What are some fast-paced jobs?

Fast-paced jobs are usually ones that require you to execute many tasks or make a lot of decisions on tight timelines, outside events beyond your control change things up and lead to deadlines that move, and there is not a lot of down time. Fast-paced jobs can be found in any industry and in any role - the pace a company or team moves is often set by the culture of the company and the style of your direct manager, combined with your own motivation and internal clock. For example, a product manager at a large, mature company may or may not feel a lot of deadline pressure, but a product manager at a startup that is running of money and has to deliver revenue is going to have to work pretty fast!

I would ask yourself: how long do you have to meet the deadline that matters? Do you only have minutes, hours, days, weeks... or longer? The longer you have, the lower the external time pressure to deliver. For example, in academia, you are measured on publishing papers every year or two, so the day-to-day pace may not feel very fast until they have to publish. On the other hand, a barista who has to deliver five coffees in three minutes to customers who are impatiently waiting around will have to execute really quickly.

So for fast-paced jobs, I would look for roles where you have to react or deliver hourly, daily or at least weekly. Here are some thought-starters on jobs that in general make you work on tight deadlines: journalist, product manager/ software developer for a startup, emergency room doctor/ nurse/ EMT, management consultant, restaurant operations, media relations/crisis management, politics, finance, business development. There are probably many more jobs like this. But more importantly - try to get a sense for your future manager's sense of urgency and what the company culture is like, because pace varies so widely.

And as for fun or not boring - that really depends on your own interests and what you enjoy doing!

Hope that helps and best of luck!

Mortgage industry

Mortgage industry

It’s really exciting that you are thinking about what kind of work environment you’d like to work in every day! Knowing an atmosphere you’d be happy in is a smart way to think about careers. When I was career hunting I knew I wanted things to be fast paced, creative, and social. I found a career in the marketing department at a technology company. Tech marketing is fast paced and fun. What makes the work interesting is that you have to be both creative and data oriented. If you enjoy environments where you get new problems to solve all the time, have a clear goal to accomplish and get to apply language, design, technology and data to come up with the solution - then marketing might be for you. Another aspect of the job is that you get to help a lot of different kinds of people. If you are in marketing you help the company take its product to market, you help sales people sell their products, and you help customers find the products they need. If you are interested in marketing, think about joining your school’s Future Business Leaders group, joining DECA, or looking into Rotary International or other community business organizations. Another good way to get marketing experience is to volunteer at a nonprofit that might need marketing or advertising help - its a great way to spend a summer giving back to your community while you learn. Good luck!