The NHS, or National Health Service was made in 1948 and is the largest publicly funded health service in the world. Working in the NHS is over 1.7 million people and only approximately fifty percent of them are medically trained, so as you can imagine, there are heaps of Career Choices obtainable. The NHS has many Careers to offer and can be accessible to just about anyone, Career Choices here can include medical practice to IT jobs and chaplains to drivers. It would not be possible to detail all of the positions on offer in such a brief article, but we shall look at a select few to provide you some ideas of what you can expect.

When Careers in the NHS are referred to, the most obvious thing that comes to mind is usually doctors and nurses. Now these are general categorisations of the roles to choose from, depending on what you were looking to do, there can be numerous options to select from. A good all-round role to bear in mind if you’re looking for New Careers would be a GP. GP’s cover many aspects of medicine and diagnosing patient issues, they are normally the first point of contact for a patient and so it is essential they have good knowledge of different illnesses and conditions.

Nurses partake in more of a caring role. They are given the task to provide and manage the care of individual patients. This can be broken down into many methods and situations, nurses can be situated in hospitals, prisons and schools, there are also district nurses who travel to patients who are unable to travel to hospital or need special treatment on an individual basis. Careers in nursing can be challenging but very rewarding if it is something you are interested in.

When looking for New Careers in the NHS, you may have something specific in mind or maybe already have specific qualifications. There are far too many specialist roles to detail here, each individual department in the hospital has dedicated doctors and nurses who have the essential training to treat patients and use the specialised equipment. Specialist Careers can include surgeons, each who once more can focus on specific kinds of surgery such as neurosurgery, there are also roles such as physiotherapists, biomedical scientists and cardiographers. If you’re looking into specifics, it’s always best to check the NHS Careers website for a full list of roles on offer.

There are lots of other Career Choices presented in the NHS and having a medical qualification is not vital. If you’re wanting something different there are various roles available in IT, call centres and working as a secretary/receptionist. General clerks can take on an office style job by completing duties such as filing, record keeping and photocopying. IT staff have a range of positions looking after the hospital computer servers and occasionally managing the patient database software. If IT isn’t your interest then there are also jobs as chefs in the hospital kitchens, cleaners are crucial for maintaining hygiene, porters are used for moving equipment and patients between wards and groundsmen tend to the gardens and surroundings of the hospital.

It’s clear to see there’s almost something for everyone in the NHS and if you’re genuinely interested in working for the health service then it’s best to refer to the NHS website and see what is currently open.

The initial thing that attracted me to both self employed Careers and working from home, is the hours you work. Certainly your income is greatly effected by the amount of work you dedicate, but I mainly liked the idea of being allowed to laze in bed in a morning or pick my days off. It also means that when I’m in a lazy mood, I can split the day up, perhaps doing a few hours in the morning, go out for a bit and then finish the work in the afternoon. The freedom was the major thing I was browsing for and as a big bonus for me, once proficient at the work, unlike a typical job, if you finish the work without delay, you’d be done for the day, no sitting around in an office finishing off someone else’s work. If I become good at the job, I could reduce my 8 hour day into perhaps 5 or 6 hours, I have never been in agreement of an 8 hour working day as I believe it is too exhausting and leaves you with only a few hours of free time, so this is a big bonus for me.

No doubt working from home isn’t devoid of its downsides and for anybody considering these Career ideas I would advise that they really consider the following. When starting these New careers, question yourself, do you have the self-control to do the work unmanaged? To be completely honest, I struggle greatly with this, as there are distractions all over the place. Subconsciously I realise that I’m not being forced to do work, it’s not like a usual job where you have to hang around there 8 solid hours and can only leave after that time, I have the freedom to do anything I want. It is incredibly easy just to open up my web browser and waste an hour on the internet, by which time I am no longer in the mood to work and the day ends up a waste of time. That equates to money lost and is the largest drawback of home employment. If you still look to try these Careers, you require a strong will and ideally a quiet room where you can cut yourself off from any interruptions.

There are plenty other reasons why I decided on working from home, such as the pleasant, comfortable and quiet workspace and having the opportunity to prepare a proper lunch, but there is too much to describe here and it’s more fitting that you consider your own positive and negative points before taking on these New careers.

First of all, being a games tester isn’t just exclusively playing games to see if they are fun or if people will enjoy them. Your aim is to play the game and try to handle as many situations as possible in the levels, and create reports on any bugs you find. This means working through the levels in a thorough manner – a manner which lots of people may not have the patience for. You need a very good eye for detail, and a lot of patience, and also the ability to put into words the errors you discover, and how they were created. These reports are looked at by the programmers, who will then need to go back through the coding and find out what specific line of code is setting off the problem, so the more detailed and precise your report, the easier it is for them to complete their job. So, you ought to have a good understanding of English for this role. You will also have to be good at games – you are required to be able to complete and finish the levels. Also, as you are required to play through the levels thoroughly, it’s not just a case of going through the levels as fast as possible – you need to find out what happens when you investigate every nook and cranny, and try and recreate as many situations as possible that might be ran into by people playing the game through normally. It’s no good releasing a game where the character can plummet through the floor if they step along a path in a particular way!

The entry wage for a games tester is a paltry £12,000, however this does rise to about £18,000 for a games tester with a lot of experience. Head games testers can expect higher pay again. If it’s amongst your Career ideas as something you would seriously think about, you are going to need to start at the bottom and work your way up. However, the same can be said for most Careers, so if you think it is something you would like to do, I would encourage getting started as soon as possible, in order to start getting experience. To me, it undoubtedly looks like one of the more interesting New careers I have looked at, and, while it sounds like it could be difficult playing through games over and over and over again (could get a little tedious!) I think being amongst the first people to play highly anticipated games, and then new games which might be surprise hits, makes it a very tempting career choice.

Yes, Careers in games testing allow you to play games all day every day. However these Career ideas aren’t just a walk in the park, there is difficulties involved and you have to remember that you can’t choose the game to play. Let’s get the hard parts clarified first. To begin, you need to have a good eye for detail, it’s your job to find the problems with the game so that the developers can patch them. You also have to be persistent and patient as you would be playing the same game constantly for many hours in a day. The greatest challenge however is trying to work out how other individuals would play the game, not all people have the same method as you and you need to find the many ways the game can play out so that you can discover as many glitches as possible.

What makes these Career ideas so great is the fact that they have no formal requirements the majority of the time. Anybody with good GCSE grades in English and Maths can be in with a decent chance. Having a degree in computing or learning programming can highten your chance of success, but to be frank, the most crucial thing is good communication skills and a love for gaming. In regards to actually locating Careers in this field of work, you can find roles at outsourcing companies, publishers and even the developers themselves can provide positions. New careers in games testing are quite uncommon however, so you will need to keep watch for any opportunities and don’t be afraid to send your CV to many employers, even if they aren’t looking for new staff it doesn’t hurt to make yourself known.

These Careers don’t provide the best of salaries, usually between £14,000 and £18,000, but the main benefit is more the fact that you’d be working a job that you love doing. It’s safe to believe if you’re looking at these Career ideas, then you’re already an enthusiastic gamer and being asked to carry out your hobby while at work can’t ever be a bad thing. It’s also entirely possible that if you’re good at the job, you may be requested to join the development team carrying out a role such as level design by using the knowledge you picked up during the testing role.

Firstly, within sales, personality and charisma are pretty important, so some individuals are genuinely more suitable for the sales role than others. Some people, like myself, don’t have much charisma, and sometimes find it tough to make conversations with new people. People who are good at striking up rapports and conversations with new people on a daily basis are the type of people who are better suited for sales Careers. You might probably have noticed when shopping in certain shops, particularly where large amounts of money are spent in one or two transactions, there will always be a pleasant sales assistant on hand to provide you with the help and assistance you need. Quite often in sales there will be targets to be achieved, however, so not only do you have to be open and easy to talk to, you also must be persistent in order to convince people to make sales. Of course, you aren’t asked to stand there and insist that people make purchases from your store, but a great sales person will notice early on the proper buttons to push in people, and steer them towards making a purchases without ever once making them feel forced into a purchase. That is a major point to becoming a great sales person.

As mentioned, due to the nature of sales you may end up working in just about any industry in which you have a key interest. Myself for example, my main interests lie in computer games, but also electronics and things, so TVs, blu-ray players, basically big flashy gadgets. So for me, if I were looking at New careers within a sales environment, I would be hoping to work somewhere like GAME, or Comet, so I could work beside products I already have a sound understanding of. Similarly though, if you have an interest in fashion, there are several high-street shops with which career development is possible. You might hope to go for something rather more high value, such as selling cars in a car showroom. With sales, as long as you have a flare for it, you can get a New career in just about any area that attracts you as an individual.

You may want to contemplate moving away from the UK if you’re wanting to move to a city that has the best quality of life – London was the only city to be listed in the top 50 cities worldwide for quality of life, and it ranked a rather lowly 39th place. The study, named The Mercer Quality of Living, looks at several cities and considers numerous aspects that contribute to a person’s quality of life. There are a wide variety of factors monitored, including crime levels, hospitals, transport accessibility, leisure facilities available and even political stability. These are all aspects which can influence the availability of New careers to you, so this study is well worth taking note of. It might even help supply you with new Career ideas as you look at moving to cities you may never have thought about working at before.

The number one city to reside in according to this survey is Vienna, in Austria. So if you are thinking about New careers you could maybe take on, and you’d like a nice place to move to so you can take on these new Career ideas you’ve had, then Vienna would undoubtedly seem like a good choice. Vienna is a city packed with history and culture, and would surely suit an ambitious person looking to expand their horizons. The other top grade cities were Zurich which came second, and Geneva came third, both of course within Switzerland. Moving to one of these cities means you are looking at a much greater quality of life than in other places. This is information worth knowing as if you’re in doubt about where you would like to live, perhaps you don’t have any real ties to your current location or you really do wish to go out into the big wide world on your own, then what greater way to start than by going to one of the worlds top-ranking cities?

If you would like something a bit further out (and with much nicer weather!) then you should also think about Sydney, Australia. This exciting city was placed 10th in the world, so again is a good choice. Australia is already a popular alternative with individuals anyway, with fantastic weather all year round – the knowledge that you know you can look forward to a good standard of living there as well really helps sweeten the deal.

At one stage in my life, I had hopes of becoming a games developer, preferably on the graphics and animation side of things. At the time I had good A-Level scores and would have acquired a spot on a university course, being taught computer programming and learning design methods in 3D animation and rendering packages. However, I decided against this, as I was quite stubborn and said I hated maths. Now for those who don’t know, computer programming involves heavy mathematical work and I chose not to go along this path, a decision based purely on the maths work alone. A foolish choice I now realise, but the focus here is not about the bad decision, but the fact that these options never fully close off from you. It’s not too late to go to university, or even pick up college grades for that matter. If you decide to go back on your choices, you can always chase after your Career Ideas by taking on a course somewhere.

The following and more current aspiration I had for New Careers was to work as a manga artist. I love mangas and animes, I feel the art style incredible and fascinating and I wish I was able to do it myself. I have always liked drawing, but never been very talented at it, but why should that stop me from pursuing the goal? The choice is always there for me to practice my sketching and again, even take on a course to study new techniques. Careers like these aren’t bothered about qualifications, but off your own ability, so if I decided to put the effort in, who’s to say I couldn’t achieve this goal in the future. Certainly it would take a lot of practice and a lot of time spent doing it, possibly years before I could earn money from it, but again the main point here is the fact that’s achievable.

If there’s something you should take away from this, it would be to remember that if you have a go-al and you are serious about that goal, then why not go for it? Chances are you can achieve it if you put the work in, and if it really is something you love, then it definitely will be worth the investment in the end. Not all Career Ideas need a natural talent, a talent can be something that you work for and accomplish over time.

The first possible reason for keeping at a job is the possibility of development. No doubt this is very situational, but if you’ve worked in the job a while, you may have gained some recognition, putting you in a decent position to look at furthering your career. If you start looking at New careers, you’ll be right back at the beginning and have to build your way up again, whereas if you continue your existing role and put the effort in, you have potential to end up in a better paid position. Even if you don’t see yourself employed in the company long term, development to a better role will look excellent on your CV and increase your chances at getting a better career later in life.

Another reason people may choose to stay in their existing Careers is for the familiarity. If you’ve worked there a while, chances are you have made a few decent friends and are familiar with the work. It can sometimes be difficult trying to fit in with a new job, both the employees and the work are unfamiliar and it can take a while to settle in. By remaining at your existing job you know what you’re doing and you almost certainly have someone to turn to if you ever wanted help. People generally don’t like change, so it’s no surprise that this is one of the main reasons people keep at a job.

Lastly, another big reason for staying in a job and evading the search for New careers is job security. This is a important reason for anybody with a family, as you can’t be sure a new job will work out and you may end up failing a probationary period and being out of a job all together. This is a big downside to thinking about new Career ideas as the work could be entirely different to what you were used to before and have a tough learning curve. If you can’t adapt to the new job you’ll be right back at the start searching for new work. If you’ve been in your existing role for a while you’re possibly considered valuable, it makes business sense to keep experienced members of staff rather than train new ones.

Probably one of the most ordinary Career Ideas within driving would be the many forms of delivery. These roles are reasonably simple, demanding you to pick up and deliver various forms of goods. These positions can be obtained in most supermarkets delivering customers online shopping or maybe working for one of the several courier services delivering packages. Equally you could work for one of the numerous vending machine companies, replenishing stock in the machines as the greater part of your work requires driving between the different sites. These Careers probably aren’t the most fascinating or unique options to be had, but they are a good start for anyone looking to be a driver.

The next option we have for your New Careers is working as a driving instructor. Anyone who drives will have come across one before, these are the people who show you how to drive. These Careers aren’t suitable for everyone, as you have to be confident in teaching and being able to take control of the car if anything were to go wrong. The people you would be teaching have often never driven a car before, they may have difficulties steering, problems regulating speed or they could even be scared around other drivers. You need to be able to handle any of these situations that come up and be able to keep close eye on the road and the student at all times. Unquestionably it is a challenging job, but the rewards are worthwhile; both pay and job satisfaction can be very appealing. These Careers of course require additional training, you won’t be able to jump straight in with a standard license. Normally the instructor training can take 6-12 months depending on the course you take.

The last role we will look at is perhaps the most exciting, but also the most complicated to achieve. Countless people dream of becoming race drivers. Whether on a track, off-road rally or even formula one, there are various options on offer for these Careers. The trouble with these Career Ideas however, is that it isn’t something you can just apply for, to make it as a race driver, you need to have your skills recognised and gain sponsorship, which can take an awfully long time and until you get good at it, you may not be making much at first. Also what can be hard for most people, is the fact that most of these Careers start at young age. Normally, a lot of the finest drivers would have began driving in karts at a young age, before they’re even teens. With these years of preparation, they generally have a much better chance than most people. If it’s your dream though, don’t give up, keep up your skills at different race tracks and with a bit of luck one day, good things will happen.

There is a benefit to all of this though, these customers make Careers as a computer repairs person a very successful option. These New careers are excellent for those who like working with computers and enjoy solving puzzles or taking on a challenge. As you can likely imagine, the idea behind these Careers is that people who know zero about computers will fetch you their no longer functioning machine and you can mend it for a charge. Business is good too, you wouldn’t believe the number of people who know so little about computers that they couldn’t even make out a safe website from a plainly malicious one. This means a lot of new computer users will end up with a virus at some stage, and in my experience, even the people with antivirus software will still receive one because it’ll be out of date, incorrectly configured or basically an ineffective piece of software. So if you’re hoping for some Career ideas linked to IT, there’s stacks of business here.

Another great thing about these Career ideas is that you can be employed by one of the retail chains or an existing computer store, or if you’re wanting a challenge, you might start up your own self employed career. Working self employed in these Careers isn’t as tricky as you may believe. The hardest part is getting yourself known, but after that, it can be plain sailing as the retail chains often overcharge horribly for their services and so making yourself competitive isn’t difficult. You don’t simply have to do repairs either, you could provide upgrade services too, as customers are always wanting cheaper ways to make their computer load faster. Once you get up and running, these New careers can provide some excellent money, sometimes a 2-3 minute activity such as installing a stick of RAM might get you £10 or more. Repairing an operating system can take up to an hour, but most of it is automated, needing little input from you and some stores charge up to £50 for this. So if you’re fascinated in technology and have knack for problem solving these New careers could be just what you need and can give an interesting alternative where no one issue is ever the same.