If you're a Baby Boomer or Gen Xer, you remember the TV show The Wonder Years. Set in the late 1960s, its characters included Jack Arnold, who worked for a defense contractor in a soul-crushing, mid-level management position. Jack joined his local Chamber of Commerce, has a white picked fence and was the family patriarch. Jack hated his job but was devoted to it because it defined who he was: career man and family provider.
For today's millennials, Jack Arnold's concept of living to work is dead. This is likely due to a variety of factors such as increasing student loan debt, lack of buying power, and the uncertain future of Social Security. The result? Millennials are more concerned with work-life balance than any generation before them. This is one reason why service jobs can be a good career choice.
So, what are the service jobs perfect for today's millennials? Which ones will support their work-to-live lifestyle? We'll examine three viable options below.
The Service Jobs Perfect for Today's Millennials
As consumers, millennials are notorious for buying from companies who support causes beyond theirproducts. The same is true for the companies they want to work for as well as the careers they choose: Millennials want to make a difference in the world. This includes directly impacting the quality of other people's experiences through the service jobs perfect for today's millennials.
1. Web Developer
While being a web developer is not normally considered a service job, its practical functions often work that way. After all, digital apps are intended to enhance user's online experiences while jobs like website design bring other people's visions to life.
Many web developers leverage website building platforms, like Wordpress and Magento, to bring their client’s dreams into reality. These tools reduce the development time since the developer doesn’t have to create everything from scratch.
Current statistics show web developers have a median salary of almost $65K. In addition, many of them are independent contractors which supports a high work-life balance.
2. Healthcare Professional
Being a healthcare professional has more potential to impact the quality of people's lives than almost any other job. Millennials are flocking to medical positions without, at the same time, necessarily becoming doctors.
Viable career options include dental assistant, medical and physician assistant, phlebotomist, and emergency medical technician (EMT). In each of these areas, millennials already make up at least 45% of the current workforce with annual salaries ranging from $32K to over $100K per year.
3. Customer Experience Representative
Not to be confused with customer service, customer experience representatives manage the entire range of interactions a customer has with a business. Field service companies are a perfect fit for this type of job. For example, at an electrician company, a customer experience representative will be concerned as much with customer emotions and feelings throughout the transaction lifecycle – and beyond – as the service provided.
Customer experience representatives can use electrician specific software to communicate when an electrician will arrive, send a picture and bio of the customer before they arrive at the customer’s door and get feedback once the job is done.
Current statistics show the median salary is $33K per year. Plus, unlike being a healthcare professional, a high school diploma can be enough to begin your career.
Making the Choice to Work to Live
Millennials live in an uncertain world. No longer can they go to work after an affordable college education expecting to have the same job until retirement. After all, many of them don't know when – or even if – they'll be able to retire. That's why the desire for an optimal work-life balance via service jobs perfect for today's millennialsis more prevalent than ever before.