Career changing for salary - what would you do?

[Dogsandcats12345]

If you were in a position to build a new career and could afford to take a few years on a low salary or potentially one or two years studying, with your main long term career goals were stability and a good salary (earning potential of over £70k in 5 or so years in the south east), what would you do?

Background is in an artistic field which is based on temporary contract work, but with 2 young kids our family just needs something a bit more stable. Open to doing something completely different and just looking for ideas on avenues to explore

If you are interested in data analytics, customer insights, learning to mine data with SQL or other languages.. these skills are very sought after, especially if combined with training AI to do the leg work and the Insights Analyst to filter through and provide strategic actions and recommendations. Adding your creative background with designing infographics, dashboards and visual reports

I would look at management consultancy on the marketing/graphics/communications side. Loads of creative ppl coming from agencies.

This was me about 4 years ago - quit my job in the arts and retrained as a software developer. Now earning nearly double my old salary and absolutely LOVE my job and work life balance. Couldn't imagine going back! For the career transition I took a paid coding bootcamp programme (there are loads of options - I picked one that was part time in the evenings and weekends so I could keep working at my old job while I was studying). If you're interested in tech I would definitely recommend one of these courses rather than a computer science degree, as they're much more practical and designed to get you straight into work at the end.

My first job in the industry was an entry level job that included an initial paid training period - check the big tech consultancies for these kind of roles. I took a slight pay cut for that first job, but just a few months later I was able to match my old salary, then by changing jobs over the following years was able to climb the pay ladder quite quickly. So definitely achievable I would say!

Thanks this is all really helpful, will take a look into data analytics and management consultancy.

On management consultancy, would school and university grades need to be quite good? I always thought it was highly competitive.

Wow that sounds like a really great career change! Do you mind me asking which bootcamp you did and was that enough on its own to get you an entry level job?

How did you find the coding bootcamp? I have a bit of IT experience but I’ve never done anything like coding.

I’d like to do this too, but it’s so difficult to know what to do to even get started! Tech terrifies me so that’s a no go for me, I also don’t want to be sat at a desk all bloody day.

In an ideal world, I’d be a specialist midwife and then go on to teach or research, if I could afford to study (and if there were any available jobs)…..

The place I did my course actually doesn't exist any more, but Northcoders are excellent, and also check out Code First Girls. There's also loads of free material and tutorials online so you can have a go before you commit to a course and see if it's your thing or not - freeCodeCamp is a good one to start. It's possible to entirely teach yourself but for me the structured learning environment was what I needed. After the course I started a small side project to practise some of the new skills but nothing too crazy. Think it also helped that I managed to pick up more digital-focused responsibilities in my old job at the time (not coding but definitely helped show my commitment to the career change at interviews).
I would say though that the job market has changed quite a lot in the last few years. I think there are less software engineering roles now but maybe more in AI/machine learning/dev ops and other tech roles. Can also look at Product Management or Business Analyst paths within the tech industry.

IT in any role will likely earn you easily over that amount - specifically AI and Cyber Security