Career Advice Please

[startingagainwith2]

I am a newly single mum to two young children. I used to be a stay at home mum before my children's dad left us. He has continued to pay the mortgage and child maintenance. In the meantime, I have started receiving universal credit and have found myself a very small, zero hours, minimum wage cleaning job. It's something, and I'm very grateful for it, but it isn't ideal long term. The house is currently on the market, and I am in the middle of a divorce.

I am seeking advice from all other single mum's in my position. I am at a loss as to what careers are out there. I have my administration qualifications from a former life, which are probably now all obsolete, but apart from that, I have nothing. I am fully prepared to retrain, and build myself up in a career that will support my children and I.

I have a few requirements for a career. Firstly, the salary needs to be such that I can fully support a household, including mortgage, all the bills, and leftovers for saving. I have been financially reliant on a man for my who adult life and it isn't a position I want to be in again. Secondly, the hours need to be reliable and consistent. I have two children, one in school, one in preschool, and I can't be having certain hours one week, and different ones the next. Thirdly, I know I'd like to work in an office, preferably not customer facing, with the potential of working remotely. I used to be an administration assistant, which I really enjoyed, but the commute wasn't worth it for the pay.

If anyone has any suggestions, recommendations or advice, I would be greatly appreciative. Like I said, I'm fully prepared to go back to school and retrain. Thank you so much for reading my long post!

What admin qualification do you have?

How long ago were you working full time in your pre children career?

I have all sorts of diplomas, book-keeping, audio transcription, secretarial diploma, office manager, admin assistant, office IT, microsoft office 2010, executive PA, HR admin.

I haven't worked in that field since 2018.

I think you should look into large-scale employers, with potential for long-term careers but with training, progression, pension contributions, etc. Civil service could be a good option for you? Plenty of scope there for PA/admin work that might lead you on to something else if you want to, or develop in your own area if you decide to stick with it.

I think you need to look for admin assistant roles
accept the salary will be low
and keep your head down and work your way up

will take time

Going against you saying you don't want to be customer facing, phone roles are often a great way into a larger company. You can get a year under your belt and then apply for internal with more experience. Remote phone roles are more common since covid. Admin tends to be low paid, so hard to climb up from, especially in a smaller company.

I'm happy to retrain, someone suggested accountancy. I'm just looking if anyone had any other career options.

I am happy to retrain, hoping to in fact. I'm just drawing a blank as to what careers are out there that I don't know about.

This would be privately funded op… and expensive. Can you afford?

I will be using some of the funds from the sale of the property awarded to me in my divorce.

Getting a CIPD qualification alongside your previous admin experience is a good way into a HR-related role, which tend to be quite admin heavy and have opportunities to WFH.

My husband worked retail management for years but did his CIPD on the side and now works in discipline and grievance in the public sector. Earns 40kp/a which is fine for where we live, 9-4 M-F and WFH three days a week.

Since you mentioned that you're open to retraining, you could look at Code First Girls - they offer training, some of which is sponsored by employers and some of which comes with an offer of employment at the end. I could be wrong but I believe some of their offering is targeted at women hoping to re-enter the workforce.

Heavy caveat though, you should only do this if you really are interested in Cyber/Programming/Data (they offer training in all these different pathways), and if you really are committed to developing this skills. Tech careers can be rewarding and pay well but the learning curve is extremely steep and a fair number of people crash out once they realise how difficult it is to acquire those initial skills.

Hi OP - try looking at these for ideas - https://www.skillsforcareers.education.gov.uk/pages/training-choice/skills-bootcamp

It's an opportunity to retrain and has jobs attached at the end. Good luck!

HMRC are recruiting - this is what I'd go for as it's training on the job and a very decent starting salary.

Sorry the link is so long. Hopefully it works.

www.civilservicejobs.service.gov.uk/csr/index.cgi?SID=b3duZXI9NTA3MDAwMCZwYWdlYWN0aW9uPXZpZXd2YWNieWpvYmxpc3Qmc2VhcmNoc29ydD1jbG9zaW5nJmpvYmxpc3Rfdmlld192YWM9MTk3MjEzMSZvd25lcnR5cGU9ZmFpciZzZWFyY2hwYWdlPTEmdXNlcnNlYXJjaGNvbnRleHQ9MTU1OTYwMTk0JnBhZ2VjbGFzcz1Kb2JzJnJlcXNpZz0xNzYwNTI5NjA3LWJlYmIzMDgyM2ZjYmM5NTA1NmVjZGU1MDViNGI1ZGIwZjIwODBmZjQ=

Apologies, that HMRC requires a uni degree of 2:2

Lone parent here OP. I would say go for EA/PA roles target the tech firms (Google top 100 tech companies in the UK) as they are keen to push the female ratio up. Or retraining for book keeping. Friend of mine did that and takes on clients which basically means she is her own boss (does books for several GPs) Kind of also depends where you live.