Cool Careers

Have you ever wanted a different career? Something a little bit different, something fun and exciting? Or that sounds as if it will really keep you interested and happy?

‘If you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life.’ Or so the old saying goes. When you have a career you really love doing, your life as a whole becomes immeasurably happier.

David is a lucky man in the eyes of many of his friends. He directs films for a living. It has taken him a long time to find a career he really loves. First he was a barman, then a professional limousine driver, briefly an electrician and, for several years, a cameraman and freelance assistant director. Finally, he started making music videos as a freelance director and now he makes films. The world of film is undoubtedly cool but, more importantly, he thinks it’s cool. For many years he followed a career path that wasn’t exciting, fun or interesting. Now he is fortunate, or clever enough just to fix his eyes on doing something he truly loves.

Your career, like David’s, is for you alone. A cool career will transcend the mere idea of work and become a job that you can be really passionate about. There really are no obstacles out there that you can’t find your way around. You have to love what you do and go for what you want to do in your life.

Cool Careers contains lots of ideas for some of the coolest and most fascinating careers on the planet right now. There are thousands of careers out there. Most conventional career guides only touch on the headline careers. The aim of Cool Careers is to tease out the little ones … the interesting jobs that you usually only discover when you have been working for a while.

It is not always easy to decide what career you might like. How should you make the decision? Based on what your friends do? Based on what you have done in your life so far? On your current qualifications or skills?

Well, if you are content with any old job, so be it. But if, on the other hand, you are looking for a career that will keep you fascinated, then this is the book for you.

This book came about because, over the last ten years, I have met hundreds of people who were seeking a career. I kept being asked the same question, ‘How do I find a truly satisfying career?’

Some were graduates taking their first steps on the career ladder. Some had lost their job and needed a new one. Many, though, had already held down a job or two before realising that they want something bigger, perhaps better paid, different, more exciting, with more free time or more of a challenge. Many simply felt that their career didn’t really express who they were. They just knew something wasn’t right.

In other words, what they were looking for was not just any old career but a really cool career.

Undoubtedly, there are some careers that lots of people in the world think are cool. Others are only considered cool by a select few.

A cool career is basically a career that is in a cool area or is simply cool itself. It is a career that is ‘a little bit more’ or ‘much more’ off the beaten track than the average.

Anybody can get a career. However, if you are creative or unconventional, if you want to do what you love and maybe even inspire others to do what they love, you probably are really looking for a cool career.

If so, look no further. This book contains around 500 of the coolest careers in existence today.

How do I use this book?

Cool Careers is deliberately not laid out like a conventional career guide, even though it contains plenty of ideas to stimulate your thinking about your future career.