Could you imagine changing careers?

[wanizame]

Back to the button.. do you enjoy the business analysis side. Or, as said, have you absorbed enough about the organisation to use your skills in other areas. I started doing IT for arts based non profits & ended up doing events & logistics because I knew so much about them as a result of handling their files & talking to bods..Are you good at research? Most non profits are so busy chasing the next common pool of public funding that they don't have time to do research for long term grants, trusts, are you savvy enough to pitch your non profit to possible funders as a fundraiser in person? Does any of this raise your blood temperature?

 

[Lee Trevino]

Had several jobs/careers and am just on the point of being made redundant. Considering shelf stacking at ASDA. Part time is all anybody needs unless you're disfunctionally protestant, wedded to an individualistic lifestyle and/or otherwise needy. Earning money just diverts you from what life is truly about.

There may be some truth in this. With the internet and the facility to shop 24/7, the end of 'make and mend', allotments and self-help,and a culture tending to the hedonist, it all becomes self-defeating in trying to find the true SELF.

That people think a second career is the answer is itself depressing.

 

[butchersapron]

Had several jobs/careers and am just on the point of being made redundant. Considering shelf stacking at ASDA. Part time is all anybody needs unless you're disfunctionally protestant, wedded to an individualistic lifestyle and/or otherwise needy.

Or not a 50 plus hippy with no current dependents and a pension. What a fucking tool. You think everyone 'anybody' is in your situation.

 

[editor]

My brother's about to be made redundant after 25 years with the same company. He's worked damn hard all his life, but the skills related to his job are more or less completely outdated in the current jobs market. Add that to his age and it's going to be very hard for him to find any kind of meaningful employment - and he's still got a houseful of kids to support. It sucks.

 

[girasol]

I really feel I need a career change, doing the same thing for 10 years is more than enough for me, I never wanted stick to the same job all my life, I'd rather learn new things and change direction.

I don't think teaching is for me, but I had an epiphany yesterday, so today I'm starting to look into training in counselling. I'm just so bored with my job there's no way I'm doing this until I'm 65!

I know this sounds stupid, but I do wish I was made redundant, I could use the money and a few months off to retrain...

OMG: http://www3.open.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/qualification/b23.htm (Childhood and Youth Studies) - I'm already overwhelmed by the possibilities

 

[Cloud]

How do you become a locksmith? That sounds good. I'd do anything given the chance. I was thinking of going back to college but they wont let me in without doing maths and english. I want to learn a trade badly.

I'm a trained chef but that has only ever lead to potwashing jobs, I think you have to start younger than I did.

I'm fantastic at PC repair but I guess an IT degree is needed for a company in that field.

I feel a bit like yozzer hughes at the moment, walking round looking at people doing jobs thinking "I could do that, giz a job, go on"

 

[Hollis]

I really feel I need a career change, doing the same thing for 10 years is more than enough for me, I never wanted stick to the same job all my life, I'd rather learn new things and change direction.

I don't think teaching is for me, but I had an epiphany yesterday, so today I'm starting to look into training in counselling. I'm just so bored with my job there's no way I'm doing this until I'm 65!

I know this sounds stupid, but I do wish I was made redundant, I could use the money and a few months off to retrain...

OMG: http://www3.open.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/qualification/b23.htm (Childhood and Youth Studies) - I'm already overwhelmed by the possibilities

OU do their own foundation degree in Counselling now -if you wanna become a quack.. I did some intro module for interest last year - very good.. then again you could just read the book.

 

[Shevek]

I graduated two years ago and have done a few different jobs. I had a manic episode just after I left uni too so that set me back a bit. So I haven't really had a career yet at age 28.

I am currently pretty disatisfied with life. I am overweight, scruffy, living in a messy rented flat with my bf and no job. My ideal job would be as a social anthropologist.

I have been 'stuck' in the same kind of depressed situation for a few years now. I just feel as though everything I want to do is out of the question because of £1000's needed for masters degrees and stuff like that.

Recently I have started to feel a bit more positive and have started going to a meditation class but still feel a bit hopelessly stuck tbh

 

[berniedicters]

OU do their own foundation degree in Counselling now -if you wanna become a quack.. I did some intro module for interest last year - very good.. then again you could just read the book.

Er, nah.

Counselling's a pretty "experiential" training - you really can't learn it out of a book. Though books do help. If I remember rightly, the OU do have some kind of arrangement whereby you get to do the face to face stuff, too, but I don't know how it works. Getting to accreditation status (even assuming the goalposts haven't moved by then, thanks HPC) is rather more than just the degree (or certificate+diploma, but it comes to the same 3 years). You'll need a clincal placement, which students sometimes find they have to pay their own supervision costs for, (probably) your own therapy, and the prospect of being gainfully unemployable for at least the first year post-qualification. After that, you're qualified and employable, but you need to accrue a total of 450 hours and jump through a few more hoops as well.

But doing counselling courses as a route to self-development...go for it: it's a very good idea, and lots of people do it and find it is very helpful in whatever field they're working in.

 

[Hollis]

Yes, I know.. it was an intro module.. you also have to have done a practical course before you can enrol on the foundation - and then its delivered in conjunction with CPCAB & local colleges.


Moar here..

http://www.cpcab.co.uk/

 

[AnnO'Neemus]

To an extent I really loved what I've been doing for the last ten years, but I developed RSI which just won't go away, so now I'm not earning enough to pay my way and need to find something else to do. Thing is for a bunch of other reasons I don't want to enter into anything that is too demanding mentally/emotionally/stress, and I don't want to work in an office environment because I hate that. That is why I went freelance in what I did (writing). So now I'm a little fucked, and am not sure what direction to go in. It's most annoying. Edit add: Also was reasonably successful in what i have been doing - not rich, but doing alright - so now my expectations are different and I find it hard to imagine myself starting at the bottom in something again. But I think I'm going to have to. **sighs**

Last resort, I know, but you could look into carpal tunnel release surgery.

Does it affect one wrist more than the other? Perhaps your mouse hand? Get a keyboard without a number pad so you're not stretching so far to reach the mouse. Or preferably get a hand held track ball mouse. And get a futura/futuro splint that has a bent angled metal insert that will keep your wrist at a more appropriate angle and help alleviate pressure on the nerves.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

At economic times like this, you read all these stories about jobless former city bankers becoming locksmiths and PR girls becoming dog groomers and advertising execs becoming teachers or whatever, and it makes me think about whether I'm fit for any other area other than what I'm in.

Scarily, it seems to me there's barely anything else I could do! (I'm an editor, by the way)

Couldn't deal with IT, legal, money, sales or medical, no way could I do anything practical, as I just don't have the patience and thoroughness. Might manage journalism, civil service, local government work, maybe marketing - at a push, I might be able to handle teaching. Reading about it at work, I find education management really interesting, but, understandably, you do generally have to have teaching experience behind you before you go into that. But at the mo, I really couldn't imagine having a change of career, so it's just as well I like what I do

I love the term 'in economic times like these'. If you listen to news radio, you're bound to hear it at least three times a day. It's a great cover phrase for whatever economic skullduggery people want to get away with: cutting wages, firing employees, etc.

I considered changing careers once already; then I did it. I went from the old work I did, to this new work, although I've been at the 'new' work for a number of years.

I did it in 'economic times like those'. I can't exactly remember what they were, though.

 

[AnnO'Neemus]

To an extent I really loved what I've been doing for the last ten years, but I developed RSI which just won't go away, so now I'm not earning enough to pay my way and need to find something else to do. Thing is for a bunch of other reasons I don't want to enter into anything that is too demanding mentally/emotionally/stress, and I don't want to work in an office environment because I hate that. That is why I went freelance in what I did (writing). So now I'm a little fucked, and am not sure what direction to go in. It's most annoying.

Edit add: Also was reasonably successful in what i have been doing - not rich, but doing alright - so now my expectations are different and I find it hard to imagine myself starting at the bottom in something again.

But I think I'm going to have to.
**sighs**

p.s.

Buy one of these:

http://www.roleepolee.com/products/roleepolee/

I had one of these when I had a buggered up wrist (well, I worked my way through two or three of them over the course of four or so years, when the little ball bearings and trackers gunked up). They are much easier on the wrist than a regular mouse.

And if you're right handed, get a keyboard without the numeric keypad something like this, in case you do use a regular mouse, so you don't have to reach so far:

http://www.amazon.com/A4-Keyboard-without-Numeric-Keypad/dp/B000F6UUXQ

And get a wrist splint, these have a metal plate that is angled and stops you bending your hand over too much and compressing the nerves.

http://www.futuro-usa.com/product_detail.aspx?id=12

 

[ChrisFilter]

My role changes on a near quarterly basis.