What job could my DH do?

[frencholives]

I am desperate to help out my lovely DH but at a loss what to advise him. Any advice would be .

DH is an experienced mechanical engineer of 12 years, but he absolutely hates it. He doesn’t enjoy getting sweaty and dirty, and often finds the tinkering away to fix something stressful. He has tried several different jobs in several different companies and is currently in a role where his workload is massive. He is incredibly stressed and down and this is the final straw for him. He is desperate to be ‘done’ with engineering but struggling to find a new career.

What’s frustrating is he has soo many transferable skills and interviews well if he can get to interview stage! (He has got every engineering job he has ever applied for). He is confident and gets on well with lots of different people. Intelligent, good English, excellent maths, a good problem solver.

I am the higher earner so he can afford to drop his wage to £28k ish and retrain. He is open to different roles but probably looking for some kind of office based job. He has applied to the civil service and is getting nowhere. I know the civil service can be difficult to get into so we are unsure whether to persevere with trying to perfect his application, or if it’s a non-starter. He feels employers see his background in engineering and discount him.

He has so much to offer and I’m sure there must be a career move he can make after engineering but we’re both a bit stuck what the next step is. Any advice would be very much appreciated!

Does he want something practical or more office based?

What about the police? They like people who have experience in other sectors.

Can do office based jobs/staff jobs in the police too.

Trades are much more future proof than office jobs. He is an engineer, so electrician or plumber ?

Have a browse on charity jobs and university jobs. Many varied roles on both sites.

Could he get an engineering job in a larger company then make a sideways move into a different role when he is more known to them?

Teaching?
Fire Service?
Police?

How about working as a project manager for engineering projects - he has background and expertise, but it gets him away from actually doing it himself. There are a couple of good courses (APM or PRINCE2) that I don't think really help but are very popular on job ads.

R+D/ design? The "hurry up and fix it" pressure would be off.

What about a transition into railway engineering? It’s much more desk based than physical work. Network Rail is the main one to look at. Or if he wants out completely, how about project management?

Does he have an idea of what he wants to do or anything that is “out”?
Office work, something practical, is shift work an option, does he want to work outside, does he want to working in a helping/caring profession?

Railway

I work in vehicle leasing we employ lots of engineer type people for supporting in our technical team (authorising work with garages, going out see problem vehicles) and also people who help spec vehicles and who sign them off for delivery. We work with lots of partners (converters/graphics etc) who also employ technical people in a more office type role. If he’s interested in automotive I could share some contacts?

I know a couple of engineers that have side stepped into H&S type roles, and earn quite well out of it too.

Production engineer in a different industry? Would he fit gas, heating, plumbing, air con? Crane or plant operator or supervisor or engineer for those vehicles?

What sector is he in now - heavy engineering or precision engineering, welding? Automotive/aerospace/industrial/shipping/nuclear/offshore?

A sideways move into a different area might suit him. High-performance powertrains maybe, or if you live anywhere near Derby - Rolls Royce. There's always airlines and aircraft maintenance, laser cutting, motor museums, steam railways, civil engineering (HS2 lol), or maybe teaching engineering at a local college or university. Royal School of Military Engineering? Could he go into R&D?

He must have a lot of transferable skills.

Thank you so much for your comments - I wasn’t expecting so many. It’s useful because my/his family’s background are in a specific industry (think NHS) so we don’t even know what’s out there really.

I’ll try and answer the questions, also on half term childcare duties so I am multi tasking.

He is a plant engineer.

The plan for the last 10 years has been to make a sideways move in engineering. The jobs never seem to materialise despite initial promises. I think part of the problem is the right job not coming up, but also he is a hard worker and well liked so managers tend to want to keep him where he is.

He likes the idea of office work, I think just for a complete change.

He wouldn’t want to work in healthcare / caring. He was thinking something more to do with the environment, admin, communication, sales, something investigative (sorry, I know that’s vague). In his personal life he loves cars, sports, food, drink, art, travel - but none of the immediate careers you think of suit.

Project manager, R&D, railways, vehicle leasing all sound promising.

The plan was to move into something like heating engineer a few years ago but I think he’s just had enough of engineering now and doesn’t want to settle.

He was also seriously considering H&S a few years ago, but it would be very role dependent. In his current role he has to make a lot of H&S recommendations which others aren’t always happy about (eg if it slow downs operations) and he finds that hugely stressful.

He has lots and lots of transferable skills. He has worked for start ups and huge corporations. Lots of direct contact with tradespeople and customers (global businesses).

When you say your DH is a mech eng is he degree qualified and chartered?

I knew someone who was a mech eng, did teacher training and went to teach in a further education college. He did really well and loved it. He was so much more knowledgeable than other lecturers who had less hands on experience.

He could look at workshop technician jobs in universities. I used to work in a uni that had excellent research and teaching workshops. The work is varied, it isn't full on manufacturing, there was lots of interesting prototype work and contributing to design, opportunities to help supervise students in teaching workshops.There are opportunities for further training and progression, and the working conditions are good compared to manufacturing. One of the workshops I used to visit often was superb, well run and clean, a mix of quality, well maintained CNC and manual machine tools, and they did interesting work, e.g. making tricky one-off parts for a massive telescope! Look on jobs.ac.uk.

Does he have an engineering degree? Whether he does or not will make a difference to the options open to him.

Technical Author: He knows how things in industry work and it's office/wfh based.

H&S as a career would normally mean getting professional qualifications, which are expensive, and the courses are hard work. Without them you'd stay at a junior level. You can't train just to do "engineering safety", you have to learn the very very broad field. And yes it's stressful! (I'm a H&S professional.)

If he likes cars then supercars & motor racing might be something to consider.