Just to say I have NC for this thread, just in case. Sorry this is going to be a long one. I think I'm stuck, work wise and I don't know what to do next. Can any of you lovely people give me any ideas about what moves I could make?
I'm 45, I've been in my role as a software business analyst with this company for about 4 years. I've come from a customer service background. I was generally enjoying the BA work, and the company are pretty decent people. However due to the business restructuring, and cutting costs and roles, recently (in the last 8 months) my role has changed substantially, from business analyst to more of an account management/sales role. I'm now tasked with upselling add ons and upgrades to our services, and increasing client spend, on top of the stuff I would normally expect to be doing as a business analyst.
I don't really enjoy sales or account management, I worked quite hard to move out of that area of work earlier on in my career. As a result I'm looking around for another job. But absolutely nothing out there is sparking my enthusiasm at the moment. There are lots of biz analyst type roles out there, although everything on LinkedIn has about 100 applicants for it at the moment. Most of these roles require a level of technical knowledge I don't really have. Or experience with specific bits of software, which I also don't have, and I'm not sure I could realistically train for (paid for training is not in my budget at the moment). I've been applying for jobs on and off since January, when these changes came in, and I've not even bagged an interview. I've also talked to a recruiter I've worked with before, and he had nothing for me either. I've never had a problem applying for jobs in my career, but I'm getting nowhere now.
On top of all that I currently work fully from home, and due to my longevity with the company I have a lot of flexibility afforded to me, which is a godsend since I have school age kids. I'm also paid pretty well, although I've only had one pay review in my time here, and I'm not expecting one this year due to the aforementioned cost cutting.
I've definitely lost the love for my work, but I really don't know what I want to do with my life. Part of me thinks, sit tight, accept where you are, enjoy the flexibility and the reasonable pay, and be grateful to have a job. But the other part of me is finding the sales work soul destroying and that's obviously getting to me. I'm also worried they're going to bring in sales targets and that is something I absolutely never signed up for.
Like I said I just feel stuck, and fed up, and I'm worried the longer I stay in this role, the harder it will be to move to a non sales type role again. Does anyone have any advice?