2

I see these questions from time to time, and having gone through rebuilding myself from nothing, I know how to do both.

Does this come up enough for us to write a canon question and answer it?

2
  • 1
    Does that mean any new question regarding "getting back to the workplace and/or switching careers" would be quickly marked as a duplicate by the quick-close crew? Does the Workplace actually have any canonical questions/answers yet? If so where? I'm skeptical of the value (at least for this forum) of these sorts of answers. – Joe Strazzere Feb 23 '19 at 19:20
  • @JoeStrazzere Id say that the Hit by a Bus is quite canonical. I'm sure there are others but can't search easily in mobile... Still, I do believe that we should handle these individually as they come – DarkCygnus♦ Feb 23 '19 at 19:47
3

Does this come up enough for us to write a canon question and answer it?

Yes, I think it comes up now and then.

However, IMHO, how to get back to the workplace or switching careers depends greatly on the specific workplace you want to return to, or to the specific new field you want to switch to (of course there are generalities shared among all workplaces and careers, but that I feel is a bit broad).

Because of that, I don't know if a single, canonical Q/A can be written for these cases, and perhaps we should answer and handle them individually.

4
  • There are some things that I find I've pointed out repeatedly, such as networking (fairly universal), Volunteering(ditto), informational interviews(fairly universal as well) and outreach methods. – Old_Lamplighter Feb 22 '19 at 20:53
  • I also think those are valid things to know when attempting career switch or reentry to workplace. What I don't know how is a way to phrase such canonical post in a way that it's not too broad or generic/universal, so it is not off-topic... Can you think of a way to phrase it and avoid it being too broad vtc-worthy? – DarkCygnus♦ Feb 22 '19 at 20:56
  • That's what I was hoping to get help with in here ;/ – Old_Lamplighter Feb 22 '19 at 21:03
  • Currently, I can't think of a way. But I will give it a thought and try to come up with one :) – DarkCygnus♦ Feb 22 '19 at 21:06
3

Certainly wouldn't hurt. But there are multiple ways people can have to build from scratch which require widely different strategies.

Big difference from recovering from illness to finishing a lengthy jail term.

Or getting fired from last job for incompetence vrs fired for drug use etc,.

A few years off looking after a baby vrs moving to a new country/language....

List is endless.

5
  • I have a surprisingly wide knowledge of all of those. – Old_Lamplighter Feb 25 '19 at 14:33
  • @For the jail term, I'd tell them to reach out to various groups that specifically hire ex cons. Some of them started by ex-cons. In general, contracting and self-employment are also good venues. Contacting churches helps as well. – Old_Lamplighter Feb 25 '19 at 14:34
  • @RichardU location specific, lots of places they're better off keeping quiet about it, only group interested would be police. eg,. my country gets hundreds of deportees from America and Australia and New Zealand who in lieu of doing years for serious crimes take a one way ticket to a Pacific Island. These people are drug addicts, sex offenders and worse and won't find a job if people know they're deportees. So while you could make an answer to cover everything it would be a few books long – Kilisi♦ Feb 25 '19 at 15:09
  • 1
    time for me to write a few books then ;) – Old_Lamplighter Feb 25 '19 at 15:24
  • 1
    Go for it mate, bound to be interesting – Kilisi♦ Feb 25 '19 at 15:30
1

NO.

This place, like all stackexchange sites, really isn't well-suited for canonical writing. It is best suited for specific questions and specific answers.

Especially for a topic like "switching careers", seriously, how can any writing about how to switch careers ever be "canonical"?? Canonical means that it is established as the final authority on something. But switching careers is so very dependent on who you're talking about, what are the specifics of their situation. There might be some similarity across certain types of successful career changers, but not enough to generalize to everyone.

That said there's enough attempts at being canonical on these sites as is. The mark-as-dupe-police, for example, seem to act like there's already an existing answer for everything regardless of what people may think. If anything, we need LESS GENERALITY on here not more.

1
  • 1
    +1 for noting the close police. very good point – Old_Lamplighter Feb 25 '19 at 16:28

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .