Recently I’ve worked with Trisha, a nurse who come 60 was going to move areas to be closer to family and no longer wants to continue working at a hospital, she wanted some guidance to consider her options for career planning at 60+
The first option is to consider doing agency work, and this would be a great way to earn an income while she explored options, but she is looking for a change.
We spoke about her interests – she loves shopping in quirky stores, so looking for opportunities to work in ‘interesting shops’ was interesting for her, and a great way to find these would be to visit shops and start talking with the shop owners.
We also talked about her strengths and skills and considered jobs she would be qualified to do – including working as a care home advocate, a speech and language therapy assistant or working in a library or tourist information centre.
Trisha was then able to explore options for career planning at 60+
We didn’t just discuss work options but considered her life in more detail, what else would she want to do – including travel, family and getting more involved in the local community.
With Trisha, we’d come up with options via coaching, but with other client’s assessments have been effective for career planning at 60+.
For example with Robert we used the Strong Interest Inventory to identify what interests him, based on his answers to 291 questions and the Highlands Ability Battery to identify his underlying natural abilities, the things he could do easily. He had been, still was, a bit of a workaholic and had arranged to meet with me after a bit of prompting from his wife. The assessment reminded him of a long-lost interest in science, this wasn’t going to lead to a new career, but a reminder of things to read – more science books! There was also a high interest in music, supported by high abilities in tonal memory, rhythm memory and pitch discrimination. So why wasn’t he playing an instrument?
Turned out Robert had wanted to learn the violin as a child but was not supported by his parents and so never got started. Later in life he bought one, but his first wife was unsupportive and moaned about the noise so again he didn’t proceed. However, come 61 he bought a violin, his second wife gave encouragement, and this was going to be a passion into his later years. We both wondered what might have been, but it did lead on to a great hobby. Robert was also an extravert and didn’t want to do too much on his own, but nor did he want a demanding job, with a background in sales, and enjoying sales and the people contact the job gave him he looked for flexible options and got a job share at a local garden centre selling garden buildings.
Can I be of help? I’d be happy to discuss my services for career planning at 60+ or any age. You can schedule a consultation using this link