Best Jobs For Former Dentists [2022]

It’s tough to be a dentist nowadays, and more and more of them are losing confidence in their own profession.

While the amount of people majoring in courses preparing people for a job as a dentist isn’t necessarily dropping, fewer and fewer people are applying to become dentists in the first place and the workforce itself is looking grim.

With so many dentists no longer sticking around, this begs the question:

What are they all doing now?

We were curious, so we looked through the resumes of former dentists to see what kind of jobs they were moving into after leaving the field. There were thousands of answers, so we made the cutoff at the top 100 jobs.

The full list of those jobs can be found below.

Here’s a quick look at the top ten most common jobs for former dentists :

These are all good jobs, all of them either utilizing some skill that a dentist would have or being a stepping stone to a different career.

Here’s the thing about these jobs though — as a list, they’re kind of boring as hell. They’re pretty much exactly what you’d expect a lot of former dentists to do.

But given that there are some very surprising and interesting items on this list, we’ve decided to highlight a few of those instead.

Here are some of the most interesting jobs of former dentists:

Some of these items are admittedly more attractive than one another as far as actually working the job goes, but one way or another, you’ve got to admit they’re eye-catching.

How We Determined the Most Common Jobs of Former DENTISTS

Using resume information from our database of over 7 million resumes, we looked at all resumes that listed dentist under their work history. Then we looked at which jobs showed up on their work histories following their stints as a dentist, sorting them by their most frequent.

That’s how we made the initial ranked list.

To make our list of most interesting jobs, we looked through the ranked list to see if any positions:

Showed up in fewer than 1% of all new jobs
And, were not part of the 100 most common jobs in our database

That’s all for how we did it — below you’ll find the full ranked list of the most common jobs of former dentists.

Detailed Ranking of the Most Common Jobs of Former DENTISTS

Rank	Job Title	%
1	Associate Dentist	11.17%
2	General Dentist	10.68%
3	Dental Assistant	7.61%
4	Dentist/owner	2.1%
5	Volunteer	1.78%
6	Dental Services Director	1.46%
7	General Practice	1.29%
8	Research Assistant	1.29%
9	Teaching Assistant	1.13%
10	Internship	1.13%
11	Associate	1.13%
12	Clinical Director	1.13%
13	Orthodontist	0.97%
14	Dental Hygienist	0.97%
15	Customer Service Representative	0.97%
16	Periodontist	0.81%
17	Consultant	0.81%
18	Resident	0.81%
19	Instructor	0.81%
20	Office Manager	0.65%
21	Server	0.65%
22	Sales Associate	0.65%
23	Optometrist/practice Owner	0.65%
24	Fellow	0.65%
25	Owner	0.65%
26	Dental Officer	0.65%
27	Operations Manager	0.49%
28	Teacher	0.49%
29	Registered Dental Assistant	0.49%
30	Clinical Instructor	0.49%
31	Home Health Aid	0.49%
32	General Education Teacher	0.32%
33	President/owner	0.32%
34	Student Internship	0.32%
35	Administrative Assistant	0.32%
36	Lead Dental Assistant	0.32%
37	Environmental Health Specialist	0.32%
38	Cashier	0.32%
39	Community Service Volunteer	0.32%
40	Ship Worker	0.32%
41	Customer Service Trainer	0.32%
42	Psychologist, Private Practice	0.32%
43	Assistant	0.32%
44	Graduate Research Assistant	0.32%
45	Teacher Assistant	0.32%
46	Clinician	0.32%
47	Cosmetic Dentist	0.32%
48	Clerk	0.32%
49	Insurance Coordinator	0.32%
50	Chief Executive Officer	0.32%
51	Orthodontic Assistant	0.32%
52	Front Desk Receptionist	0.32%
53	Oral Surgeon	0.32%
54	Doctor	0.32%
55	Product Manager	0.32%
56	Research Associate	0.32%
57	Analyst Internship	0.32%
58	Special Education Teacher	0.32%
59	Adjunct Faculty	0.32%
60	Dental Assisting Instructor	0.32%
61	Assembler	0.32%
62	Manager	0.32%
63	Office Assistant	0.32%
64	Technician	0.32%
65	Office Administrator	0.32%
66	Science Teacher	0.16%
67	Call Center Representative	0.16%
68	Singer	0.16%
69	Systems Analyst	0.16%
70	Family Member Caretaker	0.16%
71	Sales Manager	0.16%
72	Director, Network Operations	0.16%
73	Processor	0.16%
74	Licensed Agent	0.16%
75	Registered Nurse	0.16%
76	Graduate Assistant	0.16%
77	Prosthodontist	0.16%
78	Team Leader	0.16%
79	Field Sales Representative	0.16%
80	Oral And Maxillofacial Surgeon	0.16%
81	Manager Stylist	0.16%
82	Call Center Specialist	0.16%
83	Health Researcher	0.16%
84	Attorney	0.16%
85	Front Office Administrator	0.16%
86	Associate Manager	0.16%
87	Detailer	0.16%
88	Receptionist	0.16%
89	Therapist	0.16%
90	Network Internship	0.16%
91	Handyman	0.16%
92	Senior Technician Specialist	0.16%
93	Dishwasher/busser	0.16%
94	Sales Agent	0.16%
95	President/chief Executive Officer	0.16%
96	Human Resources Internship	0.16%
97	Clinical Manager	0.16%
98	Customer Service Manager	0.16%
99	Provider Services Representative	0.16%
100	Medical Biller Coder	0.16%

Author

Chris Kolmar

Chris Kolmar is a co-founder of Zippia and the editor-in-chief of the Zippia career advice blog. He has hired over 50 people in his career, been hired five times, and wants to help you land your next job. His research has been featured on the New York Times, Thrillist, VOX, The Atlantic, and a host of local news. More recently, he's been quoted on USA Today, BusinessInsider, and CNBC.

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