Since respresentative is such a broad term, you can really take your pick when it comes to having a career as one. Maybe you want to pursue customer service or politics. Either way, representatives are very important for the people they're serving.
As a representative, it's important that you present yourself well. A state representative needs to be a likeable figure for people to vote into office, while a customer service representative needs to put on an understanding face when presented with a customer complaint.
Representatives work all sorts of hours, depending on the industry they've picked. Luckily, there are so many industries that a representative can go into that you'll have plenty of job opportunities available.
There is more than meets the eye when it comes to being a representative. For example, did you know that they make an average of $16.87 an hour? That's $35,080 a year!
Between 2018 and 2028, the career is expected to grow -2% and produce -51,600 job opportunities across the U.S.
There are certain skills that many representatives have in order to accomplish their responsibilities. By taking a look through resumes, we were able to narrow down the most common skills for a person in this position. We discovered that a lot of resumes listed computer skills, customer-service skills and listening skills.
When it comes to the most important skills required to be a representative, we found that a lot of resumes listed 18.5% of representatives included customer service, while 11.4% of resumes included communication, and 5.9% of resumes included email. Hard skills like these are helpful to have when it comes to performing essential job responsibilities.
When it comes to searching for a job, many search for a key term or phrase. Instead, it might be more helpful to search by industry, as you might be missing jobs that you never thought about in industries that you didn't even think offered positions related to the representative job title. But what industry to start with? Most representatives actually find jobs in the technology and professional industries.
If you're interested in becoming a representative, one of the first things to consider is how much education you need. We've determined that 42.4% of representatives have a bachelor's degree. In terms of higher education levels, we found that 8.5% of representatives have master's degrees. Even though most representatives have a college degree, it's possible to become one with only a high school degree or GED.
Choosing the right major is always an important step when researching how to become a representative. When we researched the most common majors for a representative, we found that they most commonly earn bachelor's degree degrees or high school diploma degrees. Other degrees that we often see on representative resumes include associate degree degrees or master's degree degrees.
You may find that experience in other jobs will help you become a representative. In fact, many representative jobs require experience in a role such as customer service representative. Meanwhile, many representatives also have previous career experience in roles such as cashier or sales associate.