You’ve Heard Of Social Enterprises, But What About Social Careers?

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The world is changing. We’re arguably moving into a post-scarcity economy. By mid-century, the average household will have an income above $100,000 in today’s terms, even accounting for inflation. For most people, basic material needs won’t be a constraint on their lives. 

That’s opening up a host of new opportunities. People will no longer feel like they have to work in specific jobs or careers. And they will be willing to take substantial pay cuts if it means getting more meaning from their lives. 

We’re already seeing this sort of thing happening at the corporate level. Entrepreneurs are no longer satisfied with pursuing profits. They want to believe that they’re making a difference in the world. And many are starting social enterprises to achieve just that. 

That concept is now transferring over to the world of careers. Individuals are realizing that they can make enough money to meet all their material needs without having to slave away in a job they hate. They have choices. It’s quite remarkable. 

What Social Careers Are Available?

That choice is making itself felt in the job market. Some professionals are having to raise wages to entice people to take part in them while others can lower their wages because they offer people meaning. It’s an unspoken rule of economics, but it is becoming increasingly powerful. Social entrepreneurs, take note. 

The social justice movement is the idea that everyone deserves equal rights, opportunities, and treatments, regardless of their behavior or lack of value. We see this strongly in our society today and it is influencing the labor market. The movement has become a reason for being for a lot of young people who feel disenchanted with old value systems. 

The effect of this is an explosion of new social career opportunities spanning multiple fields.

Let’s take a look at some of them. 

Child Welfare Officers

How a society treats its children is one of the clearest measures of the morality of that society. Children completely lack any sort of power and are entirely dependent on those around them. 

Child welfare officers are often the only people in a society willing to do the hard work to get kids out of abusive or neglectful situations. It’s their compassion and kindness that helps put kids on the right track. 

Rights Officers

Rights officers are people responsible for making sure that everyone’s rights in an organization are being respected and upheld. Without them, standards could slip and people could find themselves mistreated. 

Shelter Workers

A lot of shelter workers work for nonprofits and charities. Their role is to provide support to abused partners looking for safe refuge. 

Social Workers

Social workers are people who work with members of the community to improve family situations. Getting into this type of career is easy once you learn more about your options. You need qualifications plus personal attributes that make you suitable for the role. 

Refugee Services

Many places in the world offer refugee services: systems that make it easy for people genuinely fleeing persecution and war to live in safety and peace. Your job as a refugee worker is to provide the support that people need to begin a new life. 

How To Decide If A Social Career Is For You

Here we’ve only listed a few of the career options for people wanting to choose social careers, but there are many others. How, though, can you tell if it is the right choice for you? 

Here are some of the things that you’ll want to consider. 

Ask Yourself If You Have Self-Knowledge

The famous Greek philosopher Socrates said, “Know thyself.” What he meant by that was that we should examine ourselves continually to understand how our emotional histories inform our actions. Ideally, we want to live a life we understand, not one driven by random unexplained impulse. We need to reflect on who we are as people and why we do and say the things that we do. 

For social workers, this process is particularly important. When other people’s well-being is in your hands, you need to be sure that you’re acting in their best interest, not just acting out your past traumas. 

Ask Yourself If You Find Working With Others Fulfilling

While some people thrive working with others, not everyone does. Some people are solo artists and work best on individual projects. 

Be honest with yourself about the type of person you are. It’s okay to not be a team player. If you aren’t, then you might be able to find other ways to indulge your love of social justice. Authors, for instance, can make a lot of money these days by discussing these issues. 

Ask Yourself What You Find Fulfilling

While some people like the idea of social justice in principle, they don’t like the idea of carrying it out in practice. And that’s okay. If you find the pursuit of wealth more important, then perhaps you should go down that path. There’s no point embarking on a career that you will later resent. 

Knowing what you find fulfilling is something that you usually discover only upon reflection. You often have to take risks and try new things to know whether they are something that you could reasonably do as a career or not.

Ask Yourself About The Kind Of Challenges That You’d Like To Face

In life, it’s almost impossible to avoid challenges of any kind. The heroism of living is overcoming the obstacles in your path. 

The most important question is, what type of challenges do you want to face? 

That’s a more difficult question. In some careers, the challenge is time management – fitting everything you need to do into a single day. In others, it’s puzzling through technical issues. 

In social careers, the challenges are usually emotional. You have to maintain your frame and do the right thing, even in the most difficult situations. And you have to be able to cope with your actions once you get back to your house in the evening. 

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