Career change advice

[Aoap78]

Hi,

I was hoping anyone in similar fields or who knew anyone in them could advise.

My background is in biological sciences, then switched to doing very sporadic care type work for a while for personal reasons, and now basically wondering what the next step is. Mid 30s.

Really don’t want to go back to the first field or any adjacent one if I can avoid that, I have looked into that bit quite a lot.
I looked on ChatGPT (I know…) for fields that could work if you like interacting with people, like creative work (but definitely not risking any creative industry for the obvious money instability aspects), have the possibility to do a part time online MSc.

It suggested tech adjacent fields, but as it’s unreliable as anything, I thought I’d try asking here. As this message is long enough already, let me know maybe if any questions / important information I’ve missed ?

TIA :)

You’ve said you don’t want to do creative or tech because they’re unreliable. Very few industries are stable at the minute. So you might need to get comfortable with instability.

You enjoy working with people. So that’s a starting point. What are your transferable skills from your care work and your degree? Would you be prepared to use your background as a stepping stone to something else? For example, try to make a move to medical/science junior communications, you could then make a move to communications outside of the medical and science field.

The job market is touch at the minute so I think working in adjacent fields, finding out what you like and what you don’t like might be good. If you’re really set against it, look for jobs on a big job site, read some of the descriptions. If you see some that sound interesting, research what skills you need, what training you need and start working backwards.

Thanks for your reply. By not creative I meant not doing the MSc in creative writing (I have a small budget for an online part time while working retraining attempt, I can’t imagine spending it that way though…).

Otherwise yes everything is tough atm.

Would be open to communications type ones yes, sorry I think my initial post was badly worded, as far as possible from direct sciences though (and it has been so long I’m not confident in the knowledge base too.. so I’d be hugely under competitive).

Main criteria are still security + income, I can do any job while I figure it all out though, that’s not an issue. Just wondering if I can actually make the switch happen.

Edit : I just figured out what you meant - unreliable referred to chat gpt not tech sorry

For tech I was looking at human computer interactions.

I don’t know anything about tech but have you considered training to become a social worker as you have care work experience? Or in an allied health profession such as Radiography?

You might want to browse the Mature Study and Retraining board, @Aoap78:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/mature_students

Careers Wales have an interactive quiz.

I did it for fun and it came up with loads of interesting suggestions. So I got my friends to do it and they had equally interesting job matches, which were different and did seem really suitable.

Not sure how much your salary expectations are, but maybe you could consider something like art therapy with your previous experience.