Any advice for a career change?

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Bataar

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So my entire career has been based in IT and for the last several years, it’s felt boring, meaningless, uninspiring, etc. I’ve been thinking about changing careers, but I’m not even sure how to begin. I have a few years of business to business sales experience, but other than that, my schooling and work experience has been IT related.

At this point, I’m not even sure what I’d want to migrate to, but with my entire background focused on that, it just seems impossible. I do have some debt and bills that need I need to pay so taking a big salary hit isn’t an option. If anyone has any advice, thoughts, suggestions, etc, I’d love to hear it.
 
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Take an honest assessment of your skills, abilities, and personality abilities as a first step. Think of what does interest you, excite you, have meaning, and what do you yearn for. You can always gain skills needed while in your current position (outside of the workplace).
 
Make sure there is a market for the type of work you want to do.
 
Presuming you can pass a background check, consider working for the schools. School districts use millions of dollars in technology and need IT people to maintain it, assist teachers, and work with students using the equipment.
 
“IT” is a big field.

The skills of coder or software engineer will differ from the IT support desk to the DBA to the guy who pulls wire/installs system.

Write down you job description.

See what skills you have that will transfer to a different field.

You might also think of doing the same/similar job in a different setting. Working IT for a big hospital will be different than working IT for the Diocese will be different than doing IT consulting, teaching, etc.
 
IT is rather broad, so I don’t know what you really do.

If you can’t take a salary cut, leaving a high tech field may not be realistic. Look for new challenges within IT such as AI, data science, etc.

Contact the alumni services of your alma mater for some career counseling services.
 
I don’t know what your IT skills/degrees/certifications are, but…have you considered medical IT?! Please?? With sugar on it?

Our hospital is so short of good IT professionals and it’s awful for those of us who submit tickets. Apparently the IT people have hundreds of tickets and can’t even begin to get all that work done.

Many of them are “converts”" to IT from another hospital field. E.g., the lab has our own IT person who has a Med Tech degree (lab professional) and worked for about 15 years in Blood Bank before getting more interested in computers and applications. I believe that all her “training” is on-the-job. In other words, she has no education in programming or systems or any of the stuff that my husband (a systems administrator for large international computer company) has degrees and certifications in. I wish HE would work at our hospital, but it doesn’t pay as well as his current job.

Anyway–look into hospital IT. There is great need.
 
The problem is that I’m finding the work (systems administration, systems engineering) as just boring. I don’t want to do that anymore. Ideally, I’d be able to make a living on my photography, but that seems unrealistic (at least right now).

Has anyone here ever completely changed their career type? Gone from doing one type of work to something completely different?
 
I promise you, if you became our school’s IT specialist, it would involve photography and would not be boring, however, you may not like the pay.
 
Graduation photos, wedding photos, baby photos, people have annual photo shoots for family pics. You can do Church events (we use one photographer for FHC, Confirmation, and do not allow people to come up and take their own pics).

Take a photography class at the Community College, invest in some gear, maybe apprentice to a professional. Learn Photoshop because everything is edited now.
 
Bataar said:
Has anyone here ever completely changed their career type? Gone from doing one type of work to something completely different?
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Yes.

And you often have to take a step back, both career and pay-wise to do so.

I began my career teaching math and computer science at a high school. Then i left teaching and went it corporate IT support. I did that 12 years then moved to a nonprofit in operations management.

I’ve done two major career pivots. It comes with many pros and cons.
 
I apologize if I missed this info earlier in the thread. Just got back from a trip out of town and I’m behind on CAF!

If you are single and not responsible for anyone except yourself, then I think it’s just fine and exciting to try out a new career. Move in with some other people (same sex as you) and share rent in the cheapest apartment in the safest neighborhood that you can all find. Eat cheap–lots of Ramen noodles, and perhaps attend church potlucks (bring a bag of generic tater chips as your contribution) and eat lots and take any food home that the church ladies offer to give you. If you don’t mind, try dumpster diving. Sell everything that you don’t need to survive and use that money to pay bills!

BUT…if you are responsible for someone else–a spouse, children, elderly parents—then I hope you will set aside your dreams of a non-boring career and stick with the job that earns money enough to do your duty to those who are depending on you. Unless you have a whole hunk of cash in savings that you can all live on while you are developing your new career, you simply can’t put them at risk.

EVERY job is boring after you have done it for a while. What you need to do is figure out ways to make it exciting, interesting, and fulfilling again. Look for all the wonder in your job. Consider all the good you are accomplishing for mankind. And praise God for the skills you have and the livelihood that he has provided you with and ask Him for the grace to do a job that doesn’t thrill you.
 
A friend of mine switched from IT work to a career as a nurse, because as he said, “the mainframe doesn’t smile at you in the morning.” He probably took a hit in salary, but then again nurses are paid fairly well. And having IT experience would be a plus in learning to navigate the high tech devices in use now.
 
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