Advice required on changing careers

[geek84]

Good Morning Folks

Has anyone read the popular job hunting book ‘What color is your parachute?’

If so, as you know, the author encourages the reader to complete some exercises in order to find out your ideal career choice. Has anybody completed that?

The exercises involve making lists of various categories such as:

Preferred fields of work or interest
Preferred kinds of people you would like to work with
Preferred job requirements/tasks

When these exercises are completed, the author encourages the individual to go away and show the list to friends who can give ideas of various job titles which would agree with the lists made above.

I have completed these exercises and shown the list to a few friends of mine, but unfortunately nobody can give me any job titles which would be suitable for me.

Can you please advice what else I can do?


Thanks in advance for your responses.

 

[gasbanni]

Find a field that there's a shortage of qualified people and retrain in that field, no point in training in a field that you find very interesting but with poor job prospects at the end.
What do you enjoy doing ? What do you have natural abilities in .........Are you practical or more inclined to paperwork.
Depending where you live will affect what you can do...........whatever you choose determine to be the best you can be at it.

Read a story of a new York cabbie once .......He made sure his cab was clean, smelled nice and the was a paper for his passages to read, it paid him because people regularly requested his cab.........

 

[bernardgreen]

Find friends who have more ideas. ?

 

[Shutpa]

If so, as you know, the author encourages the reader to complete some exercises in order to find out your ideal career choice. Has anybody completed that?
The exercises involve making lists of various categories such as:
Preferred fields of work or interest
Preferred kinds of people you would like to work with
Preferred job requirements/tasks
When these exercises are completed, the author encourages the individual to go away and show the list to friends who can give ideas of various job titles which would agree with the lists made above.
I have completed these exercises and shown the list to a few friends of mine, but unfortunately nobody can give me any job titles which would be suitable for me.
Can you please advice what else I can do?
Thanks in advance for your responses.

40+ years ago when I was teaching in a Scottish school every single 3rd year pupil took part in a similar programme. The difference between that programme and yours is that the one the school kids (and their teachers) completed, came up with a list of jobs at the end.
Since starting this reply, I have googled the programme name (Jigcal), and discovered that all students in Scotland took part in the exercise. I am not saying that it will help, but if you're interested, you can read more here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/7463561.stm

I think that I completed the Jigcal questionnaire 3 or 4 times, but never did take up the cloth as was always recommended.

 

[Dave54]

More to the point than what the combination of an exercise in a book, and friends' opinion thinks "your ideal career" might be.
What do you actually want to do yourself?

Also what do you do now? If you already have a decent job with prospects, you may find that the grass isn't actually that much greener elsewhere. Everybody hates their job at least part of the time!

 

[Shutpa]

Aimed primarily at school leavers, this might be of some use:

https://www.myworldofwork.co.uk

 

[rideforever]

Best bet is to do what you love and make your personal life great, and work outwards from there.
In the money world you have to be hard nosed and realistic and sometimes do things you don't like; don't take it personally, don't have illusions, and stick to the basics. What do people need ? Food, shelter, education and so on.
Every day you have opportunities, maximise what you do with that time, with that money, with that opportunity.
Afterwards go to bed and don't take anything personally.
Treat everything like an opportunity to grow, even **** jobs.
Ultimately if you can do things, if you are strong and eager and smart, then you will be valuable to an employer and to yourself.
So learn every day and do as much good with your opportunities.
And don't take it personally if something sh** happens. It will.

 

[bernardgreen]

Food, shelter, education and so on

and include provision for a decent pension when you eventually ( if ever ) retire

 

[geek84]

Hi Folks

Many thanks indeed for your replies.
I’m so sorry for not replying earlier, but I had a family issue to attend to, which is now resolved (hopefully!!), and things are getting back to normal.

To give you a bit of an insight into my knowledge & skills, I enjoy/would enjoy doing jobs/careers which would involve the following:

Working with numbers and spreadsheets
Analysing manipulating/compiling/computing data
Advising/mentoring/training/teaching people, but I don’t want to become a school teacher
Current affairs
Football – but I don’t want to become a footballer.

Any advice much greatly appreciated.



Thank You.

 

[HawkEye244]

The only way you are going to know what you like is by actually trying different jobs.

 

[London Mike 49]

Sounds like you are ideally suited to be a data analyst, the government employs lots of people to crunch numbers and stats but there are a lot of private/ plc companies that also require your skill set.

Good luck
Mike