Stuck in a serious rut!

Mr Benevolent

I've just woken up to my years of sloth when it comes to jobs. I've been working in a multitude of lowish paid customer service and tech support jobs on and off for the last 12 years. I don't have a degree but have a few certificates in random stuff (psychotherapy, electronics, neurolinguistic programming, Salesforce.com administrator) I generally haven't done very well in them and have been fired a few times. My current job is along similar lines (outsourced tech support for a large international company), but the difference is I'm the highest performer in the place. At 32 and on €21k that doesn't mean very much, however. I don't have kids or a mortgage, so the money isn't really an issue, but my self-respect for my career path is at an all-time low. In reality there are few promotion opportunities in my current job, and being honest I don't like technical jobs - I just take whatever is available.

Anyway, I need a drastic plan. I want to pin down my career path for the medium term - the next 3-5 years, ideally - and push myself in an upward direction. Firstly, I need to tear up my CV and start again. I've had so many jobs that putting even a quarter of them on my CV is unrealistic. I need a focused CV with a list of achievements. Has anyone got any good examples of this kind of CV? I've looked online but can't find anything consistent. Any suggestions?

Secondly, the jobs themselves. I need something with much more responsibility. In my current role I do exams etc to prove my competence and become certified. My only real responsibility in this job is to close as many cases in one day as possible, and I excel in this one metric, which makes my manager happy. I suppose the one job I am suited to is call center supervisor/team leader by dint of years of experience as a customer service agent.

If you've got this far, thanks for reading. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated and don't be afraid to use a critical eye.

Eoin

I suppose the one job I am suited to is call center supervisor/team leader by dint of years of experience as a customer service agent.

Or maybe move towards an account management role - e.g. the person in the likes of Vodafone or O2 who's the dedicated contact for corporate customers?

finisklin

Back to college and do a degree as part of your career plan? Ensure you identify the career/work area that you want to work in first as this will help you decide on choices.

You definitely need a plan which you then need to stick to!

Best of luck with it.

EL_Loco

Well question 1, what do you want to do? would you continue in techy stuff?

point 2, the CV. Find a job you want and skew all your prior experience to reflect on how you fit that role.

point 3, don't be afraid to take a leap in another direction, don't feel you've painted yourself into a corner regarding staying in tech.

Mr Benevolent

finisklin wrote: »

Back to college and do a degree as part of your career plan? Ensure you identify the career/work area that you want to work in first as this will help you decide on choices.

You definitely need a plan which you then need to stick to!

Best of luck with it.

Thanks, but college isn't an option and probably wouldn't be much use to me in the long term.

sarkozy

Confab wrote: »

Thanks, but college isn't an option and probably wouldn't be much use to me in the long term.

Why not?

krissovo

You have a number of key skills from that short post that would look good a CV. Also by the looks of it you have a number of transferable skills that would work in most IT environments.

This stood out for me, Salesforce Adminstrator. Its SaaS so cool at the moment and there are a number of global players seriously looking at this. VMWare recently switched to this (I think they bought it) as their primary CRM tool and so you can expect demand for this to increase.

You can continue in the tech support/service desk area and move into team management as you have said but there other areas, technical trainer, forecasting, incident manager, process analyst, business analyst, service management....all of these should have decent experience of the front line.

How about contacting one of the businesses you are currently supporting? In the outsourcing world one thing that's missing now is decent experienced 1st/2nd line tech's to move into higher level roles within the business. In my experience many service desk agents have moved on using this route.

I have a similar background with no degree and tech support so if you PM your email I can send you an example of my CV if that helps out.

Mr Benevolent

krissovo wrote: »

You have a number of key skills from that short post that would look good a CV. Also by the looks of it you have a number of transferable skills that would work in most IT environments.

This stood out for me, Salesforce Adminstrator. Its SaaS so cool at the moment and there are a number of global players seriously looking at this. VMWare recently switched to this (I think they bought it) as their primary CRM tool and so you can expect demand for this to increase.

You can continue in the tech support/service desk area and move into team management as you have said but there other areas, technical trainer, forecasting, incident manager, process analyst, business analyst, service management....all of these should have decent experience of the front line.

I have a similar background with no degree and tech support so if you PM your email I can send you an example of my CV if that helps out.

I actually work for Salesforce, but most of the jobs are for an outsourcer and that means crap money. Ironically I got promoted today (no extra money though) and have a potential interview for a team leader position in another company. I can but hope.