Career advice much appreciated!

[SevenDaysinSunnyJune]

Hi everyone,

I am looking for some career advice and hoping someone can help me.

I am 30 years old and really looking to progress my career.

I was always very clever at school, all A's and A*s at GCSE, apart from 2 B's in subjects I was dropping! And then 2 A's and a B at A-level, an A level paper with full marks etc.

I was always very good at Maths and science and my teachers wanted me to do it at A-level but I decided not to.

I didn't know what to do at university and I admit I was most interested in going out etc....I chose a party University and a subject that required me not to attend class more than 8 hours a week ( Public Relations) - nothing wrong with that degree I might add, plenty of people on the course who were great at it, but it was a more creative type course and I'm not creative.

HOWEVER - unfortunately I developed a debilitating illness age 21 (chronic UTI, very severely ) and would not have been able to cope with a demanding course that requires 9-5 attendance etc.

I was able to finish my degree without having to go into university and my lecturers were wonderfully supportive of this and I only had to go in to do exams. I achieved a high 2:1.

I now work for a US company fully remotely which is necessary due to my illness and the severity. The company have been wonderful about this.

However, it is essentially an admin type role and I know academically I am capable of a lot more. It makes me feel a little bit sad!

I would really like to do further study and gain another qualification and enter a field that is well paid and that I can use my brain in....I see my peers on LinkedIn who didn't achieve high grades at school who are in quite academic/brainy type roles earning much more than me! I don't mean that as an insult, I just mean, that I'm more than capable of that also!

The role I am currently in wouldn't even require any formal qualifications to perform. I don't mean that in a bad way, as everyone has their strengths, but I am very clever and it seems like such a waste :(

So essentially I am looking to retrain in something that is a career not just a job, but would allow me to work fully remotely due to my illness!

I did a BUPA assessment with my current employer and they said that I should work from home permanently.

Does anyone have an idea of well paid/high-paying roles that are remote and the degree/masters I would have to undertake to get there?

I was considering software development, but I don't like computers, however I heard the likes of programming (SQL/tableau) is not just computer work!, it's about writing a language etc.

I was also considering the likes of data analytics etc, but I just don't know where to begin!

Due to my illness I will not be having a family so wouldn't have to take a break to raise a family etc!

So I want to put my focus into something as I won't be having a family, so putting it into my personal development and building a career would be good!

If anyone could offer any advice I would really appreciate it!

I am UK based but not mainland UK.

Thanks in advance and sorry for the long post!!

I wouldn't recommend law - it's a very crowded, competitive field and if you didn't get a training contract you would be stuck. It also tends to be very intense, long hours in corporate law and I would think your need to WFH 100% of the time will preclude you from being client facing meaning the areas you could work in would be limited.

What about training in statistics. Good statisticians are in demand from university departments and places like the ONS.

I wouldn't know about pay or courses to get there though. I imagine if you are good enough you could probably do well.

I work in Technology and the working at home works for only some niche roles and usually for experienced people. Technology can be surprisingly collaborative and agile. Hybrid is definitely becoming more the normal so it’s not a bad bet for WFH over a career.

I work in fintech.

Business analysis and data reporting are skills that are always in very high demand - you can learn and study remotely and many roles (particularly in consultancy) are also fully remote.

You could also progress to programme / product management if you find that 'pure' BA isn't for you.

@Savoury - what about the likes of software development though? I see so many fully remote roles for it?

@AffIt - yes that is also something I'm interested in! But I keep seeing lay offs in fintech, rescinded offers etc...is the industry doing well in general?

Tech is an obvious one for remote work. Not all tech is coding. Coding and non coding roles don’t necessarily require a software degree. But tech is a broad area. What is it about computers you don’t like?
Do you like getting stuck into a technical problem? Do you like talking to people about what they need from a project and what the options are?

do some free or low cost online courses (edx, udemy, other free resources) to figure out what you like. Data visualization, data analysis, machine learning methods, web dev, cybersecurity, managing computer systems (systems administrator), software testing. Read up about what project management and business analysis involves and see if those are options. Look on jobs websites to see what is required (in some cases remote work may only be offered if you are at a certain level or may be more/less common depending on what the job market is doing - have a look to know where you stand before committing to a more expensive/longer course)

Have you thought of having some tests done by an organisation like Career analysts? Might throw up some other ideas.

Software development is the area of technology most suited to remote work but even then, there can be meets, peer programming, etc. It would be ideal if the team is fully remote rather than some hybrid and some at home. But it’s rare that junior people can just start coding without any input right after university without on-the-job training and design/code reviews etc. In a fully remote dev team, they can make that work.

@SevenDaysinSunnyJune my firm has just recorded its best year on record and we are actually struggling to recruit talent ATM - it's very much an employee's market, at all levels.

I'd be interested to see where you're seeing this news, because it's certainly not my experience nor that of my industry colleagues and peers.

@newtb - thank you for your post! I have never heard of that before, does it show you what career you should be in? I will give it a look.

@NOTANUM - yea I'm hoping a fully remote team would be an option. That's what I'm worried about, doing a degree in something and then the role not being remote!!

@AffIt - there have been stories in the news 'fintech startups lead the layoff wave'

Business insider - 'see fintech's cutting jobs as the tech bubble bursts' - coin base lay offs etc!

@SevenDaysinSunnyJuneI think you must be talking about the cryptobubble bursting - that's not fintech per se.

Fintech as an industry is system development / implementation / reporting for financial services, such as real assets and private equity.

@AffIt - yes you are right! I am thinking more of crypto...I think I need a better understanding of what fintech entails....what qualifications did you do to work in it? And do you work from home if you don't mind me asking?

@SevenDaysinSunnyJune I work in consultancy in fintech systems selection, implementation and design, which in practice means working with clients to identify issues they have in their financial activities (such as data management or reporting), then identifying and configuring suitable systems to address their requirements.

I had a background in statistics, analytics and IT service desk / database management before I joined, and I also completed my business analyst training through BCS certification fairly early on, but the vast majority of my skills I have learned on the job, to be honest: for example, I taught myself Python and R and how to use various data visualisation platforms.

There is probably a skew in the industry towards finance-related qualifications such as accountancy / economics etc (particularly for the modellers), but it's not set in stone - I also have many colleagues from engineering / computer and data science backgrounds, for example. Others (particularly on the BD side) come from tech sales and so on, and project managers come from everywhere, because PM methodologies such as PRINCE2 / Agile etc are basically always transferable. Also former lawyers / legal graduates - they are temperamentally-detail-orientated!

Because requirements-gathering is so fundamental, business analysts are ALWAYS in demand, no matter their background - we've just taken somebody on board who previously worked for the police!

Essentially, it suits people with a process-driven, logical mindset, who are good at problem-solving and pattern recognition. If you want to work on the client side, it's also important to have good 'soft' skills, such as stakeholder management, negotiation etc.

I work mostly from home now, but I am at director level and have 15 years of experience in the industry, from analyst up, and I do a lot of collaborative working - I spend about a week a quarter in one of our offices (London or New York), and I also travel to clients on occasion.

Most of our junior consultants / analysts practice a hybrid model, which works out to about two days a week in the office per fortnight, although this may vary across firms - my company feels it's important that younger employees have 'facetime' with their peers and seniors, to help them develop professionally and build their internal networks. A lot of our juniors are either new or very recent graduates and need that support - lockdown showed us that fully remote working doesn't really work for that cohort.

PS - the reason I mention our hybrid model for juniors is to help manage your expectations: obviously, what I've described is only the case for our firm and others may differ, but I think you should realistically expect at least a modicum of 'in-house' working for at least the first year or two in any industry to which you will be net new.

I work in tech, I'm in marketing. It's a great industry but really competitive. The data scientists/analysts I know did maths degrees and have worked their way up. You won't be able to just walk into a high paid job. Learning to code at a decent level takes years.

DH is a tech recruiter for a very big company, you can only wfh when you have been there for at least a year.