If you’re reaching Year 11, or even sixth form, the age-old question ‘what do you want to be when you grow up?’ might be becoming a little more daunting. You are grown up, and the world of work is only a mere couple of years away, if that. However, career paths are no longer black and white, easy to navigate pathways that you pick and stick to. Instead, you’re more than likely to move around, specialise in more than one thing, and, especially as time progresses, have a job that, right now, you’ve never even heard of. So, to give you some peace of mind and to show how many doors are open, here are some career paths you probably didn’t know existed, but that sound quite fun.
Food Stylist
Ever wondered why burgers look so much better on the screen than they do in your hand? It’s not you, it’s the fact that a Food Stylist has spent hours and a huge budget of resources to make the ads look picture-perfect. Their job is to make the food they’re promoting look as tasty as possible, often whilst making it inedible in the process.
Foley Artist
You’ve heard of sound effects, voice artists and sound recordists, but what happens when all that sound isn’t enough to pull everything together in a film? Foley Artists fill in sound gaps in movies by creating the noises themselves. They get a special room, called a ‘foley room’ where they can walk in time with a character, move pieces of fabric around as their clothes rustle and bang pans together when there’s a commotion. They have a lot of fun and can end up working on all sorts of films, from indie documentaries to big blockbuster hits.
Chief Listening Officer
A Chief Listening Officer isn’t a sort of secret agent or tapped-in spy. CLOs are part of the marketing department of a business and their job is to monitor social media networks (and sometimes real-life events) to gauge the satisfaction of both customers and employees.
Futurist
Technology is moving so quickly these days that there’s been a job created just to get a handle on it all. Futurists help companies to predict the next technological advancements, trends and curves to help them to stay ahead.
Parabolic Expert
Astronauts can’t go into space without vigorous training, which includes lots of practice in zero-gravity environments. Naturally, then, there has to be someone to teach them how to handle microgravity spaces, which is where Parabolic Experts come in. Their job is to get astronauts acquainted with zero-g by essentially having them float around and assisting them as they get to grips with their day-to-day proceedings mid-air.
