7 Amazing Careers For Empathic People.
Updated on September 25th, 2023
October 25th 2021
This text was fully written by humans.
SUMMARY / KEY TAKEAWAYS
Empathy is a two-sided sword. It could be an obstacle in your career development or it could become your biggest asset. It all depends on your approach.
In this article, we review 7 professions perfect for empathic people. What is daily life and the scope of duties like? How to get your first job?
Table of Contents
- Are You an Empath?
- Careers For Empathic People: How To Thrive in the Job Market As an Empathic Person?
- Career Coach.
- E-commerce Expert / Public Relations Specialist.
- Team Leader.
- Community Booster / Community Developer.
- Interior Designer.
- Designer of (Board) Games.
- Financial Planner.
- Conclusions: How To Navigate in the Job Market as an Empathic Person?
Are You an Empath?
The textbook definition of empathy is nothing other than “the ability to understand and share the feelings and perspectives of others.” There is more than just one level of empathy, as you might be able to read other people’s emotional states with or without feeling compassion for their situation.
And in fact, the scope of human basic and complex emotions is broad. While most individuals are able to recognize basic (or, universal) emotions in others, empaths can capture and resonate with complex, nuanced emotions as well.
Careers For Empathic People: How To Thrive in the Job Market As an Empathic Person?
Empathy is a two-sided sword. It could be a problem in your career development once you find yourself in the wrong environment.
Or, it could be your biggest asset that helps you thrive in the job market. It all depends on whether you know how to use your empathy to your advantage as a professional.
The good news is: despite the common stereotypes, there are multiple careers in which you can thrive as an empathic person. Not only can you find suitable jobs in the public education system, medicine, nursery, or clinical psychology, but also, your empathy can let you thrive in the most progressive and competitive branches of industry.
In this article, we present seven ideas for an amazing career that every empathic professional might consider.
1. Career Coach.
The most obvious and natural career track on our list is the Career Coach. Career Coach is a broad term.
The Reality of Working as a Career Coach.
In principle, Career Coaches assist their clients in their professional journey, on many levels: from assistance in discovering personal goals, through the process of searching for positions and preparing for the interviews together, to regular checkups and brainstorming sessions throughout the professional career.
In fact, there are multiple schools of coaching. Usually, just as with any medicine or therapy, the coaching strategy needs to be adjusted for every professional individually. So, the wider your portfolio of coaching techniques, the better for your client.
If you feel that becoming a Career Coach is your calling, you have plenty of choices. The feeling of solitude and confusion is common among professionals in today’s job market.
Therefore, many public institutions, universities, and businesses choose to launch their own centers for career advisory. Career coaches are in high demand. Therefore, the requirements to get hired as a Career Coach are often limited to as little as a single coaching program ending with a certificate.
Sometimes, there are no formal requirements at all! A couple of years of working experience in the given working environment, and the willingness to learn coaching methods are just enough to get hired and embark on this career path.
Of course, you can also choose to become an independent coach and set up your own freelance practice, or even a startup. However, you need to take into account that this approach won’t give you an easy start to this professional career.
Today, the Internet is full of professional career experts and free career advice. Therefore, it is not easy to get noticed and attract your first clients. There are also some other shortcomings of this career path to consider.
Many career advisors offer the first session, or even two sessions, free of charge to attract clients and build a working relationship with them. But even this altruistic approach has a low success rate. Some professionals only seek one-time help rather than long-term collaboration in the field of personal development.
Therefore, if you dream about reaching independence as a Career Coach, you might think of starting your career from employment to get time for building a network, to acquire your first clients, and to offset the collateral stress.
On the good side of things, this type of career can be highly rewarding. Not only do you help professionals grow, but also, you selectively work with those who wish to develop themselves as professionals.
And, you attract such people to your professional network. The environment of Career Coaches is highly supportive of each other. Career coaches appreciate the value of networking and collaboration in career development higher than anyone. You can also count on positive feedback and good vibes from people whom you directly helped.
How To Become a Career Coach.
Many career coaches start by getting a formal coaching qualification. However, in most cases, it is not necessary. At the end of the day, it is all about earning the trust of your clients.
This is why, today, many coaches build their presence online, for example, by creating content: writing books, launching blogs and YouTube channels.
These actions establish authority and make you relatable as a coach in the field of personal development. The audience can then decide whether they trust in your knowledge and your teaching skills.
2. E-commerce Expert / Public Relations Specialist.
E-commerce is an area that many professionals with academic degrees still look down on. However, it is a career path worth considering! E-commerce is an area where you can find a fulfilling professional career. It is for a few reasons.
The Reality of Working as an E-Commerce Expert.
Firstly, there are thousands of projects running under the radar and led by enthusiastic and capable people with no former experience in marketing and sales.
Empathy and understanding of human motivation can make you a great e-commerce specialist, for at least two reasons.
Firstly, as it was proven in multiple research studies in behavioral economics, rather than relying on cold calculation, customers usually follow their emotions while buying products and services.
Secondly, today, the leading trend in e-commerce UX is conversational design. Or, in other words, design language based on human conversation.
Namely, consumers feel more welcome and are more likely to buy products and services when they have the feeling that the software and virtual assistants they interact with, speak the human-like language and understand them in a way.
But e-commerce is not only about boosting sales. As an expert in developing efficient channels of communication with clients and/or investors, you actively help in building more functional teams and developing new products and services. As such, you are actively involved in the business development process!
In the next few years, the price tags in e-commerce will likely rise. The simple reason is that the e-commerce hegemons such as LinkedIn, Facebook, or Google, don’t have any viable competition in the market. In this situation, small businesses need to keep on working on their image, online presence, and communication with their clients.
In other words, despite the fact that e-commerce is a massive discipline today, the demand for e-commerce experts will only be growing from now on.
This type of job can also be rewarding if you are a geek interested in new technologies. After all, as an e-commerce expert, you will collaborate with multiple teams. And, you will need to get familiar with the concepts and solutions behind each one of them.
However, e-commerce requires flexibility, the ability to work under stress, and constant learning as new trends and tools in marketing come up every month. As such, this profession requires a specific personality and cognitive abilities. If you enjoy the process, nothing is impossible though!
Please find more information about careers in e-commerce in our other article, White Collar Jobs in Digital Marketing: Hot or Not? On 5 Biggest Myths around Digital Marketing.
How To Become an e-Commerce Expert.
This career doesn’t require formal preparation. If you have any experience with blogging and are active on social media, you can apply for a job at one of the companies offering e-commerce services as a Content Creator or as a Social Media Manager. Your online activity speaks for you. Therefore, you can legitimize yourself even without prior experience in working in e-commerce.
3. Team Leader.
A Team Leader, also known as an Executive, is a different sort of manager than a Product or Project Manager. Namely, while a Product or Project Manager is task-oriented as a professional, a Team Leader is people-, or team-oriented.
The Reality of Working as a Team Leader.
Team Leaders lead organizational units within companies and institutions. They are the backbones of companies and organizations in the job market of today! They coordinate their team members to reach the targets specified by the organization.
Team Leaders ensure that the team members communicate smoothly and make progress as expected. They often know their team members better than themselves, spot and stimulate their talents and potential, and they also work for their career paths.
They also need to make sure that the team members develop to the best of their abilities and progress further in their careers. As such, a Team Leader is a function that combines the responsibilities of a Project Manager with mentoring.
Today, the personality and the leading style of the Leaders have a major impact on the company culture and on the eventual success in the market. A good example is Jack Ma, the Founder and CEO of Alibaba whose servant leadership style is adored and admired by his employees and investors. As a result, Alibaba has a similar valuation as Amazon, despite having 6 times fewer employees and assets.
How To Become a Team Leader.
Regardless if you try to get in through networking or applying in an open application process, you will eventually end up at a formal job interview. When it comes to that, you might meet with the classic interview question, “What is your management style?”
A tough question to respond to without dipping into platitudes. After all, your management style usually becomes a combination of the management standards in your environment and of your own style reflecting your personality, working routine, and values.
No wonder most fresh candidates for managers are flabbergasted by this question. They don’t feel like they have a specific style yet. Well, you need to prepare for the question nevertheless—if you don’t have an answer at hand, it is a sign for the recruiter that you might not have as much experience with working with people as you claim.
Therefore, it is good to read about management styles before the interview and reflect on yourself. There is more than just one popular classification of management styles—check, for instance, the classification by Tannenbaum & Schmidt (autocratic, paternalistic, democratic, and laissez-faire style, 1958, 1973).
In general, however, it is harder to become a Team Leader than a Product or Project Manager. The reason is that most employers first expect you to have multiple years of experience working in the field, multiple projects behind your belt, and additionally, specialistic training such as an Executive MBA.
Most Team Leaders start their careers as specialists. Once they reach senior roles and get classified as prospective, their employers fund the training for them. Team Leader positions are rarely openly announced, but rather, these positions are only known to the insiders in the field.
However, if you feel that you were born to lead a team in a large organization, this career path is definitely worth embarking on!
To kickstart your career, consider exploring job opportunities abroad for team leaders and project managers on sites like Jooble.
You can read more about various career paths for managers, including Team Leaders, in the “The Ontology of Value: Discovering Your Source of Value for the Society and The Environment That Values You (ODYSSEY)” booklet.
4. Community Booster / Community Developer.
Today, in the era of online communities — from online teams working in large and small organizations, through gaming, to communities developing next to online platforms — it has become obvious that a Community Developer is a profession of the future in the job market.
The Reality of Working as a Community Developer.
As a Community Developer, you need to increase the engagement in the community, take care of the participants so that everyone feels equally included, and make sure that the vibe in the group is friendly and collaborative. This goal is not easy to achieve!
As a Community Developer, you need good working memory and the ability to type fast. It can be a hectic job in which every day brings new challenges. You will need to run from one fire to another all day long!
How To Become a Community Developer.
How to land a job here? This depends on the area you are most interested in. Of course, you will be the most successful with your job search when you combine your interest in community development with some prior knowledge or a hobby such as gaming.
Community development doesn’t require any formal education. However, it is good to have any community involvement under your belt, even if it was just a cosy online forum.
Of course, this profession is closely related to working with people. Therefore, the easiest way to land this type of job is via personal recommendations.
It is also often the case that online communities are built by people with technical- rather than people skills. As such they struggle with attracting more people and developing further. They don’t even think about hiring a professional Community Developer before you knock at their door and introduce yourself.
Therefore, as a candidate for a Community Developer, you can also embark on an online odyssey and actively look for communities which are associated with great projects, yet, lack community engagement.
For example, many NFT communities struggle with the lack of good Community Developers. You can read more about NFT communities in our article, “What Are Non-Fungible Tokens and What Do They Tell Us About The Today’s Job Market?“
5. Interior Designer.
A job of an Interior Designer is so much more than just the spatial planning of buildings!
The Reality of Working as an Interior Designer.
Customers expect their apartments to be cosy and well-suited to their individual needs. For instance, if one of the inhabitants suffers from ADHD or another cognitive disorder that makes it difficult for them to function in an environment filled with items.
Their apartment needs to be ascetic and spacious. If the owner is a fan of music, they might benefit from a room dedicated to music only. And so it goes.
The role of the Interior Designer is to well understand their client’s needs and best address them while creating a beautiful-looking interior that boosts the value of the property at the same time. Therefore, if you are empathic and with an affinity for arts, perhaps this career path might be an option for your professional development!
How To Become an Interior Designer
Many Interior Designers first complete their studies and get a degree in interior design and pass the national exams. The diploma certainly helps with landing the first job if you prefer to work as an employee in an interior design company.
However, similarly to other careers on this list, you don’t need a formal degree to start as your clients will care about your portfolio rather than your degrees. Just like other freelancers, most Interior Designers start by spreading the word of mouth. You can start with interior design on your own property and help friends with their design. You will need both practice and patience!
And especially today, in the times of the Internet, the path to becoming an Interior Designer can lead through creating an online portfolio and building a presence online more than anything else. At the end of the day, your potential clients want to see the results of your work and the social proof of the quality of your work, rather than your diplomas.
So, if you are passionate about interior design, make sure that you document all your creations with photographs, and create a personal website where you can showcase your achievements on the path to becoming a professional Interior Designer.
6. Designer of (Board) Games.
This is not an obvious one when it comes to career choices! However, the board game industry has been growing in the last decade, and this trend is here to stay. Chances are that in 10-20 years from now, the universal basic income will become a reality. People are going to have more time, and board games give a great starting point for a good conversation.
The Reality of Working as a Designer of (Board) Games.
Constructing a good board game is an art! You need to specify if the game is about to be functional or fun, what emotions you wish to evoke in the players, and eventually, what the game dynamics and the specific rules are going to be.
You need to use your empathy and analytic mind to design a game that is exciting, addictive, yields positive emotions in the players, and, ideally, creates bright, vivid memories!
How To Become a Designer of (Board) Games.
If you happen to be a fan of Board Games, it is a great start in your professional life! This profession does not require any formal education but rather, lots of passion and patience.
You can start by designing your first, simple game (such as, for example, a game that requires cards only) and ordering a number of sample sets from a local specialized printing office. Your costs should not exceed a few dollars per set, but you need to make sure that your prototype looks impressive. In many cases, getting in touch with a professional illustrator is necessary here.
Then, you can test the game among friends and network at a local (board) game convention. If the reviews are positive, you have three choices:
(1) Find a Publisher.
Proceed to contact professional publishers of board games, who might choose to publish and promote your game,
(2) Crowdsource.
Launch a crowdsourcing campaign (for instance via Kickstarter) and then manufacture and promote the game all by yourself,
(3) Invest.
Invest your own funds, manufacture the game, and contact the local game stores with a sales offer. Perhaps it is a good idea to contact them before you start producing stock!
In general, this is not an easy career path, and it usually works better as a sidekick. However, in case you are an empathic person who enjoys games and challenges, you should consider it for real!
7. Financial Planner.
This is not a mistake!
The Reality of Working as a Financial Planner.
For most people, their relationship with money is quite intimate. And, achieving financial stability is one of the crucial conditions for their long-term well-being. Plus, their personal finance strategy should be suited to their long-term plans, dreams, and personality.
For this reason, professional financial advisors need to use their empathy at work, in order to create a personalized investment strategies, well-suited to the mindset and lifestyle of their clients. Therefore, if you are an empathic person with an affinity to mathematics and finance, this can be a wonderful career path for you!
How To Become a Financial Advisor.
No need to say, as a Financial Advisor you need to have a strong interest in finance, financial markets, and the economy in general. Officially, to start working as a Financial Advisor, you need proper education and at least a BS degree from a degree in finance- or economy-related field, and professional certification.
However, if you are hired in a team where you don’t need to make independent decisions and recommendations, then in practice, this certification is not required at the start, and you can embark on this career path straight away.
Therefore, you can start by seeking employment or an internship in a bank or an investment fund as a junior specialist. You will be able to get educated and obtain the required qualifications in the process.
To work efficiently as a financial planner, you need to gain an overview of the market, understand the macro economy as well as the investment approach and the tools used by your employer, and become an expert in at least one class of assets. To your employer, your knowledge and quantitative results from your work will matter more than your diplomas.
Conclusions: How To Navigate in the Job Market as an Empathic Person?
Empathic people are more fragile and emotional and others and as such, they are more prone to burnout and other work-related mental states need to carefully choose their career paths.
Please read more on the role of empathy in professional life in our other articles:
- “The Key To Success at the Job Interview? Show Empathy In the Recruitment Process!“
- “When Does A Group Of People Become Evil? Develop Some Empathy For Your Employer!“
Do you know which door to knock at given your personality, working style, and value? If you are still pondering your options, please consider taking our Ontology of Value® Test.
This tool will help you with learning your natural profile as a value builder and discovering the working environment where people share your values, and where your professional contribution will be valued the most. As a result you will receive a cheat sheet that will tell you where in the job market you have your competitive advantage!
Are you planning to upgrade your career to the next level or change your career path? Are you pondering your options? Don’t be alone in the process – join us at our live online Ontology of Value® Career Mastery Program!
At this intensive online training, you will focus on discovering your identity as a professional, and learn effective career development strategies for landing great jobs.
We will help you choose the right career path, assist you in landing your new job, and teach you self-navigation strategies that will guarantee your success in professional development, and serve you for a lifetime!
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Please cite as:
Bielczyk, N. (2021, October, 25th). 7 Amazing Careers For Empathic People. Retrieved from https://ontologyofvalue.com/seven-amazing-careers-for-empathic-people/
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