Anyone ever did a complete career change at 30?

Zola.

I do web design I enjoy it..... the pay isnt too bad, but obviously could be better.

Sometimes I wonder if a big career change would be good.
I've always been interested in a skilled trade, being away from the computer etc....I have always had the dream of running my own business.

Have any of you ever completely changed your job and went to a skilled trade? I understand there would be apprenticeships and probably awful pay, but just asking the question for curiosity's sake.

InsideInsurance

Was 27 when I went from call centre to change management. Was a fair leap but still office based and was a very positive move in salary rather than backward one so not such a hard choice

Fireflyaway

I went from a call centre to volunteer management at 34 There were a lot of differences between the 2 jobs at first but to begin with they saw I had transferable skills.

I know of people who went back to uni in their 40's so plenty of time!

Babbawah

Is web design not a skilled trade then?

cavework

I worked as an in-house printer for a few large companies until I was 32..
By then I was married and had 2 kids but decided I wanted qualifications , I was a good printer but had no real technical knowledge..
I really wanted to work on the large presses but I was female which made it quite hard in the early 90,s .
I eventually got an apprenticeship with a large company and completed my C&Gs after 2 years..
Those 2 years were on minimum pay but the minute I qualified my earnings went through the roof
Not a complete change but really improved my earnings in future related jobs..
Did a few different things , recruitment consultant, HB assessor, sales, .
At 40 I started my own cleaning company, self employed and still going 15 years later..and now employing other people.
Only you know what you really want to do.
All I can say is you can either go for it and risk failing or look back when you are older and regret not giving this a go.
I have no regrets and although there were some really hard times I would not change any of my past decisions

agrinnall

Not at 30, but at 53, yes. At 30 you're still a baby, do whatever takes your fancy. Your working life is likely to be longer than you've been alive already, which is a long time to be thinking "I wish I'd done something else".

74jax

Babbawah wrote: »

Is web design not a skilled trade then?

I don't think so. I think to me skilled trade is brick layer, joiner, plumber.

Oldfatgrumpy

I fell pretty much by accident into my first job in local government at age 16, and stayed in local authority admin. until I got completely sick of it at 36, and left to become a mobile warden for local authority sheltered housing. I stuck with this until I finally tired of the job becoming less hands-on and more desk-bound and political by the day, so at age 47 left to become a self-employed taxi driver for five years. For ten years I've been a security/reception officer, still enjoying it although the State pension in 2.5yrs is beginning to look attractive.

Mistral001

OP, posing this question on a forum like this, could be dangerous with trying to decide what to do. You are going to get very few people describing their bad career changes and quite a lot describing their good career changes.


Some people are just lucky with career changes and others genuinely assess their situation correctly and change to a career that better suits them better and in which they genuinely have assessed correctly as having prospects.


Just on this last point, if you could correctly assess a career and determine that that it will have prospects in say the next five to ten years, you should now start investing in the stock market rather than thinking about changing jobs as you would make a fortune. We simply cannot say which careers are going to be careers that will have prospects in the future we can an educated guess, like investing in a certain sector in the stock market that we think will do well in the future, but we can say for sure.

melysion

I changed my career at 42. After most of my life in academia I decided to go into publishing. It took some planning and it was over a year before I finally got a entry level position but I've not looked back. Just be aware that you are likely to have to start at the bottom and take a hit financially for a while.

directdebiter

why don't you move into web development ? This will give you good earning potential and maybe you could run your own web business?