Nursing Careers: Become a Registered Nurse

Name: Michele
Job Title:Registered Nurse / Nursing Coordinator
Where: Ellisville, MO - USA
Years of Experience: 5 years as Nursing Coordinator, 20 years as Registered Nurse
Other Relevant Experience: Various CNA, Rehabilitation, and RN positions, including Hospital, Rehab, Home Health Aide, Hospice and Home Care, Charge Nurse, Evening Supervisor, Staff Development Coordinator, and Nurse Assessor for LTC Policies.
Annual Salary: The median nursing salary starts out just above $21.00 per hour and increases to almost $30.00 per hour after 20 years of experience.

Nursing careers are appealing for many reasons. One positive aspect of nursing careers is the opportunity to serve others through medical treatment and rehabilitation. Nursing careers also boast a glowing job outlook that has consistently risen along with increasing demand for registered nurses. Plus, nursing careers offer a wide range of employment options within various sectors of the health care field. When you become a registered nurse, you open the door to a variety of nursing career paths, including forensic nursing careers, traveling nurse careers, and nurse coordinator careers.

For the following Salary Story, we take a brief look at the career path of Michele, a registered nurse with 20 years of experience in the health care field. Interested in medicine and health care from a young age, Michele originally built up her knowledge and expertise as a registered nurse before moving to her current position as a nursing coordinator. She now teaches classes and provides management to nursing staff. Learn what an upper-level nursing career is like, and use PayScale’s research center to explore registered nurse salaries and get information on becoming a nurse.

Personal Trainer to Small Business Owner

Name: Bonnie Katz
Job Title: Small Business Owner, Personal Trainer
Where: Fitness Together - West Seattle Personal Training
Years of Experience: 10 years in personal training, 4 years being a small business owner.
Education: Cornish College of the Arts - BFA, Renton Technical College - Health and Fitness Technology
Annual Salary: The national average salary of a small business owner with 10-19 years of experience is $70,372. The average salary of a personal trainer with 10-15 years of experience is approximately $23.00/hour.

For most personal trainers, the term "average salary" doesn't really apply. The majority of personal trainers are paid by the hour. Because personal training is a one-on-one activity, many personal trainers choose to ditch the gym and work for themselves, a smart decision that will most likely increase a personal trainer's salary. The average salary of a personal trainer is highest when self-employed, a difference of over $10 an hour.

In this Salary Story, Bonnie Katz offers advice on working as a personal trainer and becoming a small business owner. She gives an insider's look at owning a personal training business and discusses the top challenges she faces as small business owner. If you're into fitness, don't miss this inspiring interview!

IT Careers - Database Administrator

Name: Chris
Job Title: Junior Database Administrator
Where: Chicago, IL - USA
Years of Experience: 1
Other Relevant Experience: Worked at same company for five years, in other department.
Education: I'm finishing up my Bachelor's in Computer Science, which my company has helped me pay for. And I have a Liberal Arts BA.
Annual Salary: Curious about IT salaries? Use PayScale's Research Center to find a database administrator salary by employer and database administrator salary by experience.

After the bursting of the "IT bubble" in the late nineties, people were asking, "how stable is an IT career?" But current data suggests that an escalating number of IT jobs are available for the picking. In fact, many of the best compensated IT jobs are with companies that have emerged from the dot-com crash as industry leaders. Just take a look at the company salary data for Yahoo and employee compensation data for Google.

In this Salary Story, we'll take a look at one of the hottest IT jobs available: database administrator. Database administrator careers are forecasted to be one of the fastest growing careers in the next decade. In the following interview, Chris, a junior database administrator, shares how he landed an entry-level IT job and offers advice on how to break into the field.