Career Options
I figured I would throw this out to see if anyone has a direction to point me. I was in the finance industry for about 8 years when times were good. I was a senior broker in a call center type environment. I was laid off about 4 years ago. It was a big change, but to be honest I was happy as I really did not enjoy the call center environment even though I was successful. I do enjoy working with people, just not while doing repetitive work. I was able to find work doing emergency management consulting. It has kept me busy for the last 4 years, but it is off and on. I mainly do PM type work overseeing workflow and temporary employees while running some type of disaster related project. I really enjoy it and the pay is great when there is a project going on, plus I do not have to be in an office 100% of the time. I would like to transition into something more constant year round and also something that does not involve 100% travel (I go where there are natural disasters).
So my issue is that a large portion of my work experience is in a call center industry I do not enjoy and the rest is in a field that involves flying around the country. My educational background is in math/computers with a liberal science degree and minor in technical education but have no practical experience in that area. I can't really afford to start over with a $25,000 a year job since I have a family. I'd love to run my own business and have several ideas but don't feel I can afford to take the financial risk with a family. I feel like I do not even know where to look in trying to find a new job. I really do not know where my recent emergency management experience would be useful. I know that I have the skills to be successful, I get compliments on every project I run and get called first when a new project is needed. Each project is different, but I have no trouble adapting my skills to the task at hand. It seems every Project Manager job I find though is looking for a PM who is also an expert in that field. I would really appreciate anyone's input as to where I might try to focus my skills in terms of an industry or field.
There is a whole disaster field out there. There are several major parts to it:
-Disaster Recovery --The IT end of ensuring that mainframes and servers can fail over appropriate, back ups exist and can be recovered, etc.
-Emergency Management --This term usually refers to City, County, State or Federal Office of Emergency Services or a similiar title. These are the people in the local community who are charged with preparing for and responding to actual disasters in the locality. Often this function reports to the PD or Sherriff's Department or Fire Department although they may be a free standing entity that reports directly to the Mayor or Town Council.
-Business Continuity -- This is the corporate version of keeping the business running regardless of the disaster. Generally this term (and similar ones) is less IT focused than Disaster Recovery and more business focused in general.
-Non-profit disaster response-- For the most part this means Red Cross although other organizations also do this work. If you're wanting to get away from so much travel, a job in the disaster department of your local chapter could be the ticket. Unless your chapter is a large city however, the pay may not be enough.
-Consulting-- Either privately or through one of the big guys (Deloitte or Price Waterhouse Coopers, Strohl or Comdisco, etc.). These jobs tend to either be sales positions for hotsites, and/or involve extensive travel.
Keep in mind this industry is somewhat vocabulary challenged and many other terms are used to mean the same or slightly different things as well such as-
Explore this field a bit. There are jobs in this field that are not so much travel. There are jobs where your call center background will be valuable. There are jobs where your general knowledge of IT is useful without having to be the IT expert. And remember too that for most people in this field, their practical knowledge of real life disasters is pretty much zero. That gives you something special that adds value. Financial institutions are all hiring disaster planners these days. Sarbanes-Oxley, the OCC and just the increase in awareness of the impact have woken up banks and brokerages. As a matter of fact, Countrywide has been advertising for someone in this spot for months (given their financial situation due to the mortgage meltdown, I don't recommend that one).