Best advice for 40 year old mom looking for new career

[Ellen Pitts]

I thought I would go ahead and update this thread. After thinking through all these ideas I decided to get my real estate license. I start the prelicensure class in April. I also unexpectedly found a position in a growing boutique real estate company as the social media manager. It's an ideal position for me and fits both my personality, my skill set and my work parameters perfectly. I am so excited about it! I had a great rapport with the owner of the company. We think very much alike and have similar vision for how things should be done. There is tons of growth potential with this. I'm just tickled. I feel like the perfect job has been dropped in my lap!

Thanks so much for all the input and advice. I appreciate the time everyone took to help me out!

[brightdoglover]

Hearty congratulations and best wishes!

[232employad]

For doing any type of business or work should have some specific knowledge about that field and doing some research work for that makes perfection in the field which you going to work.

[skeet09]

Sounds great!
I always like to have a plan b in case. With the experience of being a social media manager, as someone suggested earlier is work with a non profit.
Non profit organizations also need marketing, social media manager types. Providing a social media service package to several local non profits for a set small monthly fee for those organizations that do not have the budget to hire someone full time, this could become a flexible and rewarding business.

[Ringo1]

Originally Posted by pegotty

I thought I would go ahead and update this thread. After thinking through all these ideas I decided to get my real estate license. I start the prelicensure class in April. I also unexpectedly found a position in a growing boutique real estate company as the social media manager. It's an ideal position for me and fits both my personality, my skill set and my work parameters perfectly. I am so excited about it! I had a great rapport with the owner of the company. We think very much alike and have similar vision for how things should be done. There is tons of growth potential with this. I'm just tickled. I feel like the perfect job has been dropped in my lap!

Thanks so much for all the input and advice. I appreciate the time everyone took to help me out!

That is awesome news! Congratulations!

[jane_sm1th73]

Originally Posted by Kibbiekat

Same here. I was only off for 5 years and suddenly the 10 years prior meant nothing.

OP - the world has changed drastically. After the recession, people on solid career tracks in virtually every sector of the old economy - before virtualization - were kicked to the curb and could not get back on the merry-go-round.

I was off for Five MONTHS. HAD the science undergrad from an Ivy; management experience in two F10 companies; and an MBA while working. The economy in my area of New England was circling the bathtub drain and - as hard as I tried to kid myself - finally had to come to grips with the likelihood that it would never come back.

I moved to a different geography that was not circling the bathtub drain and was d*mn lucky to get a respectable job in the area's economic driver, IT/engineering. Now, with an increasingly virtualized world, the driver is software engineering.

Nothing I had previously done mattered. To be able to project credibility in a client meeting, I had to get creds in IT/engineering. And lately, in software engineering.

The world is more unforgiving than it used to be. Employers hire those who have already done what they are hiring for.

I'm a corporate type, so all I have to offer is corporate advice. There don't seem to be any shortcuts these days. The ONE SAHM I know who was able to break through was well known to hiring committees through her volunteer work on civic associations and volunteer BODs, over many years. It didn't hurt that her husband's company had recapitalized the bank that picked her up.

I'd say go for software engineering. Musicians have proven to develop into gifted coders. If you can think clearly, you can code. However, you do need to actually learn how to do it via formal channels - you don't have the fifteen years of self-teaching and "hacking" (learning how systems work by trial and error) that other coders without formal credentials have. And you are not likely to get hired into Goog and MS, who hire untutored youngsters and teach them in-house. Even if you were, you likely could not move to their centers of employment.

In coding, it's not about where you went to school - it's how quickly you can think through a problem and code it, and how transparent the resulting code is so that it can be re-used.

Best of luck.

[jane_sm1th73]

OOPS. CONGRATS!!! Sounds like a terrific opportunity, and the "Social Media" stripe is highly leveragable! In corp-speak, you can use it as a ladder to anywhere!! Best wishes!

[MPowering1]

That's great news! Congratulations and thank you for the update. It's always nice to hear how things turned out for people.