing in higher ed and I have so much work I have to do deep breaths before opening Asana. HOWEVER, I think the general atmosphere and in my case, union contract, do contribute to a better work-life balance.
posted by warriorqueen at 7:38 AM on August 23

I just wanted to say that I strongly disagree with the idea that a university job (faculty, staff or otherwise) is going to be calm or slow-paced. This is a huge misconception that the general public has, based on the way that universities used to be run a couple of decades ago.

The field of higher education is currently going through a transition process. Some smaller colleges are outright closing their doors, while others are seeking to cut costs by overworking the faculty and the lower paid admin staff.

A couple of decades ago, some of these lower paid admin jobs were calm, slow paced, and you had a lot more autonomy over your daily work flow. Without going into too much detail, this is really not the case anymore.

As a result, there are many people who are trying to find a way out of higher education. For instance, on Facebook, there is a group called Expatriates of Student Affairs, which is filled with droves of people who are largely dissatisfied, and who desire to find better paid employment elsewhere.

Furthermore, I've noticed that in recent years, for university staff jobs that previously only required a high school degree, they are now looking for a master's degree at minimum.

Personally I would only apply for university staff jobs if: a) I had a master's degree at minimum, b) I really really need the tuition remission, and b) I have a spouse with a much higher paying job, who can pay the majority of the bills.

As a single person in today's economy, you can not live comfortably on a lower paid admin salary.

Sorry, if this was too long. I just felt the need to clarify.
posted by carnival_night_zone at 7:44 AM on August 23

...universities are stress pits a lot of the time.

I couldn't have said it better myself.
posted by carnival_night_zone at 7:47 AM on August 23

Yeah, to clarify, not all university/high ed admin jobs are reasonable, and there is no doubt a gulf between public-facing jobs and those that are internal, a divide between public and private, between places with small endowments and large endowments, etc. But there are still pretty decent jobs to be found, so I'd say it's still worth the OP checking nearby university job postings.
posted by coffeecat at 8:02 AM on August 23

I think my job at as a bank teller (at a small local bank) fits what you are looking for BUT it depends highly on the bank & even the specific branch.
posted by needs more cowbell at 8:19 AM on August 23

Being an AmeriCorps VISTA for a year makes it easier to get a federal job. VISTA jobs can be fast-paced or not at all, but its only a year. I did that and got a federal job relatively easily, but that was 14 years ago so I don't know if it is harder now. But my federal job is pretty chill most of the year, and it is actually considered one of the more fast-paced jobs in my agency.
posted by catquas at 9:48 AM on August 23

I am also a federal employee who does good work, solid work, but I am no longer frantic at work and am a program manager not a people manager. (There are people in my work world with anthropology degrees. Look at USAjobs in the Social Services series. )
posted by stormygrey at 11:41 AM on August 23

Look for a company that is explicit about work-life balance, unlimited PTO, etc. These jobs exist. I know because I have one and am looking for my next role. Tech does not necessarily mean insane.
posted by eggman at 12:11 PM on August 23

Decent low stress jobs have low turnover and much fewer openings because people are happy in their positions. Avoid anything with a lot of open positions listed. Find out how long the previous person was there.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 11:12 PM on August 23

Just my two cents: unlimited PTO is a scam. It means the same thing as "no protected PTO". I became permanently disabled while at an unlimited PTO company and they treated me like absolutely shit and were trying to fire me for things like taking two hours off to go to an absolutely necessary medical appointment. And we only had 5 sick days, which I'd already used up to have COVID.

Frankly, after that experience, I will only accept a job with protected, actual, real PTO. The kind where if you leave the company without first using up your vacation hours, it gets paid out on your paycheck. (Unless I'm in a hourly role in the construction industry, where nobody gives you shit for taking unpaid time off to go to the doctor, but that's a different world with a very specific work culture.)
posted by cnidaria at 4:12 PM on August 25