what can I retrain in that will definitely lead to a job?

[indemandjobs]

I am about to lose my job (redundancy). Have young kids and no income. I am early 50s. What can I retrain in that will lead to definitely getting a job - so looking for something in a high demand /low supply area.

Can only afford to retrain for a year ( so no degrees) unless its an on the job training deal.

Nothing in IT/ tech as I am not good at that.

Nothing involving blood or gore as I am too squeamish and nothing where someone might die if I make a mistake as I will make mistakes.

Any help gratefully received as I am sick with worry.

Dog grooming has always been my back-up/ career change dream. Maybe with walking too.

This.

Think of all the crap managers and colleagues you’ve worked with. They don’t let pig ignorance and zero skills get in their way.

You’ve got to put yourself out there (which i know you are now) and fake it till you make it.

NHS 24 call handler

So true.

Thanks everyone for all of your suggestions. Lots for me to think about.

There’s a job currently on the Working from Home hub which is a Housing Complaints Investigator - quite well paid and flexible. They’re not asking for any specific qualifications and your past experience might fit.

I think one of the biggest factors being missed here is where you’re situated. Are you willing to move @indemandjobs because if you’re not then some of the job is being suggested on here would be great and theory but useless unless the industry is around you. For example, someone could suggest me to retrain as a prison officer, but there’s no prison in my town. So it will be pointless. You need to look at what industries you’re surrounded by pick something that you’re interested within an industry around you and train for that. For example, the town that I live in is heavily dominated by the pharmaceutical industry and it’s feeder businesses.

Sounds to me like you’d be a good candidate as a programme officer at a charity or NGO. Small ones you’d probably have a better chance of getting in - you really need to be able to describe your experience in an appealing way on your CV though, so the projects you describe having success with, you can say something like “collating research related to XYZ and identifying areas of opportunity, which resulted in service delivery for XXX people, with X% of service users going on to [positive result]”. Your actual experience might be fragmented but you need to pull out the good bits and focus on them

YouTube ilia good. Also I’m sure Microsodt do their own bite size course on line. Best of all is a friend who can spare sometime to take you through what you’ll actually need
eg
setting up and saving docs
formatting basic functions on excel (take heart that the current versions do much for you automatically- you just need to understand when it would be useful)

Just to add. Chat GPT is amazing for teaching basic word/excel skills, building you a learning program.

Prision officer? Basic salary is 30 something and plenty of over time to be had.

My husband is one and prefers working with the more mature ladies as they are a calming influence on the wing (men’s Prision).

Following with interest as I really need a change - my only advice would be to avoid anything to do with marketing. The job market is saturated and lots of very qualified people have had to go freelance after being made redundant.