To retrain as a driving instructor?

[confusedlady10]

Would I be stupid or unreasonable to consider quitting my job and re-train in a new field as a driving instructor? I am a 29 year old single mum WFH in a dead end call centre job. It’s quite niche as it involves investigating specialist fraud cases but is still mainly a customer service job. The pay isn’t that great (£2k pm after tax living in London) and I’m fortunate to be able to live in cheap accommodation through family, but it’s not sustainable.

I’ve had applied for hundreds of jobs to try in earn more money and elevate, even paid someone to re-write my CV and do an extra qualification in my field within finance. But I don’t have a degree and regardless, I’m struggling to stand out. Hundreds of applicants, countless ghosting's and unfortunatelys after an odd interview. Finance, admin and banking sectors seem to be too saturated whether remote, hybrid or office.

So I was thinking to quit my job, and hopefully retrain as a driving instructor as I heard that there’s good money and I can be more flexible with having a child and could hopefully work for myself or another company. I would hopefully be able to work it around my son and less competition for the jobs I am not getting. I've been driving now for 8 years. Am I wasting my time and dreaming?

I have asked about looking into a trade job on here, and may look at an electrician or trade course next Sep at college but many of the courses without waiting until Sep are quite expensive, so I was hoping to look into somewhere like AA for driving with a payment plan? (I have no experience in this and trying anything to earn more at the moment, whilst still applying for jobs like crazy, pls be nice!) 😣

I really don’t think you should quit your job.

I would imagine being a driving instructor would involve a lot of upfront costs, can you afford all that?

Then you would have to find enough customers to make enough to cover sickness, holidays, pension and tax.

If you want extra cash, could you do something in your current spare time, with a small amount of outlay e.g painting and decorating or small DIY jobs. Or cleaning?

Could you progress in your current area of work as a team manager? I work in finance and we have plenty of people in management roles who don’t have degrees. High street banks usually have internal training opportunities, are there really no progression opportunities in your current work place?

Hi op if you are working in fraud I would look at being a specialised claim handler for the big insurers and once you've got your foot in the door you can move upwards internally - most of the managers I know started in calls centers rather than through the grad schemes. It's mostly hybrid although you can push for wfh and loads of people do flexi time to fit around the school run.

While you can make money from being a driving instructor there's no pay increase, benefits or pensions. I think being self employed can be incredibly lucrative but it's often at a cost off your work life balance - almost always initially and often permanently. If you are looking for an easier life with uplifts and work life balance based on experience rather than qualifications I'd look to large companies.

However being honest you'd need to work full time doing during the core hours for your first couple years of achieving above your targets, promotion before then renegotiating your contract if starting from the bottom. Rightly or wrongly started as pt or even flexi time puts you at disadvantage before you've proved your worth so to speak as they tend to be quite old school. But you'd be looking at 50k plus benefits and pension options with flexible working at home at once at technical manager level

You wouldn't be able to pick and choose when they use your car as easily as you may think. With the waiting times for tests being as they are if a pupil manages to get a test you would need a pretty good reason to deny them the use of your car such as holidays or them not being test ready. These are just things to consider maybe speak to other ADIs and PDIs

My DD dad (ex) is a driving instructor he does it around his full time tram drivers job. He did do it full time but by time he paid the car hire etc he had to put in a lot of hours. He’s since went independent and has his own dual controlled car and works part time he’s better off doing it that way. No fees to a company and has a steady client base. Xxxx

I am an ADI - it can be good and there is plenty of demand at the moment, but it's not all roses (what job is I guess). So here is the bad news up front...

The money may well not be as good as you think. I teach typically something like 120 hours a month (and once you take into account driving between lessons and admin etc., that is easily the equivalent of a 37 hour week + commute. In return you can probably expect something like 2-2.5k after tax depending on hourly rate, how you fund your vehicle and whether you use some kind of franchise to get customers. On the plus side, your vehicle is a business expense, so you can mentally add an amount to the figures above for whatever you think you might normally spend on a car - £200, 300, 400 a month (however you fund and maintain it)?

You also get no sick pay, holiday pay or pension for that. Take a week or two off here and there and that number goes down. Time off sick? No pay. Car breaks, no pay. Or worse you may have to pay out to hire a temporary spare, possibly pay to rebook someone's driving test you had to cancel etc. Someone goes into the back of you at a roundabout (trust me - it will probably happen) - hassle and money even though not your fault.

It is an industry with a very high turnover rate for a reason - it just doesn't provide the lifestyle that many think it will.

That said it does over flexibility, it is fun (sometimes), frustrating at others. It suits me mainly because I am too old and too lazy to think about doing something else at the moment, and because I'm lucky enough to have very low living costs so the income is still very decent for me.

I was an ADI for 32 years. Retired 18.months ago. 13 years in a medium sized seaside town and the rest in a medium sized City in the West Midlands. Did I love the job? Yes, I did and got great job satisfaction.
Was it as flexible as I wanted it to be? No, not easy to attain preferred flexibility if you are a sole parent and needing to earn enough to pay the mortgage, bills etc. Unless you have willing family close by. Good job though if you're not the main breadwinner/ sole parent.
You have to work a LOT of hours to make a reasonable wage. You have to work out if you're making enough to make it worthwhile. Ie: overheads are relatively high, car, maintenance, fuel etc. You must be totally committed to putting tax and NI payment money away on a weekly/ monthly basis. Even if you take on a Franchise eg AA ,Bill Plant etc you still have to do this as you're self employed. When predicting earnings don't forget to take dead time into account, for instance when you are travelling from one student to the next.
There are 3 tests to pass, you have unlimited attempts at Part One, essentially the Theory and hazard perception but more detailed than the learner version. Part Two is a one hour test of your driving ability. Part Three is your teaching ability and the hardest part ( check out pass rates!). You have 3 goes at parts two and three before you have to wait 2 years since passing Part one to start again.
You have to have a passion for people otherwise the job is awful.

You have to be unflappable and put up with abuse from other road users.
Would I do it all again? Yes, but I'd have much stricter terms and conditions. I was a bit laid back about cancellations etc but could afford to be.
Be very careful who you get your training from. Part One can be achieved by self study and rather than using a national school or training agency for parts 2 and 3 try and find a local instructor ti help you.
I was always independent, so luckily no franchise fees.
If I was to do it again these days, especially in an urvan area, I would teach auto but there is a larger element of tricky or neuro divergent students.
Good luck. It can be very rewarding but please do your homework and don't resign until you've passed Part 3

You could ask Aman on YouTube her channel is called Clearview Driving. She is a similar age to you

I have seen some jobs advertised nationally for driving test examiners

Thank you.

Oh thank you. I didn't consider that.

I have tried, but most want experience and not transferable skills sadly!

Ooh thats good idea! Thank you.

Ooh thats good idea! Thank you.

Yeah I have scrapped that, mentioned I had asked about that in my OP. I am looking at many different avenues. I did want to be an instructor when younger but never bothered. Now I'm think of branching out in many different areas. Still trying to look around elsewhere and try to be realistic. Thank you!

There are, but you have to be willing to do the next step up jobs for the same pay and double the work under "career progression" first, with no guarantee you'll get to be a team leader later on. This takes a lot of time that I could be using to get a better paying job now sadly.

Lots of adverts make it out to be easy money, and an easy job - neither of these are true. Some of us think that in about 2010, there was a single TV ad which destroyed the industry, encouraging people to train as instructors, during the recession, when people were being made redundant, and learners didn't have the money for lessons.

Related to this, I'm actually thinking of training to be an examiner: contrary to popular belief, you cannot do both jobs at the same time, but many examiners are former instructors.