AIBU - a complete career change???

[Ipsofacto1]

I have a PhD in Economics, Masters in Economics and Bachelor of Business Studies. I have a good job working for the government in an analytics role. And I know this sounds ridiculous but honestly I am no good at my job as I’m terrible at maths! Even though my role is all with numbers.

I’m really good at doing exams and studying and learning things off so that was fine for uni and in my PHD my supervisor helped me a lot and my DH is also in the same field and he helped me and continues to help me when I get stuck which is often. I find it so stressful as half the time I barely know what I’m doing - on Google copying formulas and code, hoping it’s not totally wrong.

The thing is I don’t know what else I could do! With my background to move away from numbers altogether....

Anyone have any ideas and WIBU to try make a total change after all the years I put into my education... it’s a nightmare.

What about a job as a researcher at a think tank? You’d do well at one that may have an economics angle but isn’t the sole focus, eg SMF or ippr. With a PhD you’d stand a good chance.

Or maybe a researcher for one of the many uni policy institutes now springing up.

There is a good organisation called career shifters, I would start with them

Everyone Google’s bits of code - even geniuses, promise! I sense Imposter syndrome.... it is normal to feel like that

When you say you work for the government, are you civil service? If so you could look at a level transfer into a role with a different focus??

How about a field related to your role with less maths. For example maybe marketing? bit of data crunching but nothing major. Or project/programme management - some numbers for costing but again nothing complicated. I think you stand a great chance of successfully transitioning.

Thanks all, there are some good ideas here. I haven’t heard of that organisation @partyatthepalace I will check them out.

Yes I work for the civil service so I could move across to another role - I just don’t want to move to another data one and don’t think id get any non data related!

I’m glad no one has said I’m totally mad to consider it!!! My family still can’t understand how I ended up working with data and numbers - I’ve always struggled with it.

I work in data dont have great maths skills and always google code lol! Think about what your tranferable skills are, so if you are great at gathering requirments look at a business analyst role, if you have good stakeholder management and planning skills look at project management etc. Data and insights skilks sit well within change management so I would imagine you would find something not so maths intensive to transfer into that still makes good use of your skills

Take a look at some job adverts, see what appeals to you, what transferrable skills you have and what you might need to do some training on

Or if you are good at people management i know quite a few technical teams managed by only semi technical people because a lot of tech people hate people management so with your experience you should be able to go down the people management side quite easily

You must have plenty of transferable skills. Have a look at the jobs board (in my department there is an intranet page with internal vacancies that you can filter by grade/location). See what's there and what competencies/ behaviours etc they are looking for. If you are short of examples to demonstrate particular behaviours then your manager should be able to help you get opportunities to pick them up. The civil service is so huge and so diverse I am convinced you could move jobs without retraining. Of course if you want to retrain then you should! If there's something you fancy doing.

Maybe look at local government roles. Eg, forward planning, environmental, local think tank, research.

Good luck OP. You've got great skills and just need to find something that sits better.