Please help me find a new career?!

[UpUpAwayz]

Name change as I will give a few details of my situation.

I am 40 with young DC. I have a PhD in a social sciences field and managed to get very lucky and get a lectureship which I have held for around 10 years. I have worked my way up to the role of programme leader so my full time wage is decent, just under 60k although I currently work 4 days. It can be a stressful job at times but generally I have quite a lot of flexibility and we live close to my work so I can do several school drop offs and pick ups and I also share these with my DH and I can also WFH around half the time. Overall it’s a pretty good deal other than the occasional deluge of marking. I do have concerns about job security but at the moment my institution isn’t making any redundancies touch wood.

However DH and I have spoken for a while about moving to a different area that we have family connections to and we think would be good for the DC to grow up. However there aren’t many universities locally and suitable roles come up very rarely as no-one is really hiring at the moment. My DH also has quite a niche job which he loves and wants to continue in, so the chances of us both finding suitable roles in that area at the same time are slim. Despite the perks of my job I wouldn’t say that I love it and I don’t think I can imagine doing it for another 30 years. The area we want to move to is slightly cheaper and we could probably afford for me to take a bit of a pay cut if it meant I could have a job that was more mobile as such. I would also like to be able to spend more time with the DC and am even considering home educating our autistic DS who we think would benefit from it, if I had the right job. However I don’t really know where to start with looking for new roles and thinking of the sorts of things I could apply for. I have always been in education, firstly as a student, then as a researcher and then a lecturer. Other than PT student jobs 20 years ago I don’t really have any experience of any other sector and I’ve never worked in a corporate environment. I also haven’t really worked on big scale projects or with massive datasets etc so don’t think I’d be competitive for research management type jobs. Although we could afford for me to take a pay cut if we moved I don’t think we could afford for me to completely retrain/do another degree.

I had thought of A-level/university tutoring in my subject but there’s a fair bit of competition, no pension or sick pay and students typically want slots between 4-8pm ish which isn’t particularly compatible with young kids. I would say my main strengths are in organisation and being able to coordinate and manage tasks (hence my role of PL) but I don’t have any line management experience. I suppose I’m also good at public speaking!

Any ideas or suggestions gratefully received!

The jobs market is tough right now. You don’t have much transferrable experience (no line management, no project management or data analysis) and you’re over qualified for entry level roles. Basically, you’re not likely to walk into another £50-60k role.

I’d stick it out for another year where you are and try to bolster your CV through some extra-curricular study or such-like.

Just to clarify, I’m pretty good at project management and can do much more complex data analysis than your average Joe. I have postgrad training in statistics. So I think I do have those transferable skills. But I wouldn’t be competitive applying for “project manager” or “research manager” roles because I don’t have formal qualifications in project management and I don’t have sufficient big data analysis skills to be able to walk into a lot of data analysis/data manager type roles either.

Bumping for morning people 😬

Could you look at the Open University for roles, or would the summer hols programmes be too much?

Very difficult to advise as social science is a rather large subject!

What skills do you have exactly? What are you good at? What do you get complimented on? What do you enjoy doing?

Perhaps! I could also look into online tutoring but I think a lot of contracts are temporary/precarious. A permanent lectureship is so hard to get in my field, so it seems mad to give it up… but we want to move

What area of social sciences and what kind of location are you thinking of moving to? Depending on your discipline you could look at policy work either in charities or think tank type organisations which employ policy and public affairs roles that need research experience and the ability to write well.

SEO level policy role in the civil service. Spend a year or so learning the ropes of working in Government then promote to G7 and you’ll be back on the same salary

Yes it is but I was trying not to be too outing 😂 i think my main strengths are:

• can research a subject in-depth and write about it in various formats for different audiences (professional, lay, students etc) including new topics with little specialist knowledge. I’ve also got a specialist subject and wrote an 80k word thesis which, whilst of minimal interest to 99.9% of the population, developed my writing skills as well as critical thinking and analysis
• logical thinker, approach things systematically
• good communicator, confident public speaker, good at presenting, explaining complex ideas in simpler terms
• i work a lot with students in a semi-pastoral capacity so I have become quite good at that, I’m a good listener but I also have to keep pretty strong professional boundaries
• knowledge of stats and data analysis as previously mentioned
• I work well with a team, am a quick and efficient problem solver, pragmatic
• I have chaired numerous committees and working groups so I think I’m good at leading a team that can deliver results.
• I have done a lot of QA work to do with professional standards and frameworks so have some policy-type experience and skills.
• I have led on curriculum reviews and programme development so I’m used to working with lots of different colleagues and doing stakeholder engagement and delivering these projects to a timeline (in academia this stuff often isn’t spoken of in these terms because we’re not formally trained in project management but it’s effectively what we do)

I enjoy being able to strategise, come up with evidence-based solutions, and work quickly and effectively. I get bored quite easily and don’t enjoy a project if it drags on for too long or if there’s not enough to do. I enjoy writing as well.

I thrive on novelty and am great in a crisis so had previously thought about working in healthcare but everything I’ve looked at would require a lot of retraining as I don’t even have science A-levels. However I can be quite an anxious person so something like the police wouldn’t appeal to me at all. I’m quite risk-averse and a bit of a worrier (another reason why healthcare might not be great!).

Having read what I’ve written above back to myself, I’m wondering if I should be looking at law?!

It sounds that some kind of project management role might be the easiest for you.
You might want to go through some course/certificate and looks for the right opportunity, ideally project touching some of your topics

The civil service is shedding 10,000 jobs.

Most charities are shedding staff at the moment. :-/

Yeah I did think this 😬

I wouldn’t go for law based on how many unhappy legal beagles there are on here. Just search on some threads. It will also take time and money to retrain which it sounds like you are trying to avoid.

If you suffer with anxiety then don’t go the project management route. Dealing with your own projects and other stakeholders is one thing but managing large £££ projects across large teams with multiple stakeholders is something else. Project managers take the brunt when projects start heading south and you need to be incredibly resilient to deal with the fall out and keep a team (who aren’t necessarily always on your side) on track.

Are there any government agencies where you are moving to? Something in compliance or policy? Company secretarial? Operations or HR?

You can work in healthcare without being clinical.

Most companies are shedding staff. You only need one job!

Frankly, it sounds like neither of you would be likely to walk into new jobs, if your husband’s is also niche. Can you actually afford to both be job-hunting at the same time? Before you could move, I think at least one of you has to be in secure employment. Or is his portable?

Since you are considering home schooling, could you set up and run a forest school?