What job could my DH do?

[frencholives]

I am desperate to help out my lovely DH but at a loss what to advise him. Any advice would be .

DH is an experienced mechanical engineer of 12 years, but he absolutely hates it. He doesn’t enjoy getting sweaty and dirty, and often finds the tinkering away to fix something stressful. He has tried several different jobs in several different companies and is currently in a role where his workload is massive. He is incredibly stressed and down and this is the final straw for him. He is desperate to be ‘done’ with engineering but struggling to find a new career.

What’s frustrating is he has soo many transferable skills and interviews well if he can get to interview stage! (He has got every engineering job he has ever applied for). He is confident and gets on well with lots of different people. Intelligent, good English, excellent maths, a good problem solver.

I am the higher earner so he can afford to drop his wage to £28k ish and retrain. He is open to different roles but probably looking for some kind of office based job. He has applied to the civil service and is getting nowhere. I know the civil service can be difficult to get into so we are unsure whether to persevere with trying to perfect his application, or if it’s a non-starter. He feels employers see his background in engineering and discount him.

He has so much to offer and I’m sure there must be a career move he can make after engineering but we’re both a bit stuck what the next step is. Any advice would be very much appreciated!

This was going to be my suggestion. Train the next generation.

Railway signaller. Pays excellent and his engineering brain will help him through the decisions he'd be required to make. Grade 9 signaller earn upto 120k. Even at grade 3 I earns 52k a year. Training is on about 32k

That’s amazing! One of those jobs that doesn’t get mentioned in schools or by careers advisors.

Several of the IT business analysts/senior business analysts/solution owners/business stream leads in our IT organisation within a FMCG company are ex mechanical/civil engineers. We have more engineering graduates than IT ones in those roles!

Teaching in a further education setting ?

Maths teacher ?
A friends husband was an engineer but now works in a role for a major food manufacturer anticipating issues with the production machines - which bits have potential to break down & things like that I’m sure it’s much more complicated than that he earns around £75000 .
He’s not hands on .
Or set up as a consultant for other companies .
Fire officer - servicing extinguishers and offering safety advice ?
Health and safety course at uni?
Surveying at uni ?
Really random here but mental health nursing ? Not great pay but opportunity for development and actually a senior is fairly well paid .

This is a good idea. My son is a mechanical engineer and works as a project manager for an engineering firm. He is mostly office based with some site visits but he doesn't get his hands dirty, so to speak! He really enjoys it

Did anyone mention car assessment expert for insurance companies?

Retrain as a patent attorney takes years to fully qualify but my appeal

I am shocked he has not got an interview with the Civil Service . We have lots of staff with varied backgrounds. Maybe go over his application again and carefully read the success profiles information . He needs to provide specific examples of things he has done ( not the team) using the STAR technique . Good Luck

Health and safety jobs or lecturing or NVQ / apprenticeship assessing spring to mind. Project management too, would be worth paying for an agile or APM qualification. Technical writing could also be an option - user guides, specifications etc.

Worth looking at roles in nuclear as there are many opportunities and they're very open to transferable skills. There's a website called destination nuclear. Also look at sizewell C as they have huge recruitment campaigns coming up and they're actually limited to number on site so plenty of remote roles.

Also worth checking out cogent skills as they have a jobs board, or at least they did.

You say he's a mechanical engineer; it doesn't sound like he's chartered? Would he be interested in getting a degree, or even working towards his charter ship if he already has one and looking at working in consultancy?

look at your local water company and the consultants /contractors on their delivery frameworks. He could potentially move into the engineering design world or project management, investment planning, asset management type roles.

What about finance? I work in finance and although most people on my industry are maths/economics background I’d say the next most common degree is engineering.

If he is prepared to have a salary of £28k I’d say apply to graduate roles. It’s not that common but I’d say every year there are at least 1/2 experienced hires. In my own graduate intake I think I can actually think of 3!

Dh is a mechanical engineer he works in project design /management. He has also worked in innovation. He has to test products but he’s not getting dirty. A lot of it is on the computer and endless meetings

What education does he have? That might be some of the barrier to moves.

Technical recruitment? Depends where you are but my DiL does this in Cambridge, recruiters need knowledge of the industry.

My cousin is a consulting engineer. She sits in an office and manages engineering design and purchase for other companies. She helps them work out what they want, shouts at suppliers, and helps them fix issues after delivery. She goes to factories to understand, learn and inspect, but infrequently enough that it's a fun day out and someone else does the dirty work.

I agree.

Something office based in facilities management? I work for a big FM firm and they are likely to have roles for managers who can understand engineering and I suspect they're in short supply, so worth going for even if you don't have experience. I think it's one of those areas where quite a lot of older managers are retiring and there's not obvious people coming up the ranks to fill these roles.

Could he teach? I know someone who is teaching in a college and training at the same time.

My partner is a ME by trade but works in business development for large energy companies designing and scoping systems for hospitals etc

Could he move sideways into project management? Still working in engineering but less hands on. He would have to start as project management support and study for some qualifications if he wanted to be a project manager.

I worked in project management in the NHS and we didn't take anyone on without a degree, and to become a project manager we would expect specific project management qualifications and usually to be working towards a masters, (in my hospital anyway) but there will be project support roles in industry that will value experience over qualifications, at least at the lower levels.

This. There is a knack with civil service applications. As previous poster said, ensure his application meets the criteria listed versus success profiles. The great thing about the civil service is that they are very clear on criteria, so you just have to address those in application & interview. They don’t look for what you want to do in 5 years time, whether you are a good ‘fit’ because they can’t, career gap, so are very objective. Good luck to you both.

this is it.