25, in debt. Career change/shift possible? How?

PardonTheWait

PardonTheWait

PardonTheWait

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Right... there's a long story behind this but I'll spare you the grisly details.

I recently lost my job, where I was working as a trainer teaching members of the public to use Macs. Before that I worked as a regular sales floor guy in the same store, but I love teaching people. I really enjoy it, and it was the first job I've had where it really felt like I was helping people. It may sound trivial, but I felt like I was, on a small scale, doing something really useful for people.

I'd like to carry on teaching people, about Macs or, if I'm honest... anything.

At age 25, with a reasonable amount of debt, is retraining or a career shift viable? Has anyone done similar? I mean, I have a part time job selling macs lined up, but it's not what I want long term (an eventual move to management would work, but again, it doesn't get me going), and unless it goes full time quite soon I'll only be treading water, which isn't ideal. But if there's some way I can retrain around that job, which I assume there must be, I'd like to look into it.

Has anyone moved into any teaching/training related job at a similar stage in life? How did you do it? How did you afford it? By the time you finished this career shift, were you still young enough to reap the benefits?

Any career shift advice would be welcome, not just regarding this career. And by career shift, I suppose it'd be more like finding a career than changing, because my previous job was a little bit too closed to be called a career. Fairly specific - but it did finally show me there's a job that actually feels to me like it's got a bit of value.

I have no degree, no teaching related qualifications, and this is the kicker... no GCSEs (I didn't fail them, I didn't take them) but I have real world experience of training all sorts of people and I'm an intelligent and personable person. I consistently received very good feedback from customers for my training, so I AM good at it. I just don't know how to carry on now I'm not in this job anymore, and I'll be honest I feel completely lost in my life at the moment.

Any advice would be gratefully absorbed :)
 
For teaching in a school/college I believe you need a degree. If you want to take that route, maybe do a course at the Open University? Been looking at that recently for myself. You can work while you're doing it so you're not losing out on too much income and no entry requirements either.

Just an idea anyway.
 
LostPhil said:
For teaching in a school/college I believe you need a degree. If you want to take that route, maybe do a course at the Open University? Been looking at that recently for myself. You can work while you're doing it so you're not losing out on too much income and no entry requirements either.

Just an idea anyway.
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It's a good idea however considering the guy is in debt I would imagine open uni is out of the question. I had a look at some of the IT related courses a while back and some part time etc ones were 12k over 6-7 years :eek:
 
Work for yourself, mate. Set yourself up providing on-site training and tech support to people.

What's the worst that can happen?
 
Open Uni I'm considering, I'm unsure I'd be able to afford it though. I'll be going the 'official' route as well of asking colleges and so on what I can do to retrain for something more useful.

Also going to start in earnest looking at mac training jobs, or rather seeing if there are any I could do.

Striking out on my own's a consideration too, I don't suppose there's enough work to live on, but even just as a filler job until I can get full time hours it could, with a little luck, be a moderate earner.
 
I think after 21 you might be classed as a mature student and you might not need any qualifications to study, some uni's have pathways courses that you can do to prepare you for university so it might be worth looking into that.

If you have debt problems you can get free help here - http://www.cccs.co.uk/

Then once thats sorted you could work and maybe study part time.
 
From reading up, to teach primary I'd have to get a couple of GCSEs done and take a relevant degree. I'm starting to think it might be possible. It'll take a lot of dedication though.

Funny how what goes around comes around, ten years ago this year I was thrown out of school, now I think I might want to be a teacher!
 
If you earn under £16.5k or something you would have got uni fees paid for (not sure if thats Scotland only) you could have used this to put yourself through open uni.
 
Cant seem to find more information, but I thought this was something the Open University's TV advert had mentioned. Been a while since I heard it. To google!

Something a bit similar: http://www.thecompleteuniversityguide.co.uk/single.htm?ipg=7707

I am sure I heard more specific info though I hadnt really paid attention properly, but I know I dont qualify since I am about £30 over the limit.

http://www3.open.ac.uk/studyatou/apply/eng-and-ni.shtml

http://www3.open.ac.uk/studyatou/apply/scotland.shtml <-- Maybe this what I thinking of.
 
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There are training jobs available in all sorts of areas. Might be worth speaking to some adult education / community education colleges - they do IT training courses for anyone from people who are 'new to computers' to more experienced people. Also there are IT trainer jobs in all sorts of companies and public sector organisations. Not necessarily high level stuff but it might be a start.

A lucrative area is corporate training on anything from team building to personal development etc. Have a look at businessballs.com for an idea of the stuff I'm talking about. You'll need to be proactive, a good communicator and have some experience of business if you go down that route though.
 
open uni have great financial assistance and you would be surprised about the upper limits on this, for example I earn £26k a year and am doing OU and I get £355 towards course fees and £255 towards equipment and my course costs about £630 per 60 point course so its almost free
 
I don't think doing a degree at this stage will be of benefit to you, there are plenty of other graduates around, loads of competition.

My advice is to do some job hopping. Find any old job to begin with, then hop, and hop, and hop again.
Each time you'll get a pay rise, and sooner or later you'll find yourself in a position you really enjoy.
It's much easier to find a new job when you already have one.
 
Speak to Matblack if his ban's been rescinded, he moved into that sort of field later in life (Connections advisor iirc).

Personally I switched career aged 25, well I say switched career, like you it was more a question of leaving a dead-end/limited job and finding a career. I found that once I'd got my foot in the door so many more options were open to me, I was able to achieve more in the space of 8 months than I had in the previous 4 years.

As for OU I'd recommend jumping on it while you can if you want to go down that route, I made the mistake of waiting until I was 28 and earning a reasonable salary before starting my course, meaning I get no financial assistance. If I'd gone for it when I was earning ~£10-13k I could have sponged a lot more.
 
PardonTheWait said:
Open Uni I'm considering, I'm unsure I'd be able to afford it though.
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you most likely will be able to afford it, I believe that if you're on a low income then the courses are subsidised to an extent and if you're unemployed they're free (at least this used to be the case)
 
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