How to Retrain for a Different Job as an Adult
When we were younger and training for our initial career, it was easy to know how to access the skills that we needed in order to begin to make some progress. Life was laid out in a logical order and we could see the beginnings of the pathways leading to where we thought we were going. We have been in high school and have then gone on to College, University or an Apprenticeship and we were sure that we would pick up the skills that we needed for our chosen careers along the way.
Fast forward a few years and we have decided that we want to pursue a different career. It can be hard to fall out of love with a job and it happens slowly and by increments, if you actually loved it at all. It can be hard to acknowledge that something you have given so many years of your life to doesn’t work for you any more. This is what’s known as a “sunk cost” fallacy - a reluctance to abandon a course of action because you have invested heavily into it.
People tend to re-evaluate their lives around the age of 40 or so and this is often known pejoratively as a “mid-life crisis”. It is traditionally where people evaluate all aspects of their lives and figure out what is and isn’t making them happy and it is also the time of life when many people decide to end relationships they have been in for years rather than “staying together for the kids”.They decide to leave behind what makes them unhappy and live toward their own happiness for a while at least. This is where we come in with the decision to retrain for a different job.
Post-Covid Jobs Outlook
Many people have also been leaving their jobs because they no longer want to work in an office environment in the immediate post-covid period. Many office workers decided that the happiness they derived from working from home during lockdown was something that they weren’t prepared to sacrifice, so they decided that they would move on to other jobs with different employers, or even different careers entirely. There are many options for retraining and some of these are available online for free. Many of the “remote first” jobs tend to be in areas such as software development and as freelance social media managers etc.
Online Courses
There are many courses that can teach you the basics of any of the online competencies that you may need in order to pursue remote jobs. Many of these courses are freely available on Youtube and some are paid video courses on the likes of the LinkedIn Learning platform.
There are many excellent ways to learn about the subjects that you need to know about and you should ensure that you have become proficient in the more advanced courses on the subject of your choice and understand how it all works. After practicing and trying different examples for six months to a year, if you are planning to freelance then that may be as in-depth as you need the courses to be, before setting off on your journey.
You should now join some freelancer websites, set up your profiles and begin to bid for jobs in these areas. You should only bid for the most simple jobs at first until you are confident that you can do everything that may be expected of you in some of the more expensive jobs and you have begun to gain a positive reputation on the site.
You can always refer back to the video courses for handy pointers and you should try to network with others in a similar situation so that you have a cohort of other people you can call upon for assistance if you ever need it and find yourself out of your depth.
Offline Courses - Local Colleges etc
The local colleges in your area should provide you with a prospectus of the courses that they can offer, if you tell them that you are a prospective student. You will be able to find vocational courses on practically everything under the sun in some of these and you should definitely be able to find courses related to your areas of interest.
Check what level the qualifications are because you don’t want to jump into something that is too hard to begin with. It will only cause you to become discouraged and disheartened. If you are changing careers, you probably want to try something at level 2 or 3 to begin with and if you do well in those and qualify, you will have useful qualifications in your new subject area that you can refer to when applying for jobs that match your new career.
The Open University
The original distance learning institution, the Open University, is definitely worth considering as an option. They have an extensive list of courses and they can all be taken over the internet via distance learning. You may have to attend once or twice per year in person but for the most part it is as remote as it gets in the world of education.
The Open University used to show their lectures late at night on the BBC channels but now they can just stream them to their students over the internet. Such innovative thinking was always part of the OU and they are still at the forefront of providing remote learning opportunities. It is worth contacting them to see what they have available in your area of interest.
They are likely to have a selection of courses which meet your criteria and which offer a credible qualification at the end of them, unlike some of the internet based courses that we mentioned earlier. Credibility is the key and the Open University has that in spades. It is well-recognised and is a very credible academic institution with courses that will be sure to meet your needs.
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