Everyday Jobs You May Not Have Considered

If you’re currently looking for work then you’re certainly not alone. Thanks to the current economic depression, more and more people are finding themselves out of work. Of course this has resulted in the few remaining job positions becoming very much over-subscribed which is making it ever more difficult to find work – and so the vicious cycle continues. If you've started to find that rejection letters are getting you down and damaging your confidence though, then perhaps it’s time to look elsewhere for work.

While most of us will send off applications to local stores and restaurants, there are many other job roles out there that would be likely to take you on and that fewer people might have considered applying to – and they’re often more reward. Here we will look at some of the less obvious alternative jobs and fields you could look into.

• Librarian
  

Being a librarian is something of an ideal job for many people. Not only is it very quiet and restful, but if you’re a fan of academia it’s a great environment to be in where you’ll meet a lot of interesting people. Some librarian positions can also be surprisingly highly paid, so it’s not just a dead end job.

• Garbage Collector
  

I had a friend who always said that his back-up career plan was to become a garbage collector. Currently he builds defensive weapons for a private company with navy contracts – so the

Two didn't seem to fit. His explanation was that being a garbage collector would mean getting up early in the morning but then having most of his day free. At the same time it’s also surprisingly well paid, and it’s certainly not a job where you’d bring much stress home with you. Thinking about it, I kind of get his point…

• Working on Attractions
  

During my summer holidays when I was younger I used to work for a company called ‘Jump Zone’ – which owned giant trampoline bungee machines by the beach. In many ways this was a dream job – I got to stand in the sun on the beach all day and would often be asked to pose for people’s holiday photos. And when business was quiet? They would actively encourage me to cut lose on the bungees myself to try and advertise the attraction. Getting paid to jump on a trampoline in the sun is always going to be a pretty good deal.

This of course is only one example of an attraction. If you prefer you could work in an aquarium, you could work on a real bungee site, or you could work handing out drinks at the world’s largest ball of string. Hell, you could even be Mickey Mouse at Disney Land; surely that’s the happiest job in the world?

• Transport
  

There are a lot of jobs in transport that don’t involve driving or flying a vehicle. For instance you could be a ticket inspector on a train, you could work on a cruise ship or you could man the bridge on a river (a great job if you don’t mind long stretches of quiet). That said, driving a train is something that’s surprisingly easy to get into – and even becoming a pilot is possible if you have 20/20 vision and are willing to put up a big loan (helps if you have parents willing to re-mortgage their home like my friend did).

• Mining
  

There are a lot of jobs in the mining industry – and this could mean mining for anything from coal to oil to diamonds. Whether you work in finance and management or handle labour, the reality is very different to what most people think and there’s a lot of potential for career progression.

• Gym Instructor
  

Becoming a gym instructor is something that really only requires a relatively short and affordable course. Once you have this though you’ll have work anywhere in the country in a very lucrative industry. And there is of course good opportunity for advancement here as well – whether you gun for gym manager or end up as trainer to the stars…

• Hotels
  

It seems that everyone I know out of work looks at shops and restaurants for work, but that few look to hotels for jobs. This is an oversight on their part though, as there are a range of different roles in hospitality to suit almost any lifestyle.