Career change for over 50s

[Floofydawg]

I've just been made redundant from a well paid bit stressful job in financial services. I'm mid 50s. A bit too young to completely retire, but I definitely don't want to go back to the corporate world.

I can afford to have a few months off but am looking for a career change and accept that I will take a big drop in salary. Part time work would be ideal.

Interested to hear others experiences of changing direction in their 50s - what did you do?

Anyone?

Watching with interest…!

A bit earlier than you but I changed career in my early 40s. I did some re-training, but having a 20-year career behind me meant I didn't start from scratch as I had transferable skills - managing a team, leadership, etc - so my first job in my new direction was at a higher level to begin with.
I'm glad I did it. Almost a decade on and I'm still enjoying work.
Think carefully about what you want to spend your time doing and follow your heart.

I've mentioned this before on other similar threads. I was made redundant at over 50 and, because of the recession at the time, jobs like the one I had been in just disappeared. All the people I knew who would have given me a job, were similarly made redundant or took early retirement themselves.

Anyway, after some time off, I started to do temporary work. I did two longer term assignments and in both cases was offered a job. I took the second one and stayed there until retirement (early in my case). After the initial period of temping, I ended up on a salary that wasn't far off the one I had before I was made redundant.

If you know what type of organisation you want to work with, give them a call and see if you can find out where they get temporary staff from and sign up. Maybe think about larger employers with an interesting range of project based/funded jobs like universities, charities, local authorities, etc.

Temping is also very nice in that if you do a halfway decent job everyone thinks you're fantastic.

Thanks, temping had crossed mind.

Can I ask what jobs you did temping? I,m 50 with a 25 year career behind me but have tried several jobs which I didnt really like.
thanks

@Floofydawg @ChanelBoucle @ForPearlViper @HoHoHoliday @material may i ask what you tried and liked/not enjoyed or ended up doing? Few years younger but I'm thinking of retraining just not quite sure what.

As we'd know, financial services can be very niche golden handcuffs, and not always most transferable to most other "real economy" industries/services and brutal to older employees, especially women

I tried working in care, retail and working in cafe,s. Completely different from what I used to do.
I found it challenging to work the right shifts as I still have a child in primary school.
i used to travel a lot in my previous career, so it’s complete trial and error right now.
Being self-employed would be ideal as I enjoy working alone but I have no idea what that could be .

Thanks @material. I worked in a restaurant and retail as teenager and don't think i have the energy for customer service now! How about school admin or related jobs? Or freelancing in something related in what you used to do.

I'm interested in doing a masters, i like studying - though not entirely sure direction (it's like being 17 again and having zero clue what i want to do at uni) and if i could even be hired then progress as a nearly 50 year old if i went into an entirely different function or industry.

Bookkeeping, look at ICB. I did it 3-4 years ago and earn £20 ph working around my kids.

That is interesting @Sportacus as I have just started doing ICB. Can I ask how you got clients?(sorry to piggyback on that but may help op!).

I live in a rural area and it has been 100% word of mouth x

Haven't been back to work yet.