A thread for those of us who tried who have a career change but didn’t manage to

[123stay]

I’ve considered writing this post for a while, and was finally inspired to do so by the thread about not being happy with where you’ve ended up in life.

Please bear in mind this is mainly a mental health and personal support thread, NOT a job hunting advice thread. Please don’t give unsolicited advice or tell me to update my CV or go on LinkedIn etc. I’m not interested any more.

The point of this thread is that when we’re hear about people having career changes, or studying or retraining to get a new job etc, we only hear about the successful ones. But I’m convinced there’s lots of other people out there who tried but failed.

After years of employers asking why I didn’t have a degree, I went and studied later in life. I did very well at uni, but was unable to get a graduate job because most employers just aren’t set up to deal with mature graduates, unless you want to be a teacher. I applied for so many things, went to networking events etc, the ones with application forms were too rigid for my non-traditional situation, a lot of employers want people with masters degrees now, and so many other barriers.

We’re constantly told that we can change our lives through education. There is a huge amount of privilege involved in telling someone that if you don’t like your job, go and get another one instead. It’s not that easy.

I still do the same type of work as before, because it’s all I could get. I just wanted to know that I’m not alone.

It’s only large organisations that have funding for training schemes and apprenticeships

Not true. If an organisation is too small to be subject to the apprenticeship levy, the government will pay 95-100% of the cost of an apprenticeship for it.

Except that I wanted to work in a different industry, and the type of job I was interested in didn’t exist at my employer

Great. But a different industry AND different role is basically setting yourself the maximum possible difficulty challenge, and unless there is a clear vocational training route AND a demand for entry level people, that is going to be very very difficult to pull off in one move, and a more realistic path is probably going to involve multiple smaller moves towards that job and developing industry-relevant or industry-direct contacts and exposure.

@BeckyBloomwood3 speaks a lot of sense.

I work for a charitable sector that attracts, and recruits, a lot of career changers, as well as fresh young grads. Over half my team are career changers, including job sharing mums and grandma's and a 53 year old trainee.

Yes transferable skills are myth and nonsense. Anyone whose CV is going to get half a glance is expected to have "transferable skills", but they're not what gets you the job. You could be amazing at presentations but if you're not knowledge on the subject I need you to present about then so what? And older people don't necessarily have more transferable skills, just different. My youngest report needed coaching in confidence to speak up in meetings, but streamlined several processes with her digital knowledge and no-bullshit attitude. My oldest report can get an audience with, and talk to, anyone, but she lacks basic modern workplace skills and digital competence (she's had lots of extra training but she'll never keep up with the digital natives). Also people forget than you dont just accumulate skills, you can lose them if you're not putting them into to practice.

The 3 pieces of advice I always give career changers are:

1. Get some actually experience of the job (even just a weeks work experience) and speak to people who actually work in the industry and aren't either your friend or a careers advisor (they don't have specialist knowledge of most sectors and are being paid to encourage you!)
2. If you can, move sideways instead. It is so much easier to apply your specialism to a new area rather than start completely from scratch. You may still need to do some study or retraining, but our families and educations team is fully staffed with ex-teachers for example. I suppose this is "transferable skills" but specialist rather than generic ones.
3. BE REALISTIC. Ive been blown away by some of the sky high expectations of career changers. I.e. you can't assume being a mum means you'll be good at working with kids and young people. If the job involves physical outdoor work can you demonstrate you can keep up at this stage of life? And I don't care what you used to earn, need to earn, want to earn or spent on your degree - everyone gets paid for the job they're doing and progresses accordingly.

Ultimately, when I interview, it's the candidate who can best demonstrate that they can do the job that will get it.

Studied counselling and qualified at 56…private practice only generates a few clients each week (perfect as a part-time income but not enough money to rely on).

Secured a job with a charity where they recognised the qualification, however, the hourly rate is only £2 per hour above NMW (frustrating as it took FOUR YEARS of part-time study to qualify)

I have now been tempted by a job which is similar to one I did in the past - the hourly rate is £16 per hour meaning I will be TWO HUNDRED POUND PER WEEK better off! Nothing to do with counselling but counselling might be a “transferable skill”.

It’s making me question whether we go to work just for the money or whether we need to utilise those qualifications gained.

I think it's a shame the OP was very clear at the beginning of the thread that she wanted it to be about mental health support not job-bunting advice and some posters really haven't taken that on board. Hopefully it's with the best of intentions and the advice seems knowledgeable and perhaps helpful to some, but I'm not sure it's all relevant. I am happy in my career so no skin in the game but I completely agree we are missold the idea we can change career fairly easily. If you're stuck in teaching or social work, there certainly isn't a sideways apprenticeship move you can make with your employer funding. I imagine many people are stuck in a career they chose at 21 and, understandably, want a complete change not just a sideways move.

I remember very clearly at school being told over and over about transferable skills and people having multiple careers nowadays. In fact, I'm 40ish and can only think of one person I know who has changed the type of role she's doing and even that was within the same large organisation. I'd say things have worked out pretty well for me but I definitely would have put more thought into my graduate scheme at 21 knowing you essentially only get one shot, rather than applying for loads and doing the first one that accepted me.

No need for passive aggressive comments, @Bainbridgemews - I had already apologised for the slight derail and actually, my anxiety and MH has been awful over my career change so the little reassurance on here has helped me. Thanks everyone.

@123stay I apologise again and best of luck for your future career: really hope you find a solution. It’s not easy.

@Bainbridgemews

I agree with your vie s and I suppose the mental health support should be geared towards making the most of your current role/changing from within the organisation and possibly partial retirement.

yes we were all sold the dream of doing a job for 5 years and moving on with transferable skills but careers do not work like that. You step off one career and you are back into a competitive graduate job market where during early years there is the expectation that you do over and beyond in the first few years to establish yourself and complete professional qualificatiins. At certain points of your life e.g. with a young family this becomes impractical. One other thing, often aging means your cognitive ability declines slightly as well as overall physical health and in a demanding new role this could make a difference. You simply don't pick up things as quickly.

I retrained at the age of 40 as a solicitor. before that I was in the charity sector. I hated it. hated it. lasted 6 years including the training contract and took a massive pay drop (to my eyes) from round 40k to 17 k while training that rose to a princely £21k upon qualifying and finished on £23 k. It was a small high street firm and that was normal rates of pay. Our Directors were only on around £50k. I had retrained because I wanted to improve my income (hah!) and because I felt I was not properly trained in any job as I had largely progressed my career previously through good fortune.

I am taking some time out and trying to consider what next. I don't think the training itself was wasted as you can get some leverage out of being a solicitor, and I will probably apply to be a Magistrate.

And i agree with you about transferable skills being a bit of a buzzword, OP.

Thank you for starting this thread OP.

I've been trying to get out of teaching for 2 years but have only managed to become a supply TA. It's better than teaching in some ways but the oay us rubbish and at some schools I'm treated like utter shit. For example the employed TAs get a 15 minute break in the morning but the supply ones don't.

I've decided to focus on what's important to me and just see my job as a way of earning some money. It doesn't define me, it's not who I am.

I genuinely wasn't trying to be passive aggressive - I was trying to be supportive of the OP and giving my take on a thread that had rather changed direction and which I felt was very applicable to certain industries and rather irrelevant to others. I didn't see the apology for the derail, which I'm sorry for.

Also, I've gone back to see which poster you are and am pretty baffled why you think I was referring to you. I can see you're in a tricky situation yourself and are worried and have had some good advice. For what it's worth, I can't imagine you'll have any difficulty at all getting into social work, being in a closely related profession myself. I was responding to the posts about moves within big organisations and selling yourself as an investment to your company to train. I'm sorry if you thought it was about you, it absolutely wasn't.

@PinkShowerCurtain It’s okay. I can see why you’d be worried, but if it’s different with social work then hopefully you’ll be okay.

@Bainbridgemews Thanks for your comments. Actually I think the main thing I didn’t want was people saying stuff like “Have you asked for advice on your CV? Have you tailored your CV with each job application and have you made connections on LinkedIn? Did you use the STAR method at interviews?” etc when the main point is that I’m not interested any more. It would be like giving dating advice to someone who’s said they’re happy with being single now. So if anyone was going to make those sorts of comments, then don’t.

But yes, there’s a few comments that haven’t been overly helpful. I know which ones you mean. Hopefully the thread won’t go in that direction.

As for this:

I remember very clearly at school being told over and over about transferable skills and people having multiple careers nowadays. In fact, I'm 40ish and can only think of one person I know who has changed the type of role she's doing and even that was within the same large organisation.

Yes, exactly. There was a period of time when this whole idea was very heavily marketed at us, and also the idea of a “portfolio career”. It was the latest trendy thing to talk about. Maybe it still is, but we’re being sold a lie.

so agree with this.

@CrispsnDips Counselling is an interesting one. I actually go to counselling myself and even my own counsellor has told me she had to train for years and then do unpaid work, and have multiple jobs including private clients. At the same time, counselling is very much a career change thing and I don’t think many people do it straight out of uni. When I was looking for a counsellor I had hundreds to choose from. Do you think market is saturated?

Something I have noticed, and have a bit of a bee in my bonnet about (as someone who had a moderately successful but unfocussed career path in my 20s and then a bit of major career derailment in my mid 30s), is the lack of support in many large organisations for people who join via "non traditional routes".

So in my organisation apprentices and graduates have a defined career path and a lot of opportunity and support. In short they get good at "working the organisation" and have a lot more visibility with senior staff. A bright grad can become a director in ten to twelve years if they put their mind to it.

I have noticed we have people who join a grade or two above graduates or apprentices (usually from othe organisations or as later retrainers/career changers) and often their career progress is often slower and sometimes static. Now you could say it is because grads are the brightest and most motivated (and also as has been said often young people unecumbered by family responsibilities). But they also get a lot of support and often are blank canvases for the organisation to mould as they like.

I find myself doing it. I spend time worrying about whether the graduate assigned to my project has the right development opportunities and being supported (often because I have to report back to the central grad scheme on their development during the placement) whereas the young mother who joined on the next geade above if often expected to pitch in with the work that needs doing.

I’m a mental health nurse who retrained in my 30s from humanities academia. I’ve had no problems getting work-and my course had a 100% employment rate-but tbh, I think that might just be nursing! Many many people on my course were in their 30s and older and this was just expected. In terms of transferable skills, I think it’s less about “dealing with difficult people” and more “I’m trained to give injections so could work in the beauty industry instead”. The skills do have to be more specific, really, to be valuable.

Interesting thread, I’m always surprised by the narrative on here that it’s easier to get back into work after a long gap or to switch careers because I haven’t seen much of it in reality. I did change careers although had some transferable skills. However I only managed this because of financial support from DH & family support with young dc, it would have been impossible without that.

Thank you. I sometimes see posts like “I’m going back into the workplace after time away, and have got my first job after not working for fifteen years” and I always think really? How did you even get an interview?

+1000

Something I have noticed, and have a bit of a bee in my bonnet about (as someone who had a moderately successful but unfocussed career path in my 20s and then a bit of major career derailment in my mid 30s), is the lack of support in many large organisations for people who join via "non traditional routes".

Yes. YES. And going back to what people were saying earlier about universities and how they market themselves, many universities do have help and support available for non-traditional students, especially the ones where there’s lots of local students from disadvantaged backgrounds etc. And then for some reason we all assumed that this would translate into the world of work. Well duh, universities aren’t real life, of course, but none of this is really apparent when we’re start our courses. I feel I’ve learned a big life lesson from all this.

I've been in my current role 17 years. I don't have a degree. I worked my way up and now have a respectable job as a manager. I've applied for a few roles in a career change and despite having a good knowledge of thr subject, researching roles and what's expecting and demonstrating transferable skills I keep being told I have no experience and not getting interviews. Despite showing I can commit to additional learning. I also have a volunteer role in the sector of jobs I'm looking at and still this hasn't enabled me to get an interview

@123stay totally agree that the whole transferable skills thing is a load of old bollocks and mostly a platitude from people who have no knowledge or experience in career change. And I say this as someone who has had what would probably be described as a successful career change.
I was highly skilled and qualified in my old role, efficient, organised, excellent at time management, experienced in working in a pressurised environment, great at negotiation and working with conflict etc etc etc.
But when it came to looking for other roles it didn’t really matter because everyone else who was applying for the job would have said they were those things too plus they had actual experience in the sector/industry/role.
Why would the employer give me the job with no experience over those who have?
It’s only now that I’m actually in the job that the skills are useful and enable me to progress faster than some of my peers.

I don't even want to talk about my career derail because it's too painful. Caused by circumstances beyond my control. And I have two degrees, plus a number of transferable skills ( but ones that employers ignore).

Thank you for posting this thread. There’s a lot of glib ‘just retrain’ type advice but it can take masses of energy and there are no guarantees. Instead I quit a corporate job and started my own business. This has worked out but still was masses of hard work and risk.

@123stay yes, I think the supply and demand balance is not right, especially in my area. There seems to be more clients and less counsellors in some big cities but in a small market town it seems as though I have to market myself extra hard and possibly still not get enough clients.

on a different note, a friend was made redundant from a Marketing Manager role at 55. She applied for similar jobs on a similar salary but was competing against much younger applicants who had Degrees which she didn’t. Eventually, after almost a year she had to settle for something which was half her previous salary.

sorry, I know it’s moving away from the original post but I just wanted to go along with the idea that it is a tough world out there, not always easy to find what you want or what you deserve. There must be a whole section of society who are having to accept second best as a career.