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Career stories - need some inspiration! - 9/12/2012 3:26:06 PM

Brooksy84

Posts: 389
Joined: 25/1/2010

Guys, as the headline suggests, I need some inspirtation.
I'm currently a part time bartender, and spend the rest of the time as the "stay at home" parent, if you will, for my 1 year old daughter. My fiancee works full time. I'm 28 in a week and don't really have any transferable career skills beyond a solid background in customer focused jobs. No uni education or other further qualifications. And, just to top it off, I really don't have any great idea what I want to do with the rest of my working life, beyond the fact that I know I don't want to be a barman for ever.
What I'm hoping is that there may be a few of you out there who maybe have/have had similar circumstances to myself and managed to find themselves a new career, or even some better job prospects. I know I'm not "old", but I would love to have found the foundations for a better living by the time I reach 30. Has anyone else found their calling in life outside of their twenties? Or can anyone recommend a career path that may be suitable for a part timer to learn or train in. Any and all suggestions would be very helpful.

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Post #: 1

RE: Career stories - need some inspiration! - 9/12/2012 4:18:20 PM

Rinc

Posts: 12518
Joined: 2/10/2005
From: A park bench, with a newspaper quilt

At 27 I decided I wanted to be a teacher and started training a year later. Now I'm in my second year of teaching and I love the job. Moving careers was the best decision I ever made. I worked in the media before that and didn't really have the experience or work skills that you'd associate with teaching but I worked in a school for free for a while and that sorted that out.

As for advice I think it's difficult to give any if you're not sure what you want to do. I suppose you just have to find out what you really enjoy doing and what gives you satisfaction. I considered my other career as shallow and I never came home from work and felt I'd achieved something. The I realised that deep down I'd always wanted to be a teacher and so I coped on living on benefits for a while to make that possible.

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RE: Career stories - need some inspiration! - 9/12/2012 6:54:07 PM

Sledge Hammer

Posts: 1640
Joined: 14/11/2007

I worked for 15 years in Financial Services in various roles (from sales to training).

AFter being made redundant 2 years ago, I set up my own forum and sports magazine which I love doing. It hasnt pai much money (yet) but I love it. I also moved into recruitment 3 months ago and wished I had done it years ago - you basically get to put other people into jobs.

I know some companies offer interships to allow you to get experience in doing it you dont get paid other than expenses but you get valuable experience.

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RE: Career stories - need some inspiration! - 9/12/2012 7:28:49 PM

Rhubarb

Posts: 24398
Joined: 30/9/2005
From: No Direction Home

I dunno what I want to be when I grow up. (I'm 26)

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RE: Career stories - need some inspiration! - 9/12/2012 9:12:31 PM

Powka

Posts: 132
Joined: 2/12/2008

If you're really lost, how about career counseling? Do they have it where you're at?

As for inspiration, I always go for the books in these cases: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Books-For-Career-Change/lm/R1KC68Q03KVDZW

< Message edited by Powka -- 9/12/2012 9:15:34 PM >

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RE: Career stories - need some inspiration! - 9/12/2012 9:40:28 PM

Brooksy84

Posts: 389
Joined: 25/1/2010

Thanks guys some interesting stories there.

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RE: Career stories - need some inspiration! - 9/12/2012 9:42:20 PM

Posts: 3506
Joined: 26/9/2005
From: two counties east of home

To be honest, I'm not sure I can help but I have been inspired recently.

I am trilingual and have found myself in a succession of sales administration jobs because they are typically the jobs where languages are used (unless you have a postgraduate qualification and can do a job that's fancy).

I realised recently that I'm not a sales person. Until recently my sales admin roles have been mostly admin but my current role (the one I am just resigning from!) has had more of a sales emphasis. I realised I was only in it for the languages and that no matter what language you speak, the product is difficult for me to engage with.

A few months ago I did jury service and got inspired. Not by anything as lofty as a judge but just by everything and I quite fancy being a court usher. They are probably at the bottom rung of the ladder and their starting salary is about �4.5k a year less than my current salary but I would really like to do it. I have kept my eyes peeled all this time and as luck would have it, my local magistrates court has a vacancy, so I have applied and we will see if anything comes of it. They also have a vacant position for a slightly more senior administrator so I have applied for that too. I know it's still admin but I feel like I have nothing to lose now and I am very curious about the surroundings. (I am also not na�ve - I know court ushers put up with a lot of shit.)

It not really a story that will help but I feel I have something to focus on a bit.

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Post #: 7

RE: Career stories - need some inspiration! - 9/12/2012 10:25:35 PM

clownfoot

Posts: 7739
Joined: 26/9/2005
From: The ickle town of Fuck, Austria

I've worked for the same organisation for almost 11 years and worked in the same department for almost nine of those, although I'm now applying myself as a statistician to add a bit of quantitative to the qualitative, Never too late to train up to be something you're not (although SPSS means standard deviations, standard errors, t-tests etc. do not require my brain to actually work them out) in the quest to progress up the slippery sliding civil service chain. Although it does mean I'm less tolerant of people using words such as 'significant', 'correlation' and 'association' in everyday parlance...

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Post #: 8

RE: Career stories - need some inspiration! - 10/12/2012 12:49:28 PM

shool

Posts: 9612
Joined: 24/3/2006
From: In The Pipe, Five by Five.

Professional Blagger.

I sell IT for a living and have been for the last 15 years. Currently work for a large PC manufacturer.

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Post #: 9