How do I earn more?! Am I missing something?

[upandmummin]

I see it on threads a lot where posters will say "I would be aggressively looking to increase my income in that situation" "Can you look a higher paid job?" And I just think what am I doing wrong.

I don't know how to?! I have two small kids, I earn £23k doing admin. I haven't got qualifications past GCSE. I can't find local admin jobs that pay more than this.

What are these jobs that you can retrain to do and easily earn more? I don't really know how I'd afford or manage uni with two small kids. I just feel like I'm missing something but my salary just is not sustainable

Study a qualification that will allow you to get a better job. That's what I did.

Look into recruitment especially IT

its commission based and when market is good, lots of jobs around where you get training

good luck

You need a qualification. It will significantly increase your potential salary.

Look at what those the next step up are doing at work, and see if there is anything there that looks appealing. Then look at their qualifications and the paths they have taken to get there. It is hard studying part time alongside children, but it is possible, for example.

What sort of thing are you interested in? If you can work that out, then look at better paying jobs and see what experience they require, then that would help.

What sort of admin are you currently doing? Is there any natural progression, if you had a qualification?
That way you can use the experience you have.
You could look at project management, bookkeeping, other accounting etc.

It depends where you live, smallish towns with no city nearby will be tricky to get higher salaries with or without qualifications unless it’s a medical degree or another specialist area. Can you get a side hustle instead?

My advice. Would be to try to get into a science or technology company.

Once there you could change to a science stream and study/train whilst working.

The focus should be on the employer and what they offer long term.

I agree with looking at what others the level above you at work are doing, and how they got there.

For example I used to be an admin assistant, then found an Office Manager job, then moved to Executive PA level which was as high as I could go at that company so I moved to a different company, also as a PA but earning more. Then I studied for HR qualifications (part time, alongside having children so in the evenings) it was a slog but meant I got my foot in the door in an HR job. I had to take a pay cut to go back to HR Administrator level but have worked my way up again from there.

Your current employer won't just keep increasing your salary so unfortunately it is the case that often you have to move around to see the best salary progression (or be in a larger company where you can take internal promotions.)

You could try NHS or Civil Service where you might have the opportunity to be promoted to a higher band based on experience.

There's nothing that will help you "easily earn more" but if you want to increase your earning potential you have to start somewhere, even if that's right at the bottom.

Who is your boss? What would you need to do to get their job?

In your case, I'd look to earn a trade/go self-employed in something skilled. Not that I am suggesting you be a chimney sweep, but dh and I were just booking in our chimneys to be swept and got to thinking how much a chimney sweep must earn. Ours is self-employed, so obviously has her own expenses to pay, equipment, fuel, insurance, etc., but £60 for a job that takes her an hour, maybe 1.5 hours including travel time between jobs. She can do probably 5-6 a day. That's £300-360 a day before her own costs.

Dh is self-employed doing a trade with several employees working for him. He was making £18K in a graduate office job 10 years ago. He quit and re-trained and he now makes over £100K a year. Obviously, to run a business beyond just being self-employed, you will need business skills and have the drive for it, but it's possible.

I don't there's any 'easy' way, but try and speak to others who are in roles you would be interested in, and discuss their pathway to get there. This could help you identify what training/courses you could do, or what experience/skills you need to gain. it doesn't have to be university. Depends where you live, but working for a bigger company there's likely to be more opportunities to do secondments, short term cover etc, which is how I worked my way up.

With respect, there are no jobs where you can "easily" earn more with very little qualifications. Even higher education degrees are no longer a guarantee of finding significantly better paid work. IT, coding, artificial intelligence are areas with lots of demand at the moment. There are free coding courses offered by Google and various other organisations. Crypto was huge a few years ago and there is still demand for people with blockchain knowledge. Many people in crypto and AI are self taught because of how fast the industries rose. You just need to consume all the information you can find online (often very good), and then find a way to offer your knowledge as a profitable service to a company.

You can play a wild card and try starting your own business. Selling something online, making something, etc. I know someone who became very successful selling customised baby gifts and clothing. Or you can try social media which doesn't require any qualifications either. There is a market now called "User Generated Content" (UGC) where companies pay for social media content where you don't necessarily even have to show your face.

Please don't go into any MLMs or fall for scams where someone promises you great earning potential for little effort working from home. That simply doesn't exist.

You need a qualification - not to be harsh, but this is why people study after GCSEs and go on to do A levels, diplomas, degrees etc. They’re not making it up when they say this will open doors for you.

Can you look at part time study? Or find a career where you will get more training on the job? For example I have a friend who started working in a pharmacy with no qualifications, she did a couple of diplomas alongside her work then moved to work in an NHS pharmacy where she gets paid a decent salary. If you look for a new job you need to ask about training opportunities.

Look at job descriptions for roles in the 28k area.

Look out for qualifications and experience they want.

You can ask your employer to provide both, but they're more likely to say yes to the experience point.

Think very creatively about whether you've done any of those things - you don't need to lie, but you are almost certainly able to come up with some rationale for your experience being relevant. Women always undersell themselves and are too literal about what a job spec is asking for.

Don't worry about getting multiple qualifications. Get one, and tell recruiters (truthfully) that you decided to follow up X with y because you thought it would be useful for z. Because you're passionate about taking your career in ABC industries further. I use this line a lot and recruiters love it. Check out the free government L3 courses.

And get help. My husband applies for jobs in the six figure range, but I'm the one who vets his applications and helps him see all this stuff, because I've done recruitment, and I'm just better at teasing out examples and making sure his answers are relevant and impressive.

I was also going to suggest this. DP earns about £40k pa driving machines on building sites, usually telehandlers but he can also drive a few others. Each ticket is a two/three day course and he has to do a one day recert every five years.

It's all contracting through agencies but he's never out of work and gets loads of offers from the agencies.

NHS/Civil Service admin is probably a non starter as it's likely the same or less than the OP earns now unless she can push for promotions that might not exist and she'll be competing against graduates for.

I'd also recommend qualifications. I'm 4 years into an economics degree with the OU and have gone from earning £25 to £36k in that time.

Before then I only had GCSEs and didn't get a look in for better jobs.

You don't necessarily need more qualifications, I earn 40K and just have GCSE's. I used to earn more but I took a pay cut to change career. I am working as a Business Analyst for a bank, it's 100% WFH role, they want people with different skills to bring to the role rather than formal qualifications. I want to be a project manager and this was a way in. My DH earns over 60K and only has GCSE's also.

A natural step from general admin could be into project administrator / officer / co-ordinator. lots of employers would then pay for you to do PRINCE2 or AMP MSP / Agile etc then you step into being a project manger, once you have those skills there are a number of pathways that are more lucrative - product owner / manager, business change specialist / business analyst / strategic analyst / process analyst or if in tech a whole heap of different paths etc.

Or as another poster said, an executive assistant type role, which can lead to lots of options, depending on where your interests lie - governance / audit / HR etc

for both of these options i would suggest that the type of company is really important, you want one that supports learning and development.

I went back to uni whilst working for a professional postgrad (I had kids young), and spent the first 2 years of my son's life commuting 3 hours a day reading my course material on the train. It was exhausting and I didn't break even for a while in childcare costs, but best thing I ever did for my career (and enabled much better lifestyle and work/life balance in the long term for the kids), opened so many doors. The rest of my progression has managed to happen in work time at work's expense (additional qualifications, promotions etc), but means staying very engaged, I haven't coasted, regular job changes etc.

I feel I should caveat this with the fact we had cheap accommodation at the time (which offset the expensive commute and some of the childcare) and DH had a small inheritance (less than £5k) which he kindly used to pay off the postgrad fees. I appreciate going back to study isn't always feasible for lots of reasons.

This has been hard for me to accept since in career as in relationships I seem to have been a serial monogamist, but if you are a midlevel worker like I am, the best thing to do to earn more money is to change employers. Take your skills and experience elsewheere - you are almost always hired on at more money and its the easiest way to earn more and far more effective than staying loyally in place and accepting the minimum annual increase.

For me, qualifications aren't just about the certificate - they're about be able to demonstrate focus, commitment and ambition.

The last two I got, one was box ticking something I'd been doing for years, another was extending my knowledge in an area that was tangentially and occasionally useful to my main career.

Both would be especially useful to someone who's a bit unsure of how to promote themselves. It can be a helpful way to learn how to structure talking about your work, even if you don't actually need the piece of paper itself.

If you can get a job in the public sector you can often progress up the career ladder without a degree. Look at the civil service or local government admin jobs and get in that way.