Career change - next steps

El_Rey

I currently hold a Band 4 Office Manager position in the NHS and have done for over six years. I have now reached the point where I feel I need to move on to something new as there's no room for progression in my current role and have become bored in my job.

Ideally I would like to leave the NHS behind and find a completely different kind of role, but I have no idea what I really want to do.

I don't have any post-GCSE qualifications and I have held a few different administrative positions in the public sector since leaving school 20 years ago. In addition to the standard skills required for administrative work I also have experience of asset management (relating to medical equipment), purchasing, customer service, attendance management and contract management.

Can anyone advise how I can identify a new career for me? Are there any obvious careers my existing skills could transfer over to?

Savvy_Sue

Do you want to leave this kind of work behind, or do this kind of work in a different sector? 

If the latter, charity management might be a good match. 

Marcon

Start from the point of realism:

• what vacancies are there in your area (or within reasonable commuting distance), unless you're prepared to relocate
• what distinguishes you from other applicants and would make you more desirable to a potential employer than the other slew of applications they'll get for every job (many hopeless, so don't let that depress you too much!)
• are you prepared to study for further qualifications to make you more employable?
• can you afford to take a pay cut while you (re)train - for example, could you afford to do an adult apprenticeship?
• do you have any constraints on what you can do, whether these are family ties/obligations, health considerations or similar?
• what do you NOT want to do/hate doing?

That might not sound the most constructive list, but work through it and you'll find it helps to cut out quite large chunks of things you wouldn't want to pursue.

This might also be a useful link: https://nationalcareers.service.gov.uk

gwynlas

You would have a lot of transferable skills in admin of any kind but having worked in public sector for so long you might find things very different in the private sector in terms of expectations etc. Are there any opportunities in other sectors of the NHS where you could achieve higher banding and aquire more skills? You are young enough to retrain in another career but this might mean a drop in your income whilst doing so. Would yoou for example be prepared to become a mature student? 

El_Rey

Savvy_Sue said:

Do you want to leave this kind of work behind, or do this kind of work in a different sector? 

If the latter, charity management might be a good match. 

Ideally I would like to leave this kind of work behind. 

El_Rey

Marcon - That's a really useful list of questions as it helps to weed things out and makes you think about what kind of things you like to do. Thanks.

Gwynlas - I wouldn't like to be a full-time mature student, but one option I do have is to make use of the training funds available to NHS staff and get some free training from my employer. The only issue is deciding what to study. 

El_Rey

Can anyone else add anything to this, please? 

tokyo2020

I guess it's hard to add more unless you can share more with the forum without revealing sensitive info.? 

Perhaps sharing some answers to the questions Marcon raised could result in others filling in blanks / bouncing off other ideas?

What have you done with the advice so far and / or since the post was created? 

Have you spoken with colleagues or even former ones or friends that have changed careers or re-trained?

El_Rey

Since my last post the area of technical writing has caught my attention and is something I would be willing to retrain in. Does anyone on this forum have any experience in this field? Are jobs in this field easy to come by once you have the appropriate qualification?