The desire to help others. It’s a quality we look for in others, a quality we hope our actions reflect. It’s also a quality that lets us build a long and rewarding career. If you’ve been wondering how you can use your natural inclination toward kindness and desire to provide support in a professional manner, this guide will help answer a few questions.
Together, let’s unpack five career paths for those who want to help others.
1. Healthcare
Were you the sibling who dressed everyone’s cuts following an afternoon climbing the old paperbark in your folks’ backyard? If so, a healthcare career might be just what the doctor ordered (sorry, we couldn’t resist).
Few industries gather as many professions under their banner as healthcare. You know the titles: General Practitioner, Surgeon, Physician, Psychologist, and Nurse, to name just a few. What makes them comrades is the common goal of keeping the community healthy; physically, mentally, and emotionally. As the healthcare landscape evolves, professionals also need to stay informed about emerging practices, including understanding more about telehealth regulations, which play a significant role in providing remote care and ensuring the security and compliance of healthcare services.
Which healthcare career path is for you will likely depend on the category you’re most drawn toward. A degree in medicine is a common starting point. This will qualify you to work as a junior doctor. From there, you can pursue further study in a specialty field. Think cardiology or anesthesiology.
For nursing, the path changes but the sequence remains the same. A Bachelor of Nursing is the start; from there, work experience and further study present roles like midwifery. Along with a common goal, the joining thread in healthcare is constant learning. Every field demands a rigorous acquaintance with its evolving practices; you must stay current so your care remains current.
2. Social Care
If you’re known for helping friends keep afloat during rough times, like breakups, illnesses, or redundancies, social care might be your calling. Social workers fall under the healthcare banner but their work is non-medical. Instead, they support people unable to live independently.
As a social worker, your support can take any shape. Your day might involve helping elderly people with their grocery shopping; or connecting victims of domestic violence with financial support and other community resources; or counseling someone dealing with substance addiction. It’s a diverse and challenging list.
Your path begins with a bachelor’s degree in social work. That said, this isn’t the only way to start your journey to social work. Graduating with an approved undergraduate degree (say, in arts or science) will qualify you to enrol in a Masters in Social Work online. From here, you can move into fields as disparate as human rights advocacy, child protection, and public health.
At its heart, social work is about connecting people with their community; for this reason, it’ll always hold a noble standing in the community’s eyes and hearts.
3. Emergency Services
Calm and selfless in a crisis? A career in the emergency services could be perfect for you. Firefighters, paramedics, the police; any job that requires you to respond promptly and effectively to an emergency. Bushfire, city fire, a head-on crash on the Westgate Bridge; for every scene or scenario, there’s a corresponding emergency.
Aside from paramedicine, which requires a bachelor’s degree, emergency service roles typically require you to complete an intensive training program. Take firefighting. In Australia, you need citizenship or permanent residency to apply. Next comes the (highly competitive) recruitment process. Aptitude tests, physical ability tests, personality and psychological tests, not to mention interviews and medical examinations.
If you pass the recruitment stage, you must then pass the firefighter training course. Do all this and you’ll be offered a firefighting role. Entry into Australia’s police force follows a similar path. From there, it’s a matter of gaining experience.
4. Teaching/Childcare
Maybe your desire to help manifests in a different way. Maybe it’s less about healing and saving people and more about helping them understand the world. If you’ve always had a knack for helping others understand things, a career in teaching is where you want to focus your energy.
Teachers are critical cogs in a community’s ongoing development; as a teacher, you can have a profound effect on students and their families. And depending on which type of teaching you do, there’s a chance you’ll engage with almost every member of your community.
Again, the common starting point is a bachelor’s degree in teaching. Like social work, this isn’t an unchallenged pathway. Many people become teachers later in their professional lives, transitioning from careers as varied as law, business, and finance. The brilliance of the teaching vocation is that it draws on your life outside the classroom to enrich the lessons you deliver inside the classroom.
5. Politics
At face value, we can all agree on the importance of doctors, teachers, and firefighters. Politicians? Not so much. Mention to a group of friends you plan to study politics and you can expect a spectrum of lively responses.
Truth is, a political career can provide deep and lasting value to your community. At their best, politicians are sensible and compassionate leaders who help the community through equitable policy and advocacy.
The career path into politics can be as ambiguous as politics itself. If you aim to become an elected member, you need to meet the following criteria: be 18 years or older and an Australian citizen. From there, you define the path forward. Joining your local party, developing strong soft skills, and gaining expertise in an industry critical to your community (like agriculture) will strengthen your case to represent it.
If you’re interested in politics but prefer to work away from direct public scrutiny, enrolling in a political science degree will help get your foot in the door. From here, you can become a political analyst, advisor, or policy writer (again, to name a few).
Of the professions we’ve touched on, politics is the most susceptible to outside influence. If you become a surgeon, few will openly question or begrudge your decision to become one. As a politician, you won’t have this luxury.
Final Thoughts
Cliche as it is, the options are endless if you want to make your gift for helping people into a career. You just need to figure out which career path feels most natural. When you do that, you can invest the right amount of energy into helping others.