How can I find the right career, settle down, and live happily ever after?

March 6, 2012 8:29 AM

I have quite a bitty CV and I want to settle down with a job I love soon (I just turned 30). Could you help me find my career sweetheart? Or to put it another way, is there any job that will pay me to sit around and read?

So this is yet another career advice question, but I'm looking for some ideas on the sort of role I could pursue given my talents, interests, and background.

I have fairly strong ideas about what I don't want to do (admin, sitting at a desk all day and never leaving it, working on my own, starting right at the very bottom again), but I'm not so sure what I do want.

I have two skills that I think could be valuable, but I'm not sure where:

- I'm a super fast reader and pick things up very quickly. I can zip through a document or book in no time, and then summarise it for you in even less.
- I'm an interested person (not a typo). I'm good at finding out about things. Silly example, but I always meticulously plan our holidays and do tons of research (mostly online). I get intensely interested in a particular topic, find out everything about it, and then move on to another.

Do any of you lovely Ask Metafilter people work in a job that requires these skills?

Things I've considered, but don't know much about, include:

- Radio work, particularly researcher posts
- Publishing, but don't know much about this
- Some kind of entrepeneurship...hmm, a little vague I know

Here's some background: I've always worked in marketing and communications. The aspects I've really enjoyed in my working life so far have been copywriting (particularly online), promoting events, and making connections with other people and organisations.

posted by Encipher to Work & Money (10 answers total)

How about becoming a purchaser or buyer of some sort? It requires all of your skills and you'd be meeting with people. I spend some of my time doing this and I also enjoy researching something and moving on.
posted by michaelh at 8:42 AM on March 6, 2012

Generally speaking, people will not pay you just to consume, whether it's information or food or anything else. People pay food critics because of what they write, not what they eat.

If you can consume a lot of information and then summarize it in a compelling and interesting way, and you can produce that work on a deadline, then maybe journalism is for you. Project management, possibly, though that's a huge learning curve. Purchasing - making sound decisions about the information you've consumed - may also be a good fit. But again, you need figure out what you're good at producing, not consuming.
posted by mhoye at 8:45 AM on March 6, 2012 [3 favorites]

Journalism or public policy analysis. Trust me, you will read your eyes out.
posted by jgirl at 8:50 AM on March 6, 2012 [1 favorite]

I've had jobs that paid me to sit around and read. Of course, 99.99999% of what I was reading was terrible.

Google "slush pile"
posted by the latin mouse at 8:51 AM on March 6, 2012

Literary agent? Especially if you're in the NYC area. Search craigslist for "agency intern" and "agent" in the writing section. Agencies are always searching for interns to read slush.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 8:54 AM on March 6, 2012 [1 favorite]

Production assistant for a film-maker/documentarian, radio production, PBS-type show etc. They do background research for segments allowing you to dive into reading a lot about a particular topic, and also handle logistics for production (e.g., getting equipment, coordinating actor and production schedules, handling travel logistics, etc.).
posted by goggie at 9:02 AM on March 6, 2012 [1 favorite]

I was also going to chime in something in the area of "production". Researching something from the inside out and then coordinating around it to produce something for mass consumption sounds like what you are looking for.
posted by like_neon at 9:20 AM on March 6, 2012

You could look for a job as a researcher or fact-checker for a publisher. Granted, those jobs are increasingly being phased out, and are in high demand along the increasingly out-of-work journalism population...
posted by limeonaire at 10:27 AM on March 6, 2012

Productionbase.uk has frequent listings for researchers, but you should try and network your way into production companies, etc. It's rather more complicated work than just reading up on various subjects. If you know nothing about production, you might want learn, either by an internship/apprenticeship or taking some classes.
posted by Ideefixe at 10:56 AM on March 6, 2012

Response by poster: Thanks for the comments everyone - they are were all extremely helpful. mhoye, your comment about being paid to produce not to consume really hit the nail on the head for me, you're totally right and I don't know why I haven't though of it like this before.

Think I will look into production jobs, do some research etc.
posted by Encipher at 6:18 AM on March 7, 2012