11 jobs that pay $35 an hour

 

Many vocations provide such a median pay rate of $35, or around $70,000 per year.

Budget analysts, registered nurses, laboratory staff, and power plant operators all share something in common. They are just a handful of the numerous jobs with a median hourly wage of $35, or around $70,000 per year.

If a salary like that appeals to you, consider any of the 11 positions listed below. These occupations require varied degrees of training and experience, so if you don't have the necessary credentials, think about what measures you should take to acquire one of these well-paying jobs.

1. Accountant and auditor*
Job description: Accountants and auditors prepare and examine financial records. They ensure that financial records are accurate and that taxes are paid properly and on time. They also assess financial operations and work to help ensure that organizations run efficiently.
Typical education level: Bachelor's degree. It also helps to become certified within a specific field of accounting. Many accountants become Certified Public Accountants.
Median hourly pay: $36.19

2. Budget analyst
Job description: Budget analysts help public and private institutions organize their finances. They prepare budget reports and monitor institutional spending.
Typical education level: Bachelor's degree, though many employers prefer a master's degree.
Median hourly pay: $36.16

3. Registered nurse
Job description: Registered nurses provide and coordinate patient care, educate patients and the public about various health conditions and provide advice and emotional support to patients and their family members.
Typical education level: RNs usually take one of three education paths: a bachelor's degree in nursing, an associate degree in nursing, or a diploma from an approved nursing program. They also must be licensed.
Median hourly pay: $34.14

4. Fashion designer
Job description: Fashion designers create original clothing, accessories and footwear. They sketch designs, select fabrics and patterns and give instructions on how to make the products they designed.
Typical education level: Bachelor's degree in fashion design or fashion merchandising.
Median hourly pay: $35.18

5. Genetic counselor
Job description: Genetic counselors assess individual or family risk for a variety of inherited conditions, such as genetic disorders and birth defects. They provide information and support to other healthcare providers, or to individuals and families concerned with the risk of inherited conditions.
Typical education level: Master's degree in genetic counseling or genetics, and board certification.
Median hourly pay: $35.85

6. Geographer
Job description: Geographers study the Earth and its land, features and inhabitants. They also examine phenomena such as political or cultural structures and study the physical and human geographic characteristics of regions ranging in scale from local to global.

Typical education level: Bachelor's degree. A master's degree and work experience are typically needed for more advanced positions.
Median hourly pay: $36.02

7. Nuclear medicine technologist
Job description: Nuclear medicine technologists operate equipment that creates images of areas of a patient's body. They prepare radioactive drugs and administer them to patients. The radioactive drugs cause abnormal areas of the body to appear different from normal areas in the images.
Typical education level: Nuclear medicine technologists typically need an associate degree from an accredited nuclear medicine technology program. Formal education programs in nuclear medicine technology or a related health care field lead to a certificate, an associate degree or a bachelor's degree. Technologists must be licensed in about one half of the states; requirements vary by state.
Median hourly pay: $36.06

8. Power plant operator
Job description: Power plant operators, distributor, and dispatchers control the systems that generate and distribute electric power.
Typical education level: High school diploma or equivalent
Median hourly pay: $34.17

9. Dental hygienist
Job description: Dental hygienists clean teeth, examine patients for signs of oral diseases such as gingivitis and provide other preventive dental care. They also educate patients on ways to improve and maintain good oral health.
Typical education level: Associate degree. All states require dental hygienists to be licensed.
Median hourly pay: $34.96

10. Insurance underwriter
Job description: Insurance underwriters decide whether to provide insurance and under what terms. They evaluate insurance applications and determine coverage amounts and premiums.
Typical education level: Bachelor's degree
Median hourly pay: $34.93

11. Diagnostic medical sonographer
Job description: Diagnostic medical sonographers operate special imaging equipment to create images or to conduct tests. The images and test results help physicians assess and diagnose medical conditions. Some technologists assist physicians and surgeons during surgical procedures.
Typical education level: Associate degree.
Median hourly pay: $34.08

5 common interview questions and how to answer them

 

Here are five of the most common interview questions, as well as what the employer is looking for in your response.

An essential part of interview preparation is formulating answers to specific questions. And there are some standard questions that frequently come up during an interview. Here are five of the most common interview questions, as well as what the employer is looking for in your response.

1. Tell me about yourself
This is the most predictable yet sometimes the most frustrating of all interview questions. The interviewer has a copy of your résumé in front of her so why ask the question? This is simply your opportunity to present yourself in the best possible light.

For best results:

• Focus on three or four areas within your résumé that are relevant to the job opening.
• Be concise. Limit your moment in the spotlight to two or three minutes maximum.
• Show enthusiasm. Hiring managers love a genuinely interested candidate.
• Don’t get personal. Focus solely on your professional achievements.

2. What do you know about the company?
A vital element to interview preparation is researching the company, including its background, structure and current industry trends. Employers are most impressed by candidates who have taken the time to thoroughly investigate their brand. To stand out from the competition, always check current press releases or company updates on the morning of your interview to reiterate your enthusiasm and interest in the role.

3. What are your strengths and weaknesses?
This is another favorite from the lineup of interview questions and answers. Responding to the strengths element of this question should be relatively straightforward if you have thoroughly analyzed the job posting and identified the key skills needed. By highlighting your personal strengths that most closely match the company’s needs, you are emphasizing your suitability for the role. When it comes to weaknesses, restrict it to just one. It’s not a trick question; everyone has weaknesses. The key is to demonstrate your willingness to work on improving them. Admitting to a weakness also shows a level of self-awareness.

4. Why do you want to leave your current position?/Why do you want this job?
Most candidates typically respond to this question by outlining what benefits they will gain from accepting a particular job. The employer ideally wants to know not only what the company can do for you but what you can do for the company. What aspects of your qualifications and experience will add value to the organization if you are offered this job? If you are currently employed but miserable in your present role, it is essential to focus on the benefits of joining the employer, rather than how terrible your predicament is. A negative attitude is one of the principal reasons that new employees fail to succeed in a new job.

5. Where do you see yourself in five years’ time?
Unless you’ve been peering into your crystal ball recently, it’s impossible to give an accurate answer to this question. What the employer is looking for is an indication of long-term commitment. If you are the preferred candidate, will their investment pay off? Your response should imply that you intend to stick around and grow your career with the company. You may also want to turn the tables and ask the hiring manager where she sees the company in five years’ time.

How resume skills became the most important factor in hiring

 

Learn to identify your skills — and use them to get a new job.

Today’s competitive labor market is as wild as the Old West, and when it comes to hiring, there’s a new sheriff in town: skills.

The seismic disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic has fractured neat, linear career tracks and shifted the balance between hiring managers desperate to fill open positions and job seekers looking to earn more for their hard work. As a result, where you’ve worked in the past isn’t quite as important as what you can do now — and what you’ll be able to do in the future. In other words: your skills are your greatest asset.

Skills will get you hired

We recently teamed up with The Harris Poll to pick the brains of thousands of hiring managers and workers, and it turns out those brains were full of all kinds of fascinating things. But one thing in particular jumped out: people are getting hired because of their skills far more often than they used to be. Let’s break it down with some bullet points:

• Hiring managers’ top priority for 2021 is skills-based hiring.
• Moving forward, 85% of hiring managers will focus less on candidates’ prior titles and more on job skills and experience.
• So-called “soft-skills,” like communication and organization and time management, are superpowers. The overwhelming majority of hiring managers says they are important; more than half of hiring managers say they are very important.

• 88% of hiring managers say they hire based on soft skills, then provide job-specific training.
• And that’s exactly what workers want; 89% of them say they’d be comfortable starting a job based on their core skills, expecting to learn more as they settle into the role.

Why this could be good for the labor market overall

Even before the pandemic, storm clouds were gathering over the labor market. The skills job seekers had cultivated weren’t matching up with the abilities hiring managers needed. The growing inconsistency came to be known as the skills gap, and despite efforts to fix the problem, a variety of factors have made it an ongoing challenge that is impossible for workers and hiring managers to ignore.

• In 2019, 23% of workers felt they did not have all the skills necessary to advance in their careers.

• But today, that number has nearly doubled to 44%.
• Hiring managers are even more worried about the skills gap; 69% say it’s a concern.

The good news is that skills-based hiring may be an antidote. By hiring people based on core skills, then providing training, employers give people a chance to gain new skills, level up in their professional lives and advance their careers. And a better-trained workforce with a diverse set of skills is sure to help close the skills gap. Still, training is easier said than done. Only 31% of workers strongly agree that their companies are providing good on-the-job training. And when companies don’t pony up, the burden of training falls to workers, 65% of whom have taken a class or workshop outside of work to learn skills they need for their jobs.

Though training isn’t a universal opportunity just yet, the good news is that hiring managers and workers agree that it’s a necessity:

• 89% of hiring managers say an increased emphasis on training and development would be beneficial to all employees.

• 91% of workers say the same thing.

Use your skills to find a new job

If you’re looking for a job, the skills section of your resume is your best friend. Distill all your work down into the skills you used to get things done, and list them prominently in the skills section of your resume. Here are some marketable skills you might want to include (or learn):

• Communication. Show people that you're a good talker and a good writer. You can get your point across in a professional way.
• Teamwork. Offer evidence of when you’ve worked well with other people and the results you achieved together. It makes the dream work, after all.
• Adaptability. Things change, so prove you can change with them. Maybe your business updated its systems and you helped train your team on how to use them.
• Problem solving. Talk about how you provided solutions to issues, especially if those solutions brought in more money or made something easier.
• Creativity. Let your creative side shine. Some jobs will depend on this and will want to see how you’ve come up with ideas and brought them to life.

If you have the right skills, you’ll be empowered not just to get a new job, but to enter a new industry altogether. More and more workers are looking to bring their expertise to bear on entirely new fields. Transferable skills — those skills you developed in one type of work that apply to other types of work — are like a job market passport. If you’d like to identify your transferable skills, check out our comprehensive guide on the subject. In the meantime, here are some examples of how someone might apply their transferable skills to switch jobs:

Old position	Transferable skills	New position
Salesperson	Industry knowledge, verbal and written communication, writing, budgeting	Marketing manager
Restaurant manager	Customer service, communication, staff scheduling, management experience	Retail supervisor
Waiter/Host	Time management, interpersonal skills, hand-eye coordination	Delivery driver
Cashier	Problem-solving skills, professionalism, verbal communication	Customer service
Homeless shelter volunteer	Empathy, ability to perform physical tasks, communication of complex topics in accessible language	Home health aide

Top skills to put on your resume

We recently did some digging to find out which resume skills are the most in-demand right now. Here are the top three:

• Customer service. If you can deal with customers, you’re in demand — customer service is listed on 5.8% of all our jobs. It’s the skill hiring managers want more than anything else.
• Sales. Prove you can sell and you’ll do a good job of selling yourself. Sales is listed as a skill on 4.55% of our jobs. If you’ve got it, people want to see it.
• Business development. Hiring managers want to see that you can bring in the big bucks, manage projects and run with new ideas. Business development also shows that you’re a good networker — another soft skill that delivers solid results.

What else you should know about skills

To recap: it’s more important than ever to frame your work experience through resume skills.

• Hiring managers want to hire people based on their skills, then provide job-specific training.
• Still, many workers work on developing new skills outside of work by taking classes, participating in workshops or volunteering.
• The skills section of your resume is very, very important.

• Customer service, sales and business development are currently the most in-demand skills.

Workers and hiring managers agree — building the workforce of the future means we all need to focus on what we can do, not just where we’ve been. So if you’re ready to find your next job, it’s time to level up those skills.