What could I retrain as?

[KimGa]

I’m late 30s and graduated with a brilliant English lit degree nearly 20 years ago. At the time I didn’t know what I wanted to do, lacked confidence and was clueless about the financial prospects of different industries.

I went into local government admin and by the time I was pregnant with my first child I’d advanced a couple of grades and was seconded to manage a team of administrators. I never went back to that role after dc1 was born, instead doing casual hours back at my original admin pay grade so that I could be a sahm as much as possible.

Now my two dc are at school I have built up to doing a permanent part time role to fit in with the school day. I feel very lucky that I’ve been able to be around for them so much but I’m also sad that I’ve never reached my full potential work wise. But I still don’t know what I was destined to do!

Any ideas what I could retrain as?

I’m super organised and am very happy in a desk based role. I didn’t particularly enjoy managing people. I’m meticulous, detail-orientated and love keeping track of things - though my skill set is much more writing than maths. I’m happy responding to emails and phone calls a lot of the time. I like working independently as much as possible and I dislike giving presentations. I like helping people. I’m interested in education but don’t think I’m cut out for working with children directly. In hindsight I wish I had gone into law but I think it will take me too much time and expense to retrain in that.

I’m not desperate for big bucks but something with a clear route of progression would be great.

You could check out CIPR to see routes into PR/comms? It's low stress and varied work with lots of writing opportunities.

You sound a good fit for law! You’re not yet 40 and it’s doesn’t take that long to qualify. You could have 20-25 years ahead of you as a lawyer.
I’m not sure how easy it is these days to start with a paralegal role, but could this be a good way to dip your toe in the legal world before committing to a law conversion course?

Yikes. Law is competitive, expensive and not family friendly. It's also ultimately a sales job, like all professional services.

Have you considered tax? It's law based so you'd get to do lots of the interesting parts of working with the law. It's more about words than numbers once you move past entry level, personal tax is very much about helping people, and being detail focused is useful.

If you don't like the sales side of professional services your progression would be capped but you could still have a fulfilling career.

When I say helping people: If someone has a family tragedy that means they lose track of their tax affairs for years and bury their head in the sand, you can be the person who helps them sort that out, deal with HMRC for them, and get their life back on track.

Or be the trusted adviser for a family business who gives them the peace of mind that they are complying with their tax obligations correctly.

https://www.tax.org.uk/careers-in-tax

https://taxaid.org.uk/about

You may also wish to explore the retraining board:

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

This might help:

Mature Study and Retraining board

Great minds

Hey you sound quite similar to me! I’ve ended up in a flexible role in a small charity which I think I have the potential to develop but a few years ago was really preoccupied with what I should do. Have you thought about civil service or local government grad schemes?

Something in editing, publishing or copywriting?

Someone was telling me there was a shortage of bid writers. Not sure that’s a career career though.

Would you not consider staying in the CS?

Have you thought about NHS admin work? Starting as some general administrative role then working up to medical secretary, and beyond if you wanted to?

Pay wouldn’t be fabulous and the workload would be high, but there’s lots of jobs and it sounds like you’d be good at it.

With respect, no she doesn’t. I recruit and train junior lawyers and we need people who are good at working in teams and comfortable doing presentations.

Potentially copywriting could be an option? I saw the suggestion of PR, but that can be long hours and not super family friendly with evening events or having to work flexibly to suit a client etc.

@WhatapityWapiti if you are a lawyer, perhaps you could offer some more helpful advice. Could OP consider paralegal work? What about family law? What area of law do you work in? Does EVERY lawyer have to do presentations? Or just the ones you work with? The in-house lawyers at various companies I have worked in have had lovely 9-6 desk jobs with no presentations and small teams. I’m not a lawyer, but I have worked with enough to know that there are many different specialisms/roles within the legal profession.

Lawyers can work independently and choose their specialism after they have qualified and got in a few years’ experience. However by definition a paralegal or trainee solicitor has to work in a team and present their findings to others, discuss points in meetings etc because, as an individual, they have insufficient knowledge or experience to do the job. Work in law firms is staffed by teams headed by a partner who distributes the tasks according to who is at the right level (and therefore price) to do each element, but it all has to be discussed and brought together before being presented to the client.

Any lawyer you see working away quietly and independently in an in-house job will have had to have worked much more collaboratively in a team when more junior to get to the point where they can be independent.

There are some very basic paralegal type tasks such as document review for litigation where the paralegal literally reads some documents and fills in a pro-forma report without having to understand either the wider context of what they are doing or be involved in the way that their work will be presented to the client, but those are not going to lead to any career progression. They are also more and more done by AI these days.

Any commercial type firm that has to win work will expect junior people to get to the point where they can present a legal update to a client or internally to colleague, take part in a pitch or speak up in a meeting to explain a point, perhaps using slides.

if you work in something like eg personal injury claimant work or family law work (which fits with OP wanting to help people) you have to be able to go in and negotiate your client’s claim with the other side- that is a type of presentation.

Contract lawyers working in house in procurement roles have to negotiate with the vendor to agree terms. That can be done in a fairly hands off “take it or leave it” way if the lawyer works for a company that is in a strong bargaining position, but it would be quite boring and unfulfilling.

In house lawyers who give advice to the company on regulations etc have to be able to present their findings to management as well as do the analysis.

Conveyancing might work for her but that is notoriously formulaic, badly-paid, looked down upon and subject to very strict performance pressure from bosses who need to churn low-priced jobs. Yet high stakes for the clients.

I can’t really comment on non-law careers outside law firms. People with excellent attention to detail and good writing skills are definitely great employees to have though. There are admin/operations roles in law firms in non-legal teams like Learning and Development or Business Development or HR or Facilities that might be worth looking at. But nothing that really fits the brief of wanting to work “independently”. That’s going to be hard to fulfil anywhere as a career-changer to be honest.

Good luck OP.

Thanks everyone for your ideas, much to think about. The detail around working in law is particularly useful. I was always convinced there would be a fair amount of presenting which does put me off. Interestingly, I have previously thought conveyancing out of all the areas might suit me - interesting to hear about the performance pressures which I wasn’t aware of. I would be nervous about compatibility with family life especially when starting out.

I always have worked as part of a team and am aware there is an element of this in all jobs! I can do it and of course enjoys parts of it. I struggle with frustration when I’m waiting on people to do their part of a process (or who do their part badly) which I’m sure is true for most diligent people (!) but some roles I’ve had have been worse than others for this, which is why I’m trying to get a feel for how much of it is involved in different careers.

Bid writing is an interesting idea I will look into that some more. I’ve also always wondered if HR is maybe the way to go, so will research further

I can’t shake that I would need to be better at/be interested in maths for something to do with tax.

I always feel like people need to be outgoing and like social media to be in PR which I am not! But maybe a misconception.

I know a few people who’ve tried to break into publishing/editorial and it really seems so competitive which puts me off.

Thanks for the link to the other board too I wasn’t aware of it so that’s helpful.

Oh and NHS administrator is really very similar to what I’m doing in terms of work and pay so yes a potential sideways move - but less family friendly hours whenever I look so no benefit that I can see!

I would enjoy being an EA/PA I think and pay much better but how to make that move into the private sector I wonder?

Happy to stay local government but what department to move into? As I said progressing from where I am is all managing others which I don’t really want to do.

Oh one thinks that might suit you OP, take a look at Process Mapping consultancy, or Business Analyst roles. I won’t say much more detail as not my area and you can look it up but I have worked with some who probably had similar strengths to you.

Publishing is hugely competitive while also doesn't pay well

With copywriting and bid writing, give it 5 years for the tech to be refined and AI will have made those jobs obsolete

I'd say due diligence

I wouldn't join the NHS if you are CS, CS is far more flexible.

Have you looked at other govt arms length bodies or other departments? Maybe DoE if education interests you. Communications officers are sought after in all areas writing press releases etc.

Project Managing is another option if you are organised although perhaps not if you get frustrated at waiting on others, either way APM might be worth a look even if just to rule it out

As you said you were interested in education and helping people I was going to suggest careers adviser - particularly working in higher education but you said you didn't like presentations which is a big part of the job.

For what it’s worth, some NHS admin jobs are sensible hours and flexible. The admin I’ve worked with in recent years seem to each work slightly different hours to fit their commitments, some WFH one day, many finish at 3 or 4. You’d need to find the right team, not a GP surgery.

I agree with bid writing roles becoming obsolete to some extent as AI progresses. I used to manage a bid writing team and it would have been amazing to have had even the current Chat GTP at our finger tips. It’s a shame, because it can be a fairly independent role which would suit many of your skills, OP.
A great, detailed response from @WhatapityWapiti above. I suppose it is hard to avoid team working and there will be elements of ‘presenting’ (in different formats) in most jobs with good career progressions. Presenting to one person is very different to presenting to a team of colleagues around a table, which is completely different to standing up in front of a whole room of strangers. Have a think about what you might be happy doing OP - it’s also a skill you can build on. With any new role there will be elements you don’t feel confident about, but if you can find the right team of people to work with, they will help you!
Good luck with your search.