Has anyone used a professional career advisor (such as these folk? Not exactly cheap at £495 + VAT but if it helps me choose the right path at this point in my life then I’m thinking it might be worth it? I’m 32 with no degree/qualifications as such, just been drifting along in life thus far: I’m getting the feeling now (very strongly might add, I guess it’s a side effect of growing up!) that I can’t just keep doing this forever…

cheers for your advice and thoughts STW’ers, I really do appreciate it 😀

I’m exactly the same psychle, drifted through plenty of jobs. Wont list them all as i think the server might crash!

What are you doing at the moment? I wouldn’t bother paying someone to “help”. Instead ask some good freinds to be honest with you. They might have some good ideas and send you in a direction you never thought of.

The £500+ you save can be used on a biking holiday someone cool!

First read “What Color is your Parachute”, which will give you better advice than above and can be kept as a reference. An excellent guide to careers.

I have used career advisors in the past, and have had recent experience of them when there was a threat of redundancy. I think you have to be very precise about what you want. Most people IME want to know the options that are available to them with the experience that they have, including ones that they may not have thought of. However this is not what careers advisors tend to do, it always amazes me there there doesn’t seem to be anybody with a wide enough experience of the job market to provide this sort of advice.

People wanting a change often say that they do not know what they would like to do. In this case careers advisors will use some sort of “what colour is your parachute?” approach of physch testing to say “you are an ENTP and these sort of people become lorry drivers or ballet dancers or somesuch. My personal feeling about this is that you can do this sort of thing yourself without having to pay somebody 500 quid to do it for you.

The best use of a careers advisor is when you know what you want to do and need help with trying to contact people who do what you want, with CVs, letters and intervie technique.

good luck

I am a Careers adviser specialising in advice for young people
Dont see the point in paying what they are asking for as their is a variety of free online stuff you can do and use to see what you are interested in suitable for

If you must pay I will do it for half that though 😉

Look at

http://careersadvice.direct.gov.uk/

http://careersadvice.direct.gov.uk/helpwithyourcareer/

http://careersadvice.direct.gov.uk/helpwithyourcareer/skills/

last one being online assessment of skills etc which is all they will do anyway via some method of psychometric assessment (sounds worth the money now eh?)
e-mail inprofile if you need to chat

Junkyard, thanks for the links, and I may just take you up on the offer of an email or two (after I’ve had a go at the assessment 🙂

Looks like I’ll go for a wander to the book store today and pick up a copy of the recommended reading (I generally try to avoid ‘self help’ books, hopefully this is a good one 🙂 )

£500 is a lot of cash and I’m not in a hurry to spend it, but I do want to get my life on track (whatever that may be…)

Hmmm. just thinking, what about an apprenticeship? Any one have any experience as a mature age entrant to this?

Pshycle do you have ANY ideas what fields you might be interested in? I know when my Dad was made redunant at 49 odd he read What colour is my parachute and said it was a great book. Good luck!

A mate of mine has paid this sort of money for advice and was very impressed with what he got. He’s in IT and not overly happy so looking for a change; I’ll see if I can get more info out of him.

do you have ANY ideas what fields you might be interested in

Not really… that’s my main problem. I’ve worked in Travel for the past 8 years or so (as an agent) but only really fell into this after doing a bit of travel myself. I do enjoy it, to a point, but the pay is absolutely rubbish and at the end of the day it’s not very challenging…

Prior to Travel I went to Uni (straight out of school) and undertook a BSc (Marine Biology) but it was a bad time for me (my Dad had been lost at sea the year before I left school and I was more affected by it then I’d admit). Short story is that I went to uni for 5 year but only passed 1 years worth of credit… not a great result 🙁 )I didn’t really enjoy the BSc either, I enrolled in Marine Biology simply because I enjoy diving and I thought that’d be a good job for me, turns out there’s a lot more lab work then dive work (and the diving you do do is BORING 😉 )

My main hobby (apart from bikes) is photography… but I don’t know if turning a hobby into a job is a good thing to do…

I really don’t know what to do with my life, career wise (or even personally) but I do want to try and figure it out if I can…

A mate of mine has paid this sort of money for advice and was very impressed with what he got…. I’ll see if I can get more info out of him.

Cheers Mudshark, would appreciate it 🙂

Thanks to all for your thoughts and advice, STW rocks 😀