Major Career /Job changes

[bernie]

It was once said that people change careers about 3 times in their lives. This isn't including small jobs during high school. Nor is it including working your way up the ladder of a company. Going from IT tech to the supervisor position doesn't qualify.

I'm wondering about some of the bigger changes and what it was like. Both good and bad. Like changing from a job to one that you never really thought you'd be doing until the opportunity came up. Primarily ones where you maybe had to learn a different skillset. Like construction to computer programming.

b

[beta1607]

I am going from working as political staff on Capitol Hill to working as a manager at a family business in LA. From what I can tell so far a lot of the skills transfer. It's amazing how much of life just comes down a willingness to work hard and having the ability to interact well with people from all different walks of life.

[cha59]

I was in the courier industry for 15 years. I worked my way up from being a driver to an operations manager and did that for four years. It is a highly stressfull business to be in, especially the position I held. I needed to change industries.

I did some research on other careers and decided to become a real estate appraiser. Online career advice sites indicated bright futures for real estate appraisers.

I went to appraisal classes for six weeks, passed a state exam and got a license. It was then that I found out the job sites that suggested bright futures for appraisers, did not consider difficulty of finding appraisal work for inexperienced people. It was very difficult to find an appraisal company who would even talk to me, let alone hire me.

I made calls to about 100 appraisal companies and few would even allow me to send a resume. I wound up receiving one rejection letter because they were not hiring and one email asking if I was still interested in interviewing for a position - nine months after I delivered a resume. The rest of the resumes sent and calls I made were basically ignored.

Except one:

Only one person I talked to gave me an interview. This guy's response when I first got him on the phone was, "No we are not hiring." So I started asking him questions about what I should do if I really wanted to break into the industry. He spent about five or 10 minutes on the phone with me and said he would accept my resume, but again told me he wasn't hiring.

I put together an impressive looking resume with the best quality paper, envelope and folder I could find at the local office supply store. I got advice about the content and structure of the resume from a teacher at the appraisal school I went to and from my wife.

A little less than a week later I got a phone call from this guy and he told me my resume was the best he had ever seen. I went in for an interview and he hired me. He later told me that he gets about 10 phone calls every week from people like me who are looking for work. I was persistent and lucky to hit it off with him. Also my previous work experience impressed him.

I have been working with this company for about three years now. All we do is appraise commercial properties. I love the work. The stress level is non-existent compared to what I used to do and the money is good. I work out of my house about 80% of the time, spend about 10% of my time driving around looking at comparable properties and inspecting buildings and spend the remaining 10% of my time at the company's office. It is interesting, sometimes challenging and relaxing work.

A lot of my experience from my previous job actually helps me in this one too. Map skills, computer skills, knowledge of different types of businesses and people skills are probably the most important ones. Breaking into the industry was not easy, but it was worth it.

[Bucnutz19]

I think its hardest to stay in most positions because people have to make transitions through life. As you get the older the money, type of people, and job environment you want will constantly change. This of course influences our decisions to move onto new careers.

[bernie]

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I think its hardest to stay in most positions because people have to make transitions through life. As you get the older the money, type of people, and job environment you want will constantly change. This of course influences our decisions to move onto new careers.

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I don't know. It might depend. Many people(especially older) get very comfortable in their positions and don't like to change it. Even if the situation gets worse, the fear of trying for something new can be greater.

But some changes are from one industry to another with very little related. For instance, when I stopped doing floorcovering after 13 years, I wanted nothing to do with floorcovering. I could've went into sales a bit, but decided to change to something completely different, industry-wise.

It's almost like starting over, except not completely. Seems the skills you gained from previous usually don't really get the credit until you actually have the new job and implement them.

b

[bernie]

Cool story.

Btw...I didn't know if I was clear in my post what I was looking for. This was it. These types of stories.

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I was in the courier industry for 15 years. I worked my way up from being a driver to an operations manager

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I was a courier for awhile too. As a contractor(Looooved that truck insurance I had to carry [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]). Just wondering which part you liked better? Personally, I liked being on the road and travelling around. Meeting with people. The pay would've had to be alot better for me to stay in the office.

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It was then that I found out the job sites that suggested bright futures for appraisers, did not consider difficulty of finding appraisal work for inexperienced people.

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I'm sure they considered/knew about it, but were probably getting some kickback from the schools teaching it. But this is one of the scary things about changing over like that. Putting in all the time, spending the money on it and then, well, nothing. Even if you top a class taught. I've run into that a couple times. Sucks.

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Only one person I talked to gave me an interview. This guy's response when I first got him on the phone was, "No we are not hiring." So I started asking him questions about what I should do if I really wanted to break into the industry. He spent about five or 10 minutes on the phone with me and said he would accept my resume, but again told me he wasn't hiring.

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This guy sounds pretty cool. Anyone that'll take the time with you like this gets kudos. I've been down that 'rejection row' myself and it sucks. Too many just hang up the phone. (if actually busy, I can understand. But not everyone is that busy.) It's also a great sign to keep in touch with this guy.

Course, it's also better to go into some of these places in person.

Again, cool story. Nice change over.

Thanks.

b

[cha59]

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Cool story.

Btw...I didn't know if I was clear in my post what I was looking for. This was it. These types of stories.

....I was a courier for awhile too. As a contractor(Looooved that truck insurance I had to carry [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]). Just wondering which part you liked better? Personally, I liked being on the road and travelling around. Meeting with people. The pay would've had to be alot better for me to stay in the office.

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Thanks I'm glad you liked it [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] Theres a moderately long story about how I went into the office too. I'll try to summarize it:

During the Halloween blizzard of 1991 (I live in Minnesota near Minneapolis, here's a link explaining the storm: link) I got into an accident with my pickup truck. The roads had a 2" coating of snow/ice stuck to them for the rest of the winter after that storm. During the time my truck was being fixed, I drove my girlfriend's car over a chunk of ice and put it out of commission too. Two weeks after I got my truck back, the cylider head cracked. It was during this time that the company I was working for needed a new dispatcher. I had enough of driving and took the dispatch job.

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It was then that I found out the job sites that suggested bright futures for appraisers, did not consider difficulty of finding appraisal work for inexperienced people.

[/ QUOTE ] [ QUOTE ]

I'm sure they considered/knew about it, but were probably getting some kickback from the schools teaching it. But this is one of the scary things about changing over like that. Putting in all the time, spending the money on it and then, well, nothing. Even if you top a class taught. I've run into that a couple times. Sucks.

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The place I took the class at dropped hints that we should try to network before class was over, if we didn't already have a job lined up. I'm sure they knew. The source that gave me the misinformation was probably dated, not connected with any schools. There was a great need for appraisers about a year and a half prior to when I got into it. The problem was, too many people got into it and fewer people were refinancing or buying homes.



[ QUOTE ]
Only one person I talked to gave me an interview. This guy's response when I first got him on the phone was, "No we are not hiring." So I started asking him questions about what I should do if I really wanted to break into the industry. He spent about five or 10 minutes on the phone with me and said he would accept my resume, but again told me he wasn't hiring.

[/ QUOTE ]

This guy sounds pretty cool. Anyone that'll take the time with you like this gets kudos. I've been down that 'rejection row' myself and it sucks. Too many just hang up the phone. (if actually busy, I can understand. But not everyone is that busy.) It's also a great sign to keep in touch with this guy.

Course, it's also better to go into some of these places in person.

Again, cool story. Nice change over.

Thanks.

b

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Thanks.

The point I want to make is - even when someone tells you no, they might not mean no. The guy who hired me had just fired someone and was very busy. He just didnt want someone inexperienced to fill the position; at least he didnt think he did until he got to know me. Be persistent and ask good questions. Good things will happen.

[suzzer99]

I've heard that Pat Riley believes you should change careers every 10 years or so. Although then he wound up back in coaching. I kind of thought poker was going to be a career change after 8-9 years doing computer programing, but now I'm back in that too. I've always gotten a lot of satisfaction from programming though. I just was at an extremely boring job not doing much when I quit to do poker.

I waited tables and did stand-up comedy for most of my 20s. Then about age 29 I started to panic a little about getting a real career, so I took a couple programming classes (Perl and C++) at SF City college. In college Fortran and electronics were the only 2 classes I took where I was actually eager to work on the assignment. So I figured maybe there was some aptitude there. From that I wound up getting a job as a computer repair/network installation guy - for about $20k a year - in SF - right in the middle of the dotcom boom. Actually a huge drop from what I was making as a waiter. Although knowing what I know now, I think I could have talked/conned my way into an entry level programming job somewhere. I think I was still in the mindset of '92, when I graduated college, where there really were no jobs and you just took whatever you could get.

From that job I got a job where I was a SAS programmer and backup network guy at a small statistical consulting firm. Kind of helped that my cousin worked there. But I don't think he would have given me a break if he didn't see I was serious by taking the programming classes and the network job. After about a year and half at that job, a friend who worked there started tinkering with web programming in his spare time, and I thought that looked like fun. I didn't really see myself being a SAS programmer forever.

Around that time I'm standing at the bar at the Elbo Room in SF waiting for my drink, and this dude next to me just randomly flashes me his business card. He's a web designer. I tell him cool, I'm a web programmer. He says great, he has a project that needs one. I didn't know thing 1 about web programming. I didn't even know html was files. But I had enough confidence from how quick I picked up SAS programming that I could figure out whatever I needed to. It turns out the web designer had stumbled onto a gigantic project--a fully-featured e-commerce site built totally from scratch, with about 4000 products displayed in a huge variety of groups, like they were in the print catalog (ie - one web page would be 5 gymballs of different sizes and a gymball rack). This was 1998 and the only off-the-shelf e-commerce solutions were way too expensive for this client, and they wouldn't have worked for what they wanted to do with the display. Of course the web designer had no clue how involved this job was. He had bid the back-end development at $1000 (lol).

So I partnered with my buddy on it. It took us 6 months of nights and weekends, and I'd estimate we made about $1-$2/hr. In the end the client gave us $2k out of the goodness of their hearts. They lucked out with us and they knew it. This was probably a $50k site if they went to a real web shop. But we got what we wanted, which was to cut our teeth on web programming. Also I still have that client to this day, and for about 5 years I probably averaged $800/month in maintenance/new features. Plus they advance me money if I get in a pinch, they're almost family now. (Oh yeah, original web desiger went bat-[censored] insane during the project and we took over. He was manic depressive and Irish. Not a good combo.) Here's the site btw: http://www.rajala.com/cgi-bin/catalog.pl?Supplies2:: . It runs on perl and tab-delimted text files. Yes there are a lot of things I would do differently knowing what I know now. But the site does everything it needs to, fast, and is pretty much maintenance free (of course until I'm out in the boonies in Mongolia and Verisign decides to change something on their end).

Anyway I'm a gasbag. Hope that entertained. From there I've bounced around to different programming jobs and worked my way up to making a pretty nice salary. Moral of the story, as in cha's post, is to be creative and persistent. If it's something you want and the job is a good fit for you, you'll find a way to convince someone to give you a chance.


Cliff notes: suzzer takes some programming classes at age 29, leverages/bluffs/lucks/works his ass off into a nice career.

[turnipmonster]

nice post, and interesting career change.

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It runs on perl and tab-delimted text files

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doh! [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

[John Cole]

At one time, I was a member of the Operators' Union. I managed a branch store for a heavy construction equipment company (bulldozers, payloaders, etc.). I am now a member of the National Education Association and teach writing, film, and literature at the Community College of Rhode Island where I am an Associate Professor.

I guess this might be the sort of major career change you were looking for. Somehow, it just happened, and, as has been the case with me over the years, I've been lucky and sort of fell into my current occupation. I think I'll stick with this one, though. Working thirty weeks a year is much better than working fifty.