Top jobs for senior citizens after retirement in 2022

Written by Debashis Datta - Khyaal Content Community Member

Have you heard about SACRED? Don't tell me the meaning of the English word, I am asking about a portal. Perhaps you already know that it is an acronym for Senior Able Citizens Re-Employment in Dignity, an open online portal launched by the Government of India about 5 months ago. This is a common platform where you can register as a job seeker after attaining the age of 60 years and where prospective employers also enlist themselves wanting to get different jobs done by senior citizens. Get yourself registered there, describing your qualifications and experience, for there is ample scope of jobs even after retirement from the organized sector of services. 

Don't be bogged down by your ripe age, as there are an unbelievably high number of jobs doable by you, at the national as well as international stages. 

We present some jobs you can easily do even at your mature age. Online assignments are best these days as there is always a danger of having another wave of infection due to a newer mutant onslaught of Coronavirus. Some jobs require offline duty hours and should be chosen carefully based on your mobility and health requirements. 

Tutoring 

If you have expertise and experience in teaching, you can easily opt for an online teaching job, even after retirement from formal working life. You can use your contacts to rope in students for online tutoring. The newest development in this field is the advent of many online teaching applications (Apps). There are so many apps in the market that it'll not be proper to name anyone in specific. Suffice it to say that Google search will enable you to select your best choice by understanding the features of the app you consider and reading the feedback given by the users. 

In some of these teaching apps, you can register yourself as a teacher filling up the required fields of subject, level of students you want to train, details of your experience, etc. Then the app authorities will interview you, followed by a demo- class you will conduct to exhibit your actual teaching abilities. If you match their requirements, they will recruit you as a teacher there. Students will be guided to take tuition from you, and you'll get remuneration as per the number of lectures (of a given duration) you deliver. You can coach several students at the same time using these apps.

There are various types of teaching apps. Some may serve as a platform where students or their guardians contact you to avail your teaching. Local apps limit their operations in a particular city or state. Payment modes are also different, direct or through the administrators, fixed or variable pay based on the number of classes you conduct. 

The subject you want to teach is important. If your subject is not in demand in your locality, you should try to reach out to the national level. Problem-solving skills are very much in demand. The reason is that education now aims to enable students to crack highly competitive entrance tests to various institutions for higher education. Therefore, a track record of your previous students' success in different competitive exams counts. 

As of now, the area of online teaching is confined to teaching students at primary or secondary school levels. Online proficiency training in different foreign languages (reading, writing and conversing) is now gaining demand irrespective of the age of the students. Online music training, both vocal and instrumental is becoming popular across Indian and western - filmy, basic or folk varieties. Offline coaching of all subjects, instrumental music, and other performing arts are also in demand. 

Insurance 

Our society is witnessing a boom in this particular field. Provisions of so many types of insurance are now being offered to serve the various requirements of the citizens. Life insurance is the most well-known, but insurance of properties, cars, other motor vehicles, ornaments, and other valuables is also gradually becoming more and more popular. The steepest rise in demand is being recorded in the case of medical health insurance. We are a part of a vast population, and only 4.2% are covered by life insurance, as per data of 2021, and needless to say, there is an immense scope of growth in this sector, including other segments of insurance. 

You may jump onto the bandwagon of the insurance business as a viable job opportunity. Contact a financial institution and join as an insurance agent. Adult age and high school education are enough here. 

First, you have to attend a short course in the particular insurance sector chosen by you. These courses are usually conducted by the financial institution free of cost. Then you have to give an exam conducted by the regulatory authority (appointed by the government) and obtain the pass certificate therefrom. 

Thereafter, you will sell the policies offered by the financial company you have joined. Your first customers will be your social contacts in personal as well as professional life. Then you may expand your clientele to unknown persons, addressing their insurance needs, and selling appropriate policies. You will get professional help from your managers who will accompany you to visit the customers to convince them of the need for any particular insurance. 

There are many financial companies in operation, and the competition is high among them. You should be careful to sell appropriate policies to those who genuinely need them and have the financial capacity to carry on with the premiums for an optimum period. 

This is mostly an offline job, and you can have a good income if you go on generating business on behalf of your company. 

Mutual Funds & Pension Funds 

Financial companies offer jobs to seniors as agents accumulating investments in mutual and/or pension funds and similar services offered by the company. This field is similar to the insurance sector described above and the modus operandi is almost the same. You can have a good income if you go on adding to the business of your company steadily and regularly. 

Consultancy 

As an experienced senior professional, before or after retirement from formal work, you can work as an advisor or consultant in a company. This is again not an online job.

Technology and engineering are the fields most in demand, and if you have a successful career in these fields, you have a good chance of getting an advisor's job, even if it is a part-time job. Other fields of expertise usually sought-after are management, and research-oriented. 

Usually, the following types of companies need senior experts as advisors:

1. Companies taking up projects related to management, survey, research, construction, etc…

2. Companies conducting managerial/ technical studies with the purpose to troubleshoot recurring managerial, operational, or breakdown problems, or modernizing and renovating prevalent practices/ systems/ machines in any organization

3. Companies helping organizations to achieve standards such as ISO certification, etc…

4. Any company directly dealing with the field of your expertise

If you have the ability in any of the fields mentioned above, you are a good candidate to be appointed as a consultant by a company regardless of your age.

Job-related websites (like "LinkedIn", etc.) are suitable for developing a network to get an advisor's job. 

Content Writing 

Good writing skills are always handy when you go job-hunting. It is fairly easy to get a continuous flow of online assignments for creating content on different topics. 

You may be asked to write promotional write-ups for various products for digital magazines, or, certain websites. You can write about certain things with short descriptions of their specialities, like "the 10 best romantic Hindi films".

You may also be required to write blogs, of moderate lengths, on any subject imaginable on earth! Can you write a short report on any historical or recent incident? You may require a kind of short investigation to collect basic materials for it. It is easy to do a little research on the internet if you have a smartphone on your coffee table. Short essays, reviews of books and films, critiques of musical albums - all these may be asked to be penned (typed, in modern digital lifestyle) by you. Creative pieces of stories and poems are also in demand.

There are websites related to content writing, both at the international and national levels. Usually, these sites serve as a meeting ground for the prospective writers and those who want to employ writers to write some specific content as per their requirements. You go to any of such sites and get yourself registered as a writer. Mostly free, some sites may charge a paltry fee for registration. Some others may demand work-based charges. Modes of your payments also vary. In some cases, you may have to declare the rate per word you want. If the charges, your income, the conditions, and their modes (these are fairly reasonable in most cases) fit your needs, then get yourself registered as a writer, displaying your work samples and other relevant details, and wait for being chosen and assigned a writing assignment. 

One important point is that your write-ups should be befitting SEO (search engine optimization) - there are enough materials available free on the internet about it, go through some of them to have an idea about it. And your wording should be original, copying from other articles is easily traceable by software and so is a strict no-no. 

There are software tools available free on the web for checking grammatical correctness and avoiding plagiarism. After starting as a writer, you may progress to the job of an online editor at a later stage. You can get 50 paise to Rs 5 per word, and may earn Rs 15 thousand or more each month after devoting 4 or more hours per day to writing. 

Multiple Scopes 

There are numerous other scopes of BPO jobs seniors can do online, like data entry, typing, form filling, etc… 

If you are somewhat tech-savvy, you can work as a freelance Digital Graphic Designer. It's different from normal Graphic Designer jobs; you can easily use templates available free on various sites, and create marvellous graphics digitally by using a laptop or even a good smartphone. You can get jobs to create banners, logos, emblems, and attractive profile pics on a simple scale to promote/ decorate others' websites, blogs, etc… Jobs can be grabbed by enrolling into work sites like 99 designs, Fiverr among others. 

You can be a YouTube vlogger if you can shoot and edit video clips and turn these into a coherent video on any topic interesting enough to attract general mass-viewers. The income will depend on the popularity of your channel and the frequent posting of your video blogs so that your channel attracts some advertisers!

There is, in fact, no dearth of jobs. You may only require some skills attainable by following some suitable online courses, and vlogs (mostly free of cost), found after minutes only of net-surfing. 

Some Special Issues 

All the above jobs are without any investment barring a laptop or a smartphone, or, with very minimal charges for enrollment. You should be extremely careful when you are asked to invest money to a large extent, or a regular extent. There are traps like Chain Marketing or MLM (Multi-Level Marketing) jobs, which turn you into a consumer of goods, instead of an earner. Avoid such contacts, go for reputed companies and websites. 

The World is at your fingertips 

Internet technology has brought the world of online jobs into your hands. You can work out marvels at almost any level with the help of your smart devices and some software apps. You can also reach out for some offline work if you like. 

Wishing you a happy job hunting! As the saying goes, age is just a two-digit number, or, shall we say three digits?

Written by Debashis Datta