Career Key Blog: October 2011

Monday, October 31, 2011

Love Halloween? Business Opportunities and Self-Employed Side-Career Ideas

If you love Halloween – I mean, really LOVE it – you might consider a self-employed side business centered around the holiday. According to Value Village (a popular Halloween destination retailer), the average family of four will spend $300 to celebrate the holiday. To learn more about Halloween economics, both in the U.S. and Canada, check out these links:

About.com’s Halloween Business Opportunities article;

National Retail Federation’s “Big Blog” post on Halloween Econ this year, with a related CNN video

National Retail Federation consumer spending study results

Value Village’s Press Kit for its annual online survey results (Trends and Survey Data)

Top 5 Halloween Businesses, from the Intuit blog

Halloween Industry's Evolution to a $6 Billion Business, from the Huffington Post

If you don’t love Halloween, you might browse the Holiday and Consumer Trends News at the National Retail Federation website for ideas about other holidays.

As you can see from the above photo, I am probably not the best potential customer, encouraging my son’s idea to “make my own [crow] costume.” Being a crow and the wing design were his ideas – not bad for Pre-K engineering. Cost: zero. Added bonus - his black turtleneck outfit could conveniently convert to a Steve Jobs costume in case of costume malfunction/destruction.

For the record, this year our family spent $30 on Halloween candy, $30 on pumpkins and $30 on two trips through corn mazes. Shows where our priorities lie: gourds, navigating maps (but you knew that already) and stuffing ourselves with leftover candy….

Happy Halloween!

If you're a Conventional personality type, employers are looking for your structured, orderly approach to records, numbers or machines in many promising careers. Administrative careers involving mathematical detail or the ability to work well with material or records processing systems are in demand. In the last post of this 6 part series, Promising 2011 Careers that Match Your Personality, we list occupations compatible with the Conventional Holland personality type.

We recommend starting with Part 1, our introduction and tips on how to use this Promising Careers list. To see promising careers for the other five Holland personality types, see our other posts in this series:
Realistic Careers, Investigative Careers, Artistic Careers, Social Careers, and Enterprising Careers.

The world of Conventional occupations has greatly changed in the last 50 years. Paper handling and filing occupations of the past have disappeared with better computers, information technology, and outsourcing. But if you combine the needs of a more high-tech world with analytical skills and attention to detail, you will find Conventional jobs that pay well and have a positive job outlook.

Combining an occupation (from any personality type) with a growth industry (health care, information technology (see my previous post on high-tech in particular), energy, and materials moving and processing) is a recipe for more job opportunities.

When researching career information, make sure to use BOTH the O*NET (occupations below link to it) and the Occupational Outlook Handbook (OOH). There is a link to the OOH at the end of each O*NET occupation page. Read this previous post about their different advantages and disadvantages.

Promising Conventional Careers by Career Key Work Group

Holland's Theory of Career Choice and a description of the Conventional personality type

Mathematical Detail

Actuaries

Bill and Account Collectors

Billing and Posting Clerks and Machine Operators

Bookkeeping, Accounting, and Auditing Clerks

Energy Auditor

Computer Security Specialists

Cost Estimators

Database Administrators

Investment Underwriters

Mapping Technicians

Web Developers