Career Advice?

[Kerou 犠牲]

Hi guys, looking for some grown up advice lol

The past month or so I've hit a point where I've finally decided that I want to venture into a career, however my biggest problem is that I still don't know what type of career I want to get into. I think I've been leaning towards marketing since I did that for a good amount of years and whilst I ended up not enjoying it from an educational perspective I think from a practical perspective it wouldn't be so bad.

Now, another problem is that, due to not having a degree despite being at Uni for 2.5 years, I have no idea how I would even get started in any sort of career. I've really been thinking about all the things I don't want to do, and since I've been working now for almost 12 months (10 months full time) I feel like I don't want to spend too much more time in retail (well kinda retail). I guess I'd need to look at possibly assistant roles but even some of those want degrees or training with certain programmes which I haven't had access to.

I'm just getting kind of worried that I'll end up stuck in a job I won't feel rewarded from, I've already had people talk to me as if I'm wasting my potential and whilst it's never as easy as that, I dunno, it's all a bit hard and stuff haha

Any advice would be greatly appreciated, also sorry if my wording on all of this is rubbish ^^;

[Milsap]

Despite what every advisor told you in school, you don't need a degree to have a career.

Starting as a shelf stacker at Asda and working up to management. It's not the career they'd want you to have, but it's a career. My father in law barely has any GCSEs (or O Levels as they were then) yet he's running a successful business.

I can't say I speak from having the same experience as you. I walked into this job because said father in law is my boss but I run my own wing of the company now. But- This job and subsequent career started because I had no other options available to me as I had left teaching, no recording studio would take on an intern and the police had just finished a recruitment drive as I was coming out of teaching.

Get networking in what it is you want to do. Someone somewhere will know somebody. It's who you know, not what you know.

[Kerou 犠牲]

Tbf that having a degree does seem to make it quite a lot easier, especially these days.

I could work up towards management in where I am, I could probably do it in 3-5 years (providing right opportunities) but I don't know if I could grind it out, especially when the reward both financially and in terms of happiness of life isn't exactly rewarding. I mean, I could cope with the money but it's more to do with my own ambitions and wanting to accomplish something a bit more substantial, you know?

Yeah, I know that networking is a great platform, I've heard great things about LinkedIn as a platform for that, but at the same time I'm still a bit unsure as to how that can direct me into the right kind of thing haha

[Kpyna]

not sure if your college prices are as wild as they are in the USA but regardless i don't think it would be such a bad idea to get a degree in marketing or some other form of business because those will come in SUPER handy if you ever wanna advance beyond store management or if you decide you wanna start your own business. getting the real life experience is awesome, but i don't want you to end up hitting a wall because some employers will realize that you're a good employee, but the job requirement is that you need a related degree.

college is also a great place to network... talk to your parent's friends and coworkers who already work at a company, i've found that almost all of my parent's friends want to help me succeed and they offer me all of their connections and so on and so forth.

[Kerou 犠牲]

I was at Uni for 2.5 years, at this point there's no chance I'd go back. Maybe 5-10 years down the line but atm I just wouldn't be able to motivate myself for it.

[Milsap]

not sure if your college prices are as wild as they are in the USA

When I went it was £3,000 ($4,600) a year tuition. Then they bumped it to £6,000 ($9,000) and now it's £9,000 ($13,000).

So £27,000/$39,000 over three years (we do one year less but apparently our degrees are worth more according to academic sources) is putting a lot off going. Especially since the coalition government vetoed the Liberal Democrats' promise not to jack them up.

[That Girl in the 'Roo Suit]

Online courses might help? Futurelearn offers free courses, often done by lecturers themselves, which are always interesting and useful. You only pay if you want the certificate for having done the course, so it's a good way to judge whether or not something is going to be useful before you pay for the qualification. Might not necessarily be a degree, but it's more useful if you've actively gone out of your way to research things relevant to what you want to do. And you go at your own pace, which is useful.

Otherwise, I've found it's pretty much who you know, not what you know. I am where I am now because I had a job here before, and people could vouch for me. Okay, it makes it very difficult to leave, but it's stable for now regardless. A degree does not necessarily make your life easier. My life is hindered by not being able to drive, for instance. And I'm overqualified for about 90% of the jobs I've applied for here. But it'll be that way until I leave Swansea, unfortunately.

(Also if you didn't understand marketing from an academic point, I don't know if you'll enjoy it as a career, because you're going to need to learn the academic stuff regardless. Maybe you'll enjoy a different approach, but the theory will be the same however you tackle it. Maybe it was Swansea that did that to you, though. You never know. It has that effect on people)

[Kerou 犠牲]

Hmm, I'll look into Futurelearn, sounds like an interesting concept at least. The going at your own pace would suit me far more too at this point.

yeah, I know the pain with the not being able to drive but I'm trying to fix that, although it's taking longer than I thought ^^;

I did understand Marketing, I just found it frustrating as it got more deep to learn about, but I think elements of demotivation with life in general helped towards that. It's something with the right going over I'd be fine with I think. I dunno if it was just Swansea that did that to me, I've always been quite self destructive, I guess everything just began to act as a catalyst.

(btw thanks for the responses guys, I appreciate it =D)

[Milsap]

There's the Skills Centre (if you want to do a trade, maybe) or the Open University. My mother did a course with the OU and she was still able to work while doing the course. Lot of late nights, but she loved it.

[lets all go out for some frosty chocolate milkshakes]

Now, another problem is that, due to not having a degree despite being at Uni for 2.5 years, I have no idea how I would even get started in any sort of career. I've really been thinking about all the things I don't want to do, and since I've been working now for almost 12 months (10 months full time) I feel like I don't want to spend too much more time in retail (well kinda retail). I guess I'd need to look at possibly assistant roles but even some of those want degrees or training with certain programmes which I haven't had access to

first and foremost, welcome to your 20s!!!! the soulsearching nightmare no-one warns u about after all the melodrama in ones teens.



if you cant hack a uni degree then you are going to find a career change very difficult. uni degrees and careers are both abut Hard Work and forcing yourself to gt over yourself in order to do a thing you hate so that later on you can do a thing you like, more or less. a completed uni degree says to an employer "i can put the effort in and get thru w/e u throw at me" even if ur a huge spazmo like me and a 2:2 is the best u could do w/ night after night of revision. (however it is at a Good and Hard Uni and a 2:2 here is probably a 1:2 elsewhere so theres that at least)

so you need to find some other way of proving Dedication to yourself and your future employers, and properly, with courses/volunteering w/e. they're gonna look at ur uncompleted degree and go "so.......whats gonna stop you from leaving here in a year when its ~~~~too hard~~~~ or w/e. why should i take you on??" unless u remedy it with Extras in the oncoming future.

like you can't even tell us what kind of career you want to go into yet so advice is going to be sorta corollary at best, a lot of "find out what it is you even like first" cos u really cant help people beyond that. you're the one who has to do all the Experimenting and Toe-dipping.

use the job as a Savings Account booster, the job is good in which it is keeping you in Money at least so give it credit for that and treat it as means to an end otherwise ur gonna be ~~~~~too depressed~~~~~~ to think about any change at all.

money sadly is the primary obstacle to all Career Changes (even volunteering, the other way in, requires u to be financially self supporting)

if u do the basest bit of research (all career changes need at least some dedication to Courses and College Classes to be a firm contender in and guess what, they cost handsomely!!!!) save up some cash and see if you can fit the odd night college/OU course around the job. (employers LOVE a completed OU degree btw, jsyk.)

if its 2 years later and you still dont have a clue at least u will have some college courses under ur belt for ur future employer to go "wow u really turned that uni mess around and got thru s/t!"


the only other advice i can give is to go back to basics, find out what career you can least hate (everyone has a Personal Skill Set that helps them do one type of job better than others, it just requires a lot of Thinking About It) and move towards that, otherwise accept ur lifetime in being a middle manager for the rest of your life and develop an intimate relationship with an alcoholic spirit and ur own deprecating liver.

its hard and crappy and it'll suck but its either that or a bunch of sugar-coating about """"you're future""". everyone has to do this at some point in their lives



disclaimer: after completing a degree in chemistry i found out im too dumb to do further study (the wimps way out, ask any phd student about why they didnt go into industry and they'll stammer and stare at their feet) and theres barely any chemistry jobs around me so im tryina move into a career of mental health/special needs/occupational therapy

[Kpyna]

So £27,000/$39,000 over three years

My school costs $40,000 for out of staters with no scholarships. Not saying the crap college situation in America is reason for you guys to do anything, but I still think that's pretty wild 😵

If you don't wanna get a degree here's my suggestion: something like 80% of marketing majors (at least in the usa) end up doing sales. If you have the degree you immediately get a leg up in what you qualify for, but sales is a career just about anyone can bust into. I used to work a sales job for 6 months (I only stopped because I got into a car crash) and I'd work like 15 hours a week and pull $200 to $600 a week with minimal effort. Make it a full time career and put some effort into it, and you're looking at money. It's also pretty low commitment, especially at entry levels, and you meet a lot of people who run their own businesses and have industry experience. My coworker sold timeshare and he said his first year he made like $60,000 which is only the average pay.

[Milsap]

My school costs $40,000 for out of staters with no scholarships. Not saying the crap college situation in America is reason for you guys to do anything, but I still think that's pretty wild

I was lucky I went when I did. Student Finance UK paid the tuition (which I pay back) and gave me a maintanence grant (about £1,100/$1700 in three installments a year) which, if you were lucky in that your parents could pay the accommodation fees, was more than enough to live on, if you didn't go clubbing on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday like some did every week. They failed first year, which is very hard to do. You almost have to deliberately fail.

Of course, if you're reading this and genuinely could not get through first year even though you worked your arse off, don't feel like I'm trying to put you down. I just have no time for slackers.