The world's moved on but my skills haven't! Thoughts on retraining please?

[Mandy2003]

Having spent the last 7 years working in a local shop because the hours were ideal for school pickups etc (I don't drive so limited to working at/near home), I was made redundant when the shop closed.

I was thinking I might like to look round for something that might stretch my brain a bit more and started thinking about office work. I did this before DS was born 12 years ago: word processing, desk top publishing, PowerPoint presentations etc.

But obviously now software has become so easy to use and widely available that most people are well capable of producing their own documents and presentations.

What do you think I could retrain to do, and which are the best training providers? I am thinking of maybe learning audio typing (for legal secretary work) and copy editing (to translate writers' ungrammatical scrawl into something approaching the English language). Any thoughts?

Pitmans are still an industry leader. Also perhaps ask a couple of agencies their opinions? Office angels springs to mind for example. Depends on the kind of office really. Many only want someone to answer phones and book appointments. However I do think its a bonus to show you have covered some recent training. I, if hiring, would think very well of that and would give you an edge.