Transferrable skills

[crofty1984]

Don't know if this is a complaint, a rant or a request for some advice! Just mainly a bit of catharsis to write things down.

At the moment I'm early 40s, working as a project manager in engineering, before that was sales. To be honest I'm finding that PM work isn't all it's cracked up to be and was thinking about a career change either closer to manufacturing (workshop manager type roles) or getting into quality engineering.

I feel like after a certain point, experience in "that specific role" massively trumps the transferrable skills I've built up. I don't mind jumping a rung down the ladder to change careers, but it feels like you have to jump three rungs down and start again from the bottom. It's not an ego thing, I can't pay my bills on a graduate salary.
It doesn't help that I don't have a dream job, like I suddenly had a calling that I NEEDED to be a vet or I'd never be happy then I'd be having the difficult conversations with the wife, extending the mortgage etc.

Maybe I'm just poor at selling myself. Or being silly.

[craigjm]

Its a very common position to be in once you have been in work for 20 years say. People dont stick to the career they envisaged at 21 anymore and thats fine. You will find that some companies will reject you outright because they will expect people to start again at the bottom. These are the companies you dont want to be working for anyway. Those companies that you do want to be working for will be more open minded but you have to get your foot in the door first.

Applying for a career change means you have to think differently about your CV and how you sell yourself. The traditional CV wont cut it here because they will look at it and say "he is a project manager". What you need to do is create a CV that is skills based that shows the transferable skills and how they link to the environment you want to move into with the chronological career description being secondary to that. There are some good examples of skills based CV's online and a few people on here who will be good to talk to. Dont be tempted to allow AI to create it for you as there are now tools on the employer side to look for this and you could end up being thrown out when you dont want to be.

Once youre in the human stage of any recruitment you just need to be open and honest with the recruiting manager and tailor everything to their situation. You may not get the first one you apply for and you may need to take a bit of a dip but not massive.

You have taken the first step with your post here. Keep going

[crofty1984]

Thanks very much for taking the time to reply, it's good advice I shall be following this weekend

[BeeDeeVV]

I’ve always felt you’re more likely to be successful doing this within your current company as they’re more likely to have the faith you have the skills and ability to change roles, and obviously you may already know and have a relationship with the line manager. And they are less likely to make yoy go down the ladder?

[crofty1984]

BeeDeeVV said:

I ve always felt you re more likely to be successful doing this within your current company as they re more likely to have the faith you have the skills and ability to change roles, and obviously you may already know and have a relationship with the line manager. And they are less likely to make yoy go down the ladder?

To be honest I agree with you. It's quite a small company so not an enormous amount of room for movement, then again, we do have very high staff turnover.
I did think about a quality engineer job that came up at my place, but it was barely over minimum wage (I wonder why we have high turnover...)
I might try to pick up some new skills here though. I'm not against moving internally if the job was right.

[lizardbrain]

I would just move company. In most cases it's the people, not the job. Probably healthy to move every few years anyway. Internal moves less likely to pay market rate perhaps?

[67Dino]

I think it’s hard to move industry AND role at the same time. So might be easier to move in two steps: to a project manager role in a new industry (which may itself be rejuvenating) and then to a different role.