When your alarm goes off in the morning, do you look forward to the day’s work that lies ahead of you, or do you feel dragged into the office? The answer to this question could tell you a lot about how happy you are in your career. Working with nice people and feeling comfortable in your role are not reasons to stay in a job that doesn’t make you happy. Who wants to spend 40 plus hours a week in a job they don’t like?
It’s never too late to change up your career path and here’s some tips on switching things up for 2018.
Start Your Own Business
Do you work in job that could be done freelance? Chances are, if you can build up enough contacts, you could be making more money and working to your own hours – a real perk. This option gives you the freedom to nip to the doctors, dentist or opticians without using annual holiday as well as working around childcare more easily.
This type of business uses your expertise in a certain area of work to charge for your time. You are the commodity – personal trainer, freelance writer, consultant etc. The other option is starting a business with a product. Maybe you could start a candle business or an online cake shop, perhaps your interests lie in selling vintage cars or making furniture; the possibilities are endless.
Entrepreneur has a great article called 50 signs you need to start your own business, that will help you to make the leap from employed to self-employed. A key piece of advice is: get ready for hard work and long hours. Setting up your own business is a brave thing to do and you need to have lots of passion and belief in yourself and/or your product.
It is also advisable to start your business alongside your current job. It will mean using your spare time and weekends to get things off the ground, but having an income to support you will give you that little cushion you need. Once you start getting it off the ground, you can then invest in some suitable office furniture, from companies like office monster, to replicate a typical work environment wherever your business is based.
Bye-bye Customer-facing Role
For customer facing roles, such as the health or medical professions, dealing with the public can be the best part of your job or the absolute worst, depending on your personality type. If you are faced with the same questions every day or simple communication with the public makes you feel uneasy, maybe a behind the scenes role in the health or medical sector could be the change you need.
You’d be surprised about the amount of jobs that don’t work directly with customers that are available. You could be a perfect fit for one them!
If you know you aren’t the best communicator, stop feeling out of your depth by forcing yourself into a role that requires that skill. You could be thriving in another job instead of feeling inadequate in your current one.
Your new career could be just around the corner – customer-facing no more!
Retrain to Gain
No matter how old you are, retraining for the job that could give you a lot of pleasure is better than sticking with a career that is sucking the life out of you! Do you have a nagging feeling that you should be doing something else? Perhaps your current job is way off the mark and taking the time to retrain in another career could make you much happier.
Before you quit your job and leap into an expensive course/degree, using your holiday time to do some work experience is worth its weight in gold. This risk-free option gives you a taste of your possible new career, while giving you contacts within that industry. After this, you will have a better idea of whether you’d like to make the leap.
If you have responsibilities such as a mortgage and a family to support, there are ways around giving up your full-time work to study. Open University is one option – this list of courses will show you if you dream career is included.
If you have some financial leeway, you could consider apprenticeships in your chosen field. Although things will be tight money-wise to begin with, you could end up making more money than your previous job once fully qualified, plus you’ll be happier.
Educating yourself is never a bad idea, even if you are planning on starting your own business. Knowledge is power, and having the skills to achieve your goals will only help to boost your success. Courses such as bookkeeping, marketing and a social media refresher will add several strings to your bow when building up your venture.
