Hot jobs for the '90s Whether you're starting out or making a change, here are some strategies for success…

Here’s  what our founder told The Providence Journal in 1995….Its border line humorous today, but still very applicable for the most part………

Providence Journal - Bulletin - Providence, R.I.

 
From her air conditioned office in 1 Citizens Plaza, Ann E. Polachi has a good view of downtown Providence and the rivers of Waterplace Park; but during her 60-hour weeks as sales manager of investment services for Citizens Bank she rarely pausesto enjoy it.

From her perch on a "creeper" that she uses to crawl beneath cars, Donna Gilbert's view is far different from Polachi's: Gilbert spends her days in her family-owned garage with an up-close look at the valves, cylinders, and gears thatmake cars go.

Gilbert's is a hot, greasy world that bears little resemblance to the world in which Polachi moves. But the fact is, Gilbert the mechanic and Polachi the investment expert have a lot in common:

Both women are entrusted to tinker withimportant pieces of people's lives, their cars and their money; both say that they love their jobs; and both are employed in fields that have been identified by experts as "hot careers" for the '90s in the Rhode Island area.

Whether you're juststarting your working life or whether you're thinking about a career switch - because of changing technology, or corporate restructuring, or plain old boredom with what you're doing now - you want to get into a field that offers a high probabilityof finding work with decent pay.

Interviews with more than a dozen job recruiters, career counselors, and major employers turned up four fields in which local employers just can't find enough women to fill vacant jobs. They are:

* HEALTH CARE: "Weare right now looking for physical therapists, medical transcriptionists, a physician's assistant, and operating room nurses," said Cyndie Wilmot, employment manager at R.I. Hospital.
* COMPUTERS: This was one of the most frequently-mentioned areas by job recruiters and career counselors alike - yet it was also the most nebulous.

Get into computers, what exactly does that mean?

For Elaine K. Carroll, president of the Katharine Gibbs School in Providence, computers mean everything. "Everyone has to have computer training. That's a given," Carroll said. "If you graduate from college, even if you have your master's, if you don't have computer training you're out of luck."

* FINANCE: "Mutual funds, that's a real hot thing right now," said John Seraichyk, president of the Barrett Group, a career counseling firm in Warwick. "With the Dow up over 4,600 points, these companies are selling a lot of stocks."
Polachi, the Citizens Bank manager, said that she could use saleswomen for the bond and mutual funds programs that Citizens offers, and she recommends the work: "It's a fascinating industry. Every day you get up in the morning and your environment will change, 365 days a year. There are constantly new changes to it, constantly. It's exciting."
* JOBS IN THE TRADES: "In Rhode Island, CNC machining is just booming," said Kendra Baldwin, business/education coordinator of Davies Vocational School, a public high school in Lincoln. "What that means is taking metal and milling, drilling, and lasing it to make pieces that can be used in machines.

"Another area where we've had some growth is automotive," Baldwin said. "There are great opportunities in this field."

And a fifth hot field: Start your own business.

"By the Year 2021, more than half of the country will work for themselves," said the Barrett Group's Seraichyk. With corporate downsizing and defense cuts "it's going to go back to the way it was a few hundred years ago, when everyone worked for themselves. It's only been in the past 200 years when there's been factories and all of these people going to one place to work. It hasn't been that long, and I think it's burned itself out. I believe firmly that you're probably more secure working for yourself than for a company."

Health care: Hottest of the hot

Of those five areas, health care is by far the hottest. Six of Rhode Island's 15 largest employers are in health care, including the largest of all: Lifespan, the corporation that employs 6,300people at Rhode Island and Miriam Hospitals.
In the past 10 years, the health care industry has generated 15,000 new jobs in Rhode Island, and the next 10 years promise to bring more.

Bobbi Koppel, director of careers services at the University ofRhode Island, said, "Any list of the hot jobs is going to change, but most opportunities are going to be in health care in the next 10 years."

"Well into the next century there will be a need for physical therapists, occupational therapists, and speech therapists," said Julie Robinson, spokeswoman for Kent County Memorial Hospital. "That's because the population is aging; you have people recovering from strokes and heart attacks."

There are well-paying jobs in health care. Wilmot said that the job vacancies she cited at Rhode Island Hospital - medical transcriptionist, physician's assistant, physical therapist, and operating room nurse - pay from $9.86 per hour for the transcriptionist to $32,500 per year for a first-year physical therapist, and $49,850 for an experienced O.R. nurse.

Of course, these jobs require some training: perhaps two years at a school such as Katharine Gibbs or New England Tech for medical transcriptionist, or, for physical therapist, five or six years in the highly-selective physical therapy programs at Northeastern, Boston University, or the University of Rhode Island.

But if you need a job right now, there's an easier, if less lucrative, way to break into the health care field: become a certified nurse's assistant. With as little as three months of training you can qualify for the state's CPA exam, and once you pass you're essentially assured of finding a job. CNA's generally begin in nursing homes, and earn between $5.50 and$8.50 an hour.

"There's a huge need," (for CNA's) said Kendra Baldwin of Davies. "It's a nice job; you wear a lab coat, you're helping people." CNA's might make beds, clean bed pans and simply talk to patients. And if you find that you like the work you can branch out into nursing or therapy or desk work by continuing your education.
Computers: Get savvy

There are also different ways of breaking into the computer field: from learning how to press the right buttons by taking applications courses to learning the guts of a machine by earning a degree in computer science.

"We work with people who are looking for a career change, people who are looking for something better than what they've got," Seraichyk said. "As you know, everybodytalks about the computer industry as the growth industry. We see a lot of opportunities in that area."

So, how do you get into the field?
If you've got four years and some tuition money, Seraichyk suggested earning a bachelor's degree in a field such as computer science.

"Because it's become a very competitive market, (employers) probably would want to see a four-year degree in computer science" for skilled jobs such as a programmer - a person who writes codes to tell a computer what it’s supposed to do. "An entry level programming position would pay $25,000 to $30,000, perhaps as low as $23,000 in Rhode Island." Senior programmers can earn about four times as much.

Sara Chapin, assistant director of career services at Bryant College, said that graduates with degrees in Computer Information Systems have a good chance of finding jobs. CIS majors - the people who manage a company's data - need at least four years of college, and they generally start in the $30,000range.

But what if you can't wait four years to begin your new job? Get into applications, Seraichyk said.
Employers often ask for computer-savvy office workers - such as secretaries or office managers - who know computer applications such as word-processing or spread sheets, said Betty Ethier, vice president of Occupations Unlimited, a Warwick-based recruiting firm.

"I can't emphasize enough to be updated on computers," Ethier said. "As fast as (computer-knowledgable workers) come in we send them out. And you don't have to spend a lot of money to learn. You can go to Bryant, CCRI, or small computer stores like CompUSA."

Ethier said that someone with computer skills can expect to earn about $10 an hour working in an office setting.
Finance: Two hot spots Experts agreed that another "hot career" in an office setting is the world of finance, specifically in two fields: actuaries, who calculate risks, dividends, and premiums by examining statistical records for businesses from insurance companies to health care providers; and people who sell investment packages such as mutual funds.
Business recruiters often come to campus seeking actuaries, said Bryant College's Chapin. Actuaries make good money, generally starting around $30,000 per year, but the job requires analytical thinking and skill with statistics.
"It's a difficult program to get through," Chapin said. "But if you stick to it you've done well. It's a good job, but it takes a certaintype of person."

Polachi, manager of investment services for Citizens, said that it also takes a certain type of person to sell investment packages. "An individual who seeks out a career in this industry on the sales side should love dealing with the public, be flexible, be a quick thinker, and like financial markets," Polachi said.

And she must be ready to pay her dues: "You don't just walk out of college and get into this," Polachi said. To sell mutual funds and bonds you need a Series 7license from the Securities and Exchange Commission, and you must be sponsored by a broker-dealer to take the licensing exam.

But Polachi said that, for her, the hard work's been worth it. "You make a great living at it, and have fun too," she said.

If you want to get into investment sales, you'll need a bachelor's degree in just about anything, with a concentration in finance or marketing. Then, Polachi said, "Identify a company that will sponsor you for taking one of the SEC exams -perhaps some of the larger fund companies in New England such as Fidelity; Putnam; Eaton Vance. Get in the door there through shareholder services, staffing the 1-800 lines."

Polachi said that the "fund companies" generally start salespeople with a salary of about $25,000 per year, then wean them away from salary and replace it with commissions. A good salesperson, she said, can earn as much as $250,000 in commissions.

Banks generally don't pay on a commission basis; a licensed broker working for a bank earns about $30,000 per year to start, and can earn up to about $100,000 annually.
The trades: Learn a skill. But don't despair if you find health care too sterile and working in an office just isn't for you.
"CNC machinists - you can't get enough of them," said Ethier of Occupations Unlimited. "There's tons of jobs, no people to fill them."

So, what is a CNC machinist? A machinist is a person who takes a piece of metal, sets controls on a machine to make precise cuts in the metal, then shapes the metal into a useful tool.

The "CNC" stands for computer numeric controlled machining. In the old days, machinists set controls by hand. In a modern machine shop, machinists set controls via computer.

Ethier said that CNC machinists earn about $12 an hour to start, and about $15 per hour maximum. The job doesn't generally progress into a supervisory position, but $15 an hour - more than $30,000 per year - is considerably more than the state's average per capita income of$22,251.

However, few women have gone into the field. Interviews with owners of several machine shops turned up just one woman CNC machinist in Rhode Island, and her company declined requests for an on-the-job interview.
Baldwin said she finds it hard to sell machining as a career to the teenage girls at Davies.

"Machining is very greasy," said Baldwin. "And how many 16-year-old girls who are worried about getting a date want to do that? But there are a number of them, and we're telling the girls, 'Look, these are great opportunities.' "
The New England Institute of Technology in Warwick offers a course in manufacturing that includes CNC training, said spokesman Charles Rogers. A two-year program, it costs $9,000 per year. Although Rogers said he can't guarantee graduates a job, "we're placing 80 percent of our students (in all trades) into jobs which they trained for."
Baldwin said that besides CNC machining, she's also encouraging women to explore the automotive field:

"If you want to make decent money and you don't want to get a four-year degree, but you've got some good intellectual sense, I would go into machining or auto body. You've got to find a niche, and right now the best opportunities that no one's really taking are automotive and CNC machining. You've got to be bright to be able to do it, but there are well-paid, skilled jobs.

"More women are working and more women are buying cars," Baldwin said. "The women who take their cars to be serviced want tosee women in the service centers. Now the auto industry has to attract women who want to go into servicing.

"We believe we have to attract more girls into the field."
In fact, Baldwin said, representatives from General Motors have called urging her to direct women towards careers in mechanics, auto body, and collision assessment.

Beginning mechanics earn as little as $5 an hour pumping gas and changing oil, but mechanics with experience generally earn $12 to $14 an hour.

The technologystuffed into new automobiles has transformed mechanics from grease monkies to technicians who are frequently called upon to diagnose computer problems.
The work still can be physically tough: "A lot of times you don't have the strength to man handle something, so you have to find a way around it like through leverage," said Donna Gilbert, a mechanic who works for her father at Hassell's Garage in East Providence.

Ray Hassell, Gilbert's father, said that she's particularly good at dealing with the new technology. "We all have our own expertise," Hassell said, "and Donna seems to have the knack on the computer systems of the late model cars."
Going out on your own.

And then there's always hot career number five: Start your own business.
Seraichyk, who described himself as a "career doctor" - a counselor who helps fix broken careers - said that he often suggests this route.

"In starting your own business the most important thing is that you love or enjoy what you're doing," he said. "If you start your business solely to make money you probably won't make it, because nobody can do something they hate seven days a week, and to start a business that's what you're going to have to do - work seven days a week."
Seraichyk said that once a client identifies a field she loves, he'll probe a little farther to determine if she has "what it takes to be an entrepreneur."

And what does it take? Hard work; commitment; the personality of a leader, not a follower.
"You need to be independent," Seraichyk said. "You need to want to deliver a service your own way, to believe that you can deliver it better than anyone else is; you don't want to be bound by a corporation or a boss."
Once Seraichyk has identified a person who has what it takes, and determined that she has a passion for a particular business, then he'll get down to the nitty-gritty of drafting a business plan and seeking financing.

But Seraichyk cautioned that whether you seek a job as a physical therapist, train for auto mechanics, or decide to open your own business "there's no easy way to do any of this. Career changing is very, very difficult."

Bobbi Koppel and Sara Chapin, the career specialists at URI and at Bryant, agreed that job searching is difficult and is growing more complex.

"Job searching is not just sending out resumes any more," Koppel said. "For each individual woman the job outlook is different, depending upon her experience, outlook, location, flexibility, the method of her job search."

Good "job search" methods include talking to people who work in your targeted field; looking for jobs in trade publications; and electronic job searching through e-mail and the Internet.

"It really depends on the individual and the effort she puts into it," Koppel said.
Chapin said that she can't guarantee jobs to even CIS or actuarial majors. She recommends that people concentrate on developing "a portfolio of skills."

A good "portfolio" must include "communication skills, verbal and written; being on top of technology, because even if you're in marketing or management you've got to have computer skills; and it's helpful to have motivational and leadership skills.

"You can't predict and I can't predict what the job market is going to be in two years, three years, five years, whatever," Chapin said. "How are you building your portfolio so you can adapt?

"In the '80s you'd say, 'I'm an accountant' or 'I'm a product manager.' I don't look at it that way. The most important thing to major in is change. No matter what major you're in, it's going to change."

Abstract (Document Summary)
From her air conditioned office in 1 Citizens Plaza, Ann E. Polachi has a good view of downtown Providence and the rivers of Waterplace Park; but during her 60-hour weeks as sales manager of investment services for Citizens Bank she rarely pauses to enjoy it.

From her perch on a "creeper" that she uses to crawl beneath cars, Donna Gilbert's view is far different from Polachi's: Gilbert spends her days in her family-owned garage with an up-close look at the valves, cylinders, and gears that make cars go.

Gilbert's is a hot, greasy world that bears little resemblance to the world in which Polachi moves. But the fact is, Gilbert the mechanic and Polachi the investment expert have a lot in common:

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.