What to do next [advice]

440Hz

Hi all! Sorry for the long post!

After some objective advice here. I'm at the stage where my career or lack of is really starting to get to me and I'm finding it hard to make objective decisions about offers I am getting. So Im hoping people might have some ideas/advice/thoughts that might help point me in the right direction again.

The background:
-BSc Comp Sci, MSc Music Technology and then 2 years of academic research

Long story, but circumstances meant I couldn't finish my PhD and I ended up taking an audio development job. After about 10 months in that job I was offered the chance to finish my research in another University, so I left the job with the intention of going back to my research. Through another unfortunate set of circumstances it turns out that finishing the research won't be possible afterall. So, for the past few months I have been job hunting, unsuccessfully.

The problem:
I seem to be getting offered dev and QA roles, which honestly, I really don't want. I know the market is bad, and that I really should just take what I can get, but I really know that I would be unhappy going back to a pure development job. What I really want to do is get into technical training or coaching, or even IT consulting or something like that. I have lecturing experience and that was my main motivation for starting the PhD in the first place.

Thing is, like I said, all I can seem to get interviews/offers for are dev roles. My latest job offer was for call center work, and im really at the stage where Im seriously considering taking it, just to see if I could get a foot in the door and work my way up.

I spend every day on job sites, sending off CVs and never hearing back from the roles I am actually interested in. Very hard to be looking at technical training/consulting jobs with no direct experience. I have gone to my local FAS office and chatted it all through with them but they told me there wasn't much they could help me with as I don't really need any further training.

Anyway, like I said initially, I'm just at a loss now. I really don't know what to try/do next, or if there is some direction I'm not thinking of. Any advice?

I know its a long post, so thanks for reading if you got this far, just really need some advice/help!

cronos

440Hz wrote: »

Hi all! Sorry for the long post!

After some objective advice here. I'm at the stage where my career or lack of is really starting to get to me and I'm finding it hard to make objective decisions about offers I am getting. So Im hoping people might have some ideas/advice/thoughts that might help point me in the right direction again.

The background:
-BSc Comp Sci, MSc Music Technology and then 2 years of academic research

Long story, but circumstances meant I couldn't finish my PhD and I ended up taking an audio development job. After about 10 months in that job I was offered the chance to finish my research in another University, so I left the job with the intention of going back to my research. Through another unfortunate set of circumstances it turns out that finishing the research won't be possible afterall. So, for the past few months I have been job hunting, unsuccessfully.

The problem:
I seem to be getting offered dev and QA roles, which honestly, I really don't want. I know the market is bad, and that I really should just take what I can get, but I really know that I would be unhappy going back to a pure development job. What I really want to do is get into technical training or coaching, or even IT consulting or something like that. I have lecturing experience and that was my main motivation for starting the PhD in the first place.

Thing is, like I said, all I can seem to get interviews/offers for are dev roles. My latest job offer was for call center work, and im really at the stage where Im seriously considering taking it, just to see if I could get a foot in the door and work my way up.

I spend every day on job sites, sending off CVs and never hearing back from the roles I am actually interested in. Very hard to be looking at technical training/consulting jobs with no direct experience. I have gone to my local FAS office and chatted it all through with them but they told me there wasn't much they could help me with as I don't really need any further training.

Anyway, like I said initially, I'm just at a loss now. I really don't know what to try/do next, or if there is some direction I'm not thinking of. Any advice?

I know its a long post, so thanks for reading if you got this far, just really need some advice/help!

Would you apply for a grad consultant role and work your way up from there. It would be allot better than working your way up from a call center job. It will be very difficult for you to work your way up from a first level call center job. Perhaps if you could make it to a second or third level support job you would be in business.

440Hz

cronos wrote: »

Would you apply for a grad consultant role and work your way up from there.

Thanks for the reply!

Yeah I have been applying but Im finding that because I have worked for a year most of the grad roles don't seem to count me as eligible Maybe that is just the companies I have applied for to date though.

cronos

Perhaps you could post your cv as an attachment to a post in this thread and people could give you advice on it. You should take out any details like your name ... phone numbers... home address any thing that could be used to identify you. That is if you dont want to be identified. I will take a look but I prob am not the best qualified to do it as I am only a degree grad myself.