Best paid jobs that don’t involve much social interaction

Fritterbug

I’m looking to find a job with a good wage, but one that doesn’t include having to sell yourself or get chatty with clients.

I’ve no idea where to start looking, as there’s so many different types of jobs. I’m autistic so excellent with numbers, detail, spotting things that others have missed etc, but not so good with people skills. I’m currently in my first year of AAT at college, but I’m not enjoying the environment as much as I thought I might and there doesn’t seem to be as much raw number work as I’d hoped.

Could anybody please offer any suggestions, or direct me to a good source of info? I’ve looked it up several times but the salary on everything seems to vary so much. I’ll likely be working in Manchester once qualified.

Thanks

Farside71

Are you good with IT? Onsite support where you go round fixing issues with people's IT equipment, or potentially IT operations where you might work in a 'computer room' or work with linux/windows servers etc. These types of jobs depend on your ability to solve problems rather than having to sell yourself. Obviously some customer/client interaction but its more about understanding their problem rather than making small talk.

I say the former because I have experience of someone at an organisation who had aspergers and did that kind of support and fitted in fine.   

ryan7

IT also springs to mind.

Sandtree

Most areas like IT, Actuarial, Finance etc will have some roles that are more solo and others that are more social... if I had my time again I'd probably move more towards data science (though cannot see myself ever being a quant) or possibly go into actuarial but in general insurance rather than Life. 

El_Rey

Sandtree - What would be the best route into Actuarial in general insurance if the OP chose that area? 

Jillanddy

These types of jobs depend on your ability to solve problems rather than having to sell yourself

Based on my experience of IT departments, they can usually do neither.

But doesn't this all depend on what the OP thinks is a good wage, because lots of IT jobs are not "good wages" in my terms. And there is a certain truism that with few exceptions there are no jobs where you don't have to sell yourself even to get into them / stay in them; and to get a "good wage" you have to be able to progress through the ranks which requires people management skills of some sort, and/or selling yourself and your service. 

If the OP is at college then perhaps utilising the colleges careers services and possibly accessing specialised advice and support to work through their real options may be a better option than a random "what's a well paid job for me?" to a bunch of strangers on the internet.

Jillanddy

I also just checked your previous posts, and I would reiterate - you really need to speak to specialists and not random strangers because from what you have said elsewhere, autism is going to be only one of the issues you face in employment since you also have CFS/ME and fibromyalgia. Those conditions will impact on the kind of advice people with expertise would give you - both can be exacerbated by stress, for example, so a stressful job possibly wouldn't suit, and depending on the severity of your condition(s), full time work may be challenging too. There are many organisations and services available who can give much better specific advice to you - in addition to your college careers service, you should maybe think about some of the charities dealing with these conditions as they often have employment advice sections.

Sandtree

El_Rey said:

Sandtree - What would be the best route into Actuarial in general insurance if the OP chose that area? 

Route to becoming an actuary | Institute and Faculty of Actuaries

Its generally on the job learning backed up with self study and exams. Most actuaries I've worked with were in the Life space and employers were generous with extra days off for study leave and exams but life insurers have many actuaries because everything they do is long term predictions.

I prefer general insurance, and I have worked with a few GI actuaries but no way near the volume of part qualified ones to know if their employers are equally generous. Proportionally less actuaries but specialist insurers have more in pricing, reserving etc than mass market consumer products that often have statisticians for those things as the volumes are sufficient.

Obviously at the start its a lot of grunt work so last year had a team of very junior actuaries taking pension data in one format, converting it into a different format, rolling it forward to today then comparing it with a system generated roll forward. If it was correct then push it through a capital model and compare the reserves for each pensioner against what is currently being reserved and explain any differences greater than 2%... some people's idea of fun 

Farside71

Route to becoming an actuary | Institute and Faculty of Actuaries

Its generally on the job learning backed up with self study and exams. Most actuaries I've worked with were in the Life space and employers were generous with extra days off for study leave and exams but life insurers have many actuaries because everything they do is long term predictions.

Similar, but A LOT can also be expected of you in addition to the studying.  Not sure if it's as prevalent but actuaries used to stints around the business as that was the way they introduced you to how different parts of the organisation worked, so you could end up with people responsibilities at a very early stage of your career.  Nowadays I think they tend to stay within finance mainly, possibly because the nature of life assurance businesses has changed a lot over the years.

Sandtree

Farside71 said:

Route to becoming an actuary | Institute and Faculty of Actuaries

Its generally on the job learning backed up with self study and exams. Most actuaries I've worked with were in the Life space and employers were generous with extra days off for study leave and exams but life insurers have many actuaries because everything they do is long term predictions.

Similar, but A LOT can also be expected of you in addition to the studying.  Not sure if it's as prevalent but actuaries used to stints around the business as that was the way they introduced you to how different parts of the organisation worked, so you could end up with people responsibilities at a very early stage of your career.  Nowadays I think they tend to stay within finance mainly, possibly because the nature of life assurance businesses has changed a lot over the years.

I think people are more specialist these days in general and the idea that someone should understand the whole business appears to have fallen out of fashion. 

Certainly Finance has a lot of Actuaries in a Life insurer but how the company is structured can vary a lot... so Longevity team in one prior client was part of Finance with their work almost exclusively being used in capital modelling. For another client Longevity sat in Sales as whilst their work was used in capital modelling their pricing of new bulk deals was their priority. 

coffee_cake

Programming / software development?  You'd be working from technical specifications.  It'd be the consultants who talk with the customer to find what they need and draft that into a spec (generally speaking - different companies might have different processes)