Doubling Up on Careers Suits More Workers
By TODDI GUTNER
Wall Street Journal February 5, 2008
If you've found success in one profession, but long to do more, you might not have to choose.
Early in his career as an internist at a teaching hospital and later in private practice, Jeff Gold felt he needed to add another dimension to his job to gain satisfaction. While he enjoyed his clinical work, Dr. Gold also yearned to be intellectually challenged in the business world. "Most people thought I was kind of strange," he says of his transition 18 years ago to dual careers, geriatrics and medical marketing and advertising.
Today Dr. Gold, 51 years old, is the medical director and head of medical affairs at the Rebekah Rehabilitation and Extended Care Center in the Bronx, N.Y., and a senior vice president and medical director for Grey Healthcare Group in Manhattan. Together, these two half-time positions satisfy Dr. Gold's desire to work with patients on complex clinical cases and be part of a marketing team that creates advertising for pharmaceutical products. "I've rounded out my must-have list of criteria for my career," he says. And perhaps just as important, Dr. Gold says, he has a higher level of job and financial security. "If one industry suffers a downturn, I am still likely to be employed by the other."
[Portfolio careers slideshow]
Karl Hampe displays work from one of the professions in his portfolio career: comic strip artist. He launched the comic, called The Regular Guy, last year and it has since been picked up by a local newspaper.
Dr. Gold is one of a growing number of professionals who are opting out of the traditional one-job track. Instead, they are crafting a portfolio of careers comprising multiple part-time jobs that, when combined, are equivalent to a full-time position. The number of people pursuing these dual -- or tri -- track careers has doubled in the past couple of years, says John A. Challenger, president of the outplacement consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.