What should I be when I grow up?

In My Humble Opinion
1

(This time?) I’m a newly single mom who’s just starting back to work after having been at home with my kids for the past six or so years. I do have a job now, working as an executive assistant. I don’t hate it…I’m good at it, and I like the people I work with and for. The problem is it pays horribly, and there’s no room for advancement. Before I had kids I was never career-minded, but now that I know I need to support myself and my two kids on my own, and now that I no longer have baby fever, and I’m a lot more mature, I need to choose a career path. That’s where you guys come in. :slight_smile:

Here are my qualifications/abilities:
–My only working experience is working as a receptionist then admin assistant then executive assistant. (If you don’t count retail customer service teenage jobs.)
–I have a bachelor’s in Journalism, professional writing to be more precise. And no fair picking out my grammar mistakes and typos, it’s been almost 20 years. I’ve done nothing with this degree other than doing a little creative writing in my own free time.
–I’m smart, a fast learner.
–I’m good with computers. I especially love Excel…I’m an Excel nerd.
–I hate getting up in front of people to speak.
–My strengths in school were always on the English/History side of things, but I’m okay at math, too…just have to work a little harder. I fail so bad at chemistry, though.

My priority for job ideas are 1) A good salary. The higher the better, obviously. I don’t mind working as a drone in a cubicle if it means more money. 2) Doesn’t require a new degree. I’m totally up for taking a few classes here or there, or working towards a certification, but I don’t have the time or money to go back to school full-time. That’s why I’m considering going the computer-programming route…seems like something I could train myself on in the evening after the kids are in bed or on slow days at work. But then the question becomes…what languages should I learn? Which are in high demand and have a future? I don’t even know where to begin!

And I’m wondering if there’s some other career path I could train myself for that I’m not even aware of. It seems like so many of my friends have just sort of fallen into their careers by accident and chance…I’m feeling kind of at a loss of where to go from here.

Any ideas? I’ll be happy to answer any further questions…

2

One path to consider is civil service. The entry level positions are usually pretty open and then you can work your way up through promotion exams within the system.

You’ll never reach the financial success you’d see at the top of professions like finance or the law or medicine - but the peaks of those professions require very high education standards. What you’ll get in civil service is steady secure employment with a nice benefits package.

3

“Cubicle drone” isn’t really a job description. Particularly since most people work in some sort of office.

You could go work in a big insurance company. For some reason, insurance companies always hire the consulting firms I work for (consulting typically requires advanced degrees as well or a lot more computer background than a couple of Excel classes). But the insurance companies always seem to have thousands of middle-aged women with not particularly impressive resumes and “some computer skills”. They typically do some sort of anachronistic bullshit work. Probably why they hire all sorts of consulting firms.

Anyway, maybe you can do whatever work they do? And they seem to have good job security.

4

Can you sell? Lots of money there if you’re good at it.

5

My suggestion would be to try to find an executive assistant position with an outfit that was big enough to have some room to expand your job and take on more responsibilities, thereby making yourself more valuable. And once you’ve been in that next job long enough to increase your responsibilities and develop some relationships, try to get some formal or informal mentoring to give you ideas of where you go from there in terms of making your increased worth to the firm pay off in a higher salary for you.

6

To quote Charlie Brown, when posed (by Linus) “What do you wan to be when you grow up?”

“Outrageously happy”. :smiley:

You could (and most certainly have) done worse…

7

In this vein, what about office manager type jobs? You have to be organized and good at multi-tasking, but a good office manager is invaluable to many workplaces, has good transferable skills if you want to move around, doesn’t require any special training. Executive assistants, if they have a track record of great performance, can earn a fair amount here in Silicon Valley - but of course, our cost of living is insane.

OP, my advice to you is to read a bunch of job ads and position descriptions in your local area, and keep lists of things that appeal to you, and things that don’t - and why. This could be anything about the job, from office size and culture, to software packages or other duties you’d handle. This will give you a much better jumping off point at which to construct a career narrative, an essential tool in job searching, especially if you’re changing careers.

For example, I had an interview for an office manager type role at a non-profit. I’ve worked in informal education non-profits for ten years, but had more programmatic roles. During the interview, I told the hiring manager how I’d been considering my prior roles, where I’d managed staff and driven change, and succeeded at it, but which required a great deal of my creative and emotional energy. I said that I’d be ultimately most fulfilled and successful in a support role.

This was 80% bullshit, but it made my application make sense to them, and resulted in a job offer (which I turned down for a programmatic role elsewhere…)

Good luck, hope this helps.

8

This is probably too late to help the OP, but my answer to this question when posed by my students is:

DON’T grow up. It’s a trap!

9

How about finding yourself a new partner? Two together live more cheaply than two apart which will decrease the short-term need for money, and you’ll be psychologically better off.

As for jobs, have you considered cleaning houses? Freelance women typically get ~£15/hour in SE England; men don’t get a look-in.

10

Frankly, to me it sounds like you’ve given up before you’ve even started. For every job there is someone who loves it. They go home and read books about it. They attend professional events on their own dime. They huge networks that they carefully cultivate, and they generally live and breathe it. And that person is always going to get the jog over someone who doesn’t give a damn as long as they get paid. If you just need a 9-5, that’s one thing. But if you want to make a lot of money you’ve got to dig in. And you aren’t going to dig in if you don’t care.

Think this through again. What do you really want? A what makes your eyes light up? If you could to to school for anything, what would it be? If you wrote a novel, what would the protagonist be?

Then you can think about entry level, further training, etc.

11

“Excel nerd” is a little vague, IMHO. Does this mean you can write macros and complicated array formulas? Or just make nifty charts and tables?

Database management is a marketable skill. But just being good with Excel isn’t enough. You’d want to learn a programming language like SQL and gain proficiency with MS Access. Ths could open some doors for you.

12

Where I work (medical software company), I’ve been there almost 20 years and several people have started as receptionist, and then established inner connections and they transitioned to other internal positions such as with customer service, office manager, human resources, and marketing positions. OP, if your office has those positions you could combine external training with a move like that.

Good luck to you!

13

Thanks for all the replies, everyone! Sorry it’s taken me so long to respond. Computer at home is broken, which means I have to wait for a slow period at work before I can hop on here.

I’ve answered some of your posts below. If I didn’t quote you directly, please don’t think I’m ignoring your post…some of these other ideas are really intriguing to me. Please keep them coming!

I just meant I’m not picky about my work environment.

Unfortunately, no. I’m just too much of an introvert. I can get along with coworkers easily, but I just don’t have the kind of aggressive personality it takes to be successful at sales.

Yeah…no thanks. For now I think I’m definitely better off as a singleton. That’s part of this…I want to be able to rely on myself from now on.

I can do some of the simpler macros and formulas…but yes, I definitely have plenty of room to grow my knowledge there. Which I enjoy doing…I like figuring out how to make things work the way I want them to.

Awesome! Okay…so SQL. And Access…what else? My dad was a Visual Basic developer before he retired and thinks I should learn that…is that still marketable?

Thanks for these thoughts, even sven, but I’m just trying to be practical. I’m not looking for my great passion in life, and I know I’m not going to be filthy rich. I’m looking for yes, a nine-to-five job I can go do and not hate and support myself and my kids with. Maybe I will write a great novel someday, or create a successful pop culture blog, or whatever…but that’s going to have to happen in my free time. I just want to be able to pay the bills, put my kids through college, and put some aside for retirement every month–aspiring novelist isn’t going to cut it. Right now I’m living paycheck to paycheck, on food stamps and gov’t assistance, and it sucks.

But your advice is excellent for someone starting out fresh…it’s exactly the kind of thing I’ll be telling my kids when the time comes.

14

Even before I read your response, I was going to quote Sven’s post and say that it doesn’t have to be about something your live and breathe every second – not everyone has one of those-- but it helps to find something you are interested in (again not necessarily life-consumingly interested, but interested). If you’re stuck in the non-fiction section of a library, what kinds of books would you get? When you flip through a newspaper, what subject would guarantee you read an article? What subject would you most like to write a newspaper article about yourself?

With such a broad non-specific set of skills, narrowing down options to particular kinds of things might help a bit; it would certainly allow you to focus a bit more on higher-level jobs and sell yourself as more than just a generic “I can file and do excel” office assistant.

15

House cleaning in the United States is typically a minimum wage proposition if you work for a service, and is generally occupied by immigrant labor who are willing to work any hours and bear any burden. It is not a desirable job, much less a career with advancement opportunities.

To the o.p.: have you considered technical writing? Good or even decent tech writers are in high demand. While a technical background is helpful, an ability to learn appropriate terminology and industry-specific formats is more important. If you also have some basic graphic design and structured document formatting skills, you’ll find a good demand. Similarly, if you are detail oriented and capable of learning jargon, becoming a Certified Legal Assistant (“paralegal”) will offer a lot of decent paying options, albeit often in a high stress, performance-oriented environment. Both may offer the option of freelancing or agency contract work once you’ve built up a resume, offering some flexibility in scheduling versus a typical corporate job, and potentially the opportunity to make a higher rate than you would get in a normal corporate-defined pay scale.

Stranger

16

Paralegal? Does require some training, but I don’t think the requirements are that onerous. I work in an attorney’s office as a patent writer and the paralegal is a mom who became a paralegal when her kids were young. There is a lot of organization and attention to detail involved, but it’s a pretty quiet job, and seems to be well-paying. I suppose it depends on what type of attorney, but I work for a patent attorney and it is a great office environment for an introvert.

And by the way, I feel your pain. I had a decent career until my oldest was born 10 years ago. Then I worked part time at another job. Then my youngest started first grade and I had to figure out what I was going to do because my part-time job wasn’t enough hours to keep me from being bored and my original career path was too many hours and too high-stress. Fortunately for me my current job fell into my lap, but good for you for trying to plan ahead!

17

I don’t think you are getting my point.

You would like a stable desk job that makes decent money, has some room for advancement and offers decent work life balance-- and you have few specialized skills and are unwilling to invest much time in training.

You, and everyone else. There are thousands of fresh graduates entering the market every year, and they are fighting tooth and nail for every entry level job, slightly paid internship, and foot in the door opportunity. And you are competing with them.

You can do this, but you need a strategy. You need to know what training makes sense, what companies to target, what professional contacts to cultivate, and what job opportunities are ones that will grow you and which will limit you. It doesn’t need to be your entire life, but in today’s market finding even a stable office job does take quite a bit of active career management.

And to do that you need a field. It doesn’t have to be your dream field, but it makes sense to at least be interested in it. Technical writing is a good idea. A PA can transition into conference and events planning. Any kind of policy or analysis work calls for strong writing. Paralegal work could make sense.

But you have to choose, because you will probably need to jump through some entry level hoops, you will likely need some more training (hopefully once you are already in a company that offers training benefits), and you will need to build the story of your career in a way that makes sense. If you can tell a good story about your career, people will help you. They will mentor you. They will hire you. They will want to see you grow and succeed, because they want to be a part of your story.

But people don’t help the drifters. They don’t see themselves in that non-narrative.

Once you know where you are gojng, go on LinkedIn and find people who have the job you want in five years. See what titles they’ve held and what companies they’ve worked for. Really get to know what leads where. Then develop a short list of companies and watch their job list weekly. Go to job fairs in your field. All of them. Go until the recruiters want to give you a job just to get you out of their face. That way, you know who to contact when those key entry level positions you’ve identified open up. You will need an inside contact to get the resume on the desk.

18

This is all good advice. The o.p. may want a stable job with opportunity for advancement, but the employer–who is making the decision on who to hire–is looking for someone who is motivated, capable, and most importantly, likely to provide good service for the amount of training and mentoring that will have to be invested for any genuinely professional position. Nobody will expect en employee to be in the same position or at the same company for more than four or five years, but they at least need to see that they’ll get good value of the time and energy they do invest.

And it is worth emphasizing that creating and maintaining a good network of mentors, peers, and eventually, potential future employees (or at least peers you can recommend for recruitment) is essential to advancement Training and certifications are all well and good, but any worthwhile candidate has those., and some will have more than you will ever have time to acquire if you worked on it full time. What makes you stand out to an employer or client is a recommendation from a respected peer or friend, or a past history of shared experiences that lets your future employer know that you understand his business and the challenges in it, and will be able to come in and take your share of the load without having to be led around or given explicit instruction. Right now, you need to find a position that offers experience and a recruiter who will champion you over other equally qualified candidates because you have that special something (motivation, capability, empathy, whatever) that makes you stand out.

Good luck to you.

Stranger

19

Happy,I hope

20

Posting from my phone so I apologize for the brevity and/or typos. Yes, this is all excellent advice once I choose a career path. But I need to decide that path, first. Which is the point of this thread.