Career changing. Career jumping. Career scaling.
It’s possible.
By a Youth Ambassador
When I left school, my dream was to embark on a forensics career. Disappointingly, that dream remains exactly that due to my general struggle around scientific formulas!
My fallback plan suggested I should join the police force instead. The two career paths were closely related. One examines the crime scene and the other justifies a conclusion. I decided the best approach was to revoke my UCAS application and enrol on a retail apprenticeship, with the main focus on developing my people and communication skills.
Retail success followed and I was regularly given overtime that amounted more hours than any other full-time staff. This was followed by full-time contracts, and then the association of multiple job titles within the company. The potential promotion implied I had just walked into a retail career I didn’t ask for. I only worked for two different retail companies, but they were very different; one purely focused on sales targets, and the other on customer service.
In between those years in retail and sales, I regularly volunteered, studied with free online courses, and even obtained an unconditional offer from my second UCAS form, but cancelled it because I wanted to focus working.
The skills I picked up in retail allowed me to branch into any career. Here a few things I think anyone in employment or volunteering should consider when applying for a new job or opportunity:
- Customer service (everyone looks for this, it’s PR-related),
- Sales and Finance (everyone looks for this, you need income to survive),
- Multi-tasking (everyone looks for this, you’re value for money),
- People skills (everyone wants you to handle stakeholders effectively),
- Shift work (it helps to be a flexible candidate meeting their needs)
- Replenishment and tidiness (everyone wants someone who pays attention to detail)
- Prioritisation (everyone wants someone who can use their initiative and judgements)
In January I moved jobs and became a business support officer and PA. It’s a different type of challenge compared to retail. There’s less of the physical aspects, and a clear focus on mentality and prioritisation. Being part of the business support team is great, and you get to communicate with every corner from HR to researchers to finance directors. It’s a brilliant way to draw up ways to branch out and specialise in other professions.
So there we have it. From retail you can just about get anywhere; from business and admin we can branch out to teaching, IT, project management, or finance.
Personally, I enrolled for an AAT accounting course at a college near my workplace. It’s costly, but with accounting and IT non-graduates more in demand than ever, why not!? It’s definitely going to be money well invested. I might even consider going back to forensics….
