Off topic.

Health Physics / radiation monitoring. I know the Navy have apprenticeships in that line not sure about the RAF.

Hi Babyen. Bit late to this but where I work they are always looking for apprentices. The salary for them is £20k too which is good for round here as you'll know.

In truth, and this is for the younger people here, I'm 42 and I still don't really know what I want to do. The job I'm in is OK and pays the bills but when I go home that's it. I don't think about it. It really is just a job to me that I try to do my best at every day. I guess what I'm trying to say is that sometimes you don't have to let your job define who you are. How you are as a person should so that. My ambition has always been to be happy (to paraphrase John Lennon!) and if I have family and friends around then that's all I need.

If I could choose something realistic then as I get older I'd like to work somewhere which cares for animals. Just something that would allow some exercise and fresh air would do me.

comment by TBone Steak Roysters (U3947)
posted 4 hours, 51 minutes ago
comment by (U22183)
posted 50 seconds ago
comment by Vidicschin (U3584)
posted 54 minutes ago
My advice is to look at a career where there is always going to be employment.

Right now the smart money is going to be in the IT world.

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have to be very careful what you do in the IT world though.

I work in Cyber Security which has a huge lack of talent and by its nature requires a lot of human involvement to keep eyes on glass, remediate and investigate.

coding was popular ten years ago but now you can get an army of developers in India for the cost of 1 western resource.

engineers are the same.

In IT you really need to be designing or securing (essentially processes you cannot automate), anything else is getting gutted by cheap overseas workers and/or automation.
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I agree with most of this but most big companies I have consulted on recently have scrapped outsourcing to India amd prefer in house teams

I work in cyber and tech also
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The last place I was consulting at were shipping in devs, data ‘analysts’ and testers from India to work in-house on fixed-term contracts.

They were being paid peanuts, relatively-speaking.

(The testers were good, as were the SQL guys; but we struggled with the devs. They wanted everything on a plate - full-blown technical specs as well as design documents - and we had to take them completely off the joint-design/prototyping, JBGE stuff we were doing.)

It’s like what Melton said

It’s in cycles, bit like tech buys, consolidate...multi vendor....consolidate

And don’t even get me started on ‘cloud migration’

But ultimately as an employee you don’t want to be at risk in cycles of being replaced then having to take short term contracts until the industry decides they want on shore again

Conveyancing.

You don't want your son going sandy places, which he almost certainly in the RAF.

You don't want your son going sandy places, which he almost certainly in the RAF.

.......................

Like RAF Akrotiri? In fact most of the sandy places the RAF go to are well away from any war zone.

comment by Vidicschin (U3584)
posted 1 hour, 42 minutes ago
You don't want your son going sandy places, which he almost certainly in the RAF.

.......................

Like RAF Akrotiri? In fact most of the sandy places the RAF go to are well away from any war zone.
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True.

I was in the RAF as an avionics electronic engineer.
Basically working on aircraft electronics rather than mechanical.

There are so many different roles in the RAF other than piloting, you can be a chef if you want or a musician.
Minimum service is 9 years so if your son can handle that then I'd recommend it, half my family were in the RAF and all of them loved it.

You have to be pretty special to become a pilot in the RAF though and I'm sure there are long waiting times due to so many applicants.
You need to completely smash the airman selection test otherwise they won't even consider you for the role.

Obviously if he is looking at transferable skills into civvy world before even joining, then maybe being in the forces isn't the right move for him?

Either way you learn plenty in the forces and if you were to leave one day you will definitely be well set up for a job in the civvy world.

I'm currently in IT now, MCSE certified and all that palava and the money is decent.

Babyen

An option in the Army if he cant get in the RAF is the Army Air Corps based near Ipswich at Wattisham.

They fly the Apache Helicopters.