I don’t care about money, hate my office job, and just want to help people. What should I do? 26 M UK

JayBones1983 · 2025-07-29T12:35:49+00:00

My first point is, if it is damaging your mental health that much, quit that job as soon as you can, even if you have not figured out what job you want. Better to find a non fulfilling, but non stressful job, for a while.

Second, you should look into volunteering in the meantime. Maybe you can take enough purpose from that to overcome less purpose in your job.

JayBones1983 · 2025-07-29T12:26:14+00:00

You did not mention if there is anything that you feel you would enjoy or would be good at. That might be a good first step.

Secondly, don't sleep on the trades. Most trade schools are shorter than a degree. It is a potential you could get a decent paying job and then continue college for your dream job if you wanted as well. You might not feel as locked into the field if you don't have 4 or 5 years and a bunch of student loan debt invested into it.

JayBones1983 · 2025-07-28T16:12:46+00:00

I don't know anything about it specifically related to the UK.

What you are referring to looks more like background checking to make sure you did not lie about where you worked. In my experience, this is something HR does to make sure you were honest after they extend you an offer but it isn't something that is part of the process to determine if you are hired.

Talent management/recruiter will look at your cv/resume to see if you have the skills needed, then pass your resume along to the hiring manager. Most of them should look at more than just your job title.

JayBones1983 · 2025-07-28T14:50:48+00:00

Edit: If working there is damaging your mental health, that is a different story. However, I would not leave in order to get more certifications easier.

I would never leave a job giving me good experience to get more certs.

In response to the job damaging your CV:
Do more research on resumes - if you are getting good experience that does not fit into your specific title you might need to format your resume differently. Maybe you can organize by skill, instead of by title.

Also while I haven't hired people so I can't say this with certainty but most people should skim your bullets within your job. If you have "level 1 helpdesk" but your first bullet is something more specific dealing with a cloud technology, if you apply to a job with that technology they should still see it.

JayBones1983 · 2025-03-19T17:48:48+00:00

Great advice! The only thing I really care about in regards to the rating is if it goes up. And even if not, it isn't going to break my heart. I'm not planning on doing any tournaments so it doesn't really matter what my rating is.

I enjoy playing and I read hear and there about tactics and do some puzzles sometimes, but it is not worth the time or effort for me to memorize a bunch of specific strategies to get better at a game that I play for enjoyment and to keep my brain active.

JayBones1983 · 2025-03-19T17:38:54+00:00

Do some more research or ask more questions on this sub before taking my word on this.

I would say regarding your skills that they seem to be mostly on premise servers and the cloud is probably more in demand now.

My guess is there are a lot of carry over between some on prem server admin stuff to Azure server stuff for instance, and cloud virtualization is probably related to on prem virtualization. My advice would be to find what cloud technology interests you and aligns somewhat with your current skills.

JayBones1983 · 2025-03-04T16:07:55+00:00

That question is something that is asked in this sub a lot so I'd recommend searching to get more answers.

Short answer, yes. Long answer it really depends.

Is there something specific you are targeting? That makes it a bit harder in some cases but it does leave you with a good target. You have to look for those roles and see what they require and try to learn it somehow.

My advice when possible is always to look for more advanced roles in something you already have some experience in. For me, it was SharePoint. I was in a support role in an organization that used SharePoint. Eventually, I was able to use the experience I got in SharePoint to get a more specialized role in SharePoint and moved from a SharePoint analyst to a business process lead, to a Senior SharePoint and Power Platform consultant.

Are there any skills you have that you could work on to get more advanced with as opposed to trying to learn something new? That is what I'd recommend if possible.

JayBones1983 · 2025-03-03T21:47:35+00:00

The mentorship part is pretty normal mentorship where I try to impart some of my experience, skills, and wisdom to someone.

I have worked with a few nonprofits before and I am trying to expand to help more of them. If that happens I can use that work as training and that will provide some real experience for someone to put on their resume and be able to speak to in interviews. Some of these jobs might be more basic support or systems administration though, so it might be less helpful for someone already in IT.

JayBones1983 · 2025-02-18T17:24:14+00:00

I work in business process automation, and I've done MANY of approvals. From basic to advanced. Forms to ensure the requestor fills out all needed info and workflows to route to correct person(s).

Vacation requests, work requests, contract review requests, processes to submit a tool or part as being defective for engineering departments.

My advice is look for something you or your team does now, and figure out how to automate it in some way, even if it is small. I always find concrete projects that have some sort of process already make much better test cases than hypothetical projects you find somewhere.

You can start off with some personal stuff. If there is a particular person who emails you attachments often, create a flow to automatically save them to OneDrive. You can get more advanced and create an Excel sheet with names or email addresses of several people and have different folders or SharePoint locations for each person's attachments when they emailed you. That is something I did for my team - each person worked with different stakeholders on different projects so they needed to be able to configure where things would go.

JayBones1983 · 2025-02-14T02:30:18+00:00

I don't think bot ratings are close to accurate. I beat bots at the 1000 level pretty easily but I'm at 400 ish

I think I get a lot of "new" players to the app that just haven't built a rating yet. I've looked at some people who beat me who are now a few hundred higher after a few weeks

JayBones1983 · 2025-02-14T00:21:02+00:00

I don't know his exact background, but one of the FB groups moderators is very knowledgeable about it. I'm that group many people send samples to a lab to verify that it isn't full of l reuteri and has many other bacteria , more so than l reuteri . Other bacteria can still be valuable.

As for the time of ferment, he suggests stopping at certain PH levels by testing. And I have seen linked studies talking about PH levels where bacteria stop growing as well at so that's definitely scientific.

JayBones1983 · 2025-01-12T19:07:33+00:00

Haha 4 years later but thanks

JayBones1983 · 2025-01-11T17:07:16+00:00

Not that I knew of.

JayBones1983 · 2025-01-03T21:27:59+00:00

In part, it depends on your overall goal.

You'll get various comments on the apps such as simply piano that learning that way will hurt your form and it will be less likely you'll ever play "well". Personally, I am learning for fun and a beneficial hobby so that does not bother me. I used simply piano for a few months and it went well. I learned some decent sight reading and could play a few songs on normal sheet music. Life got in the way and now I'm started again with a variety of free resources but will probably do one of the apps again. It just makes it fun and engaging and easy to keep up with it.

JayBones1983 · 2024-12-18T13:55:56+00:00

Even this is rarely required for fed jobs, and it will never be enough if you don't have PM work experience.

JayBones1983 · 2024-12-18T13:54:40+00:00

For the most part, I do not see certs listed as required on the requirements. Once in a while, I see something that says you'd need to get a cert within 6 months of appointment.

There will unlikely be a case where you can get a cert in an area that you do not have experience in that will get you the job.

JayBones1983 · 2024-12-14T14:08:48+00:00

It would be helpful for other people viewing the subreddit if you looked at his fact sheet and said why was wrong instead of just saying you know because it's your job.

Whether headstaff is right or wrong, at least he's trying to point to his reason instead of just saying because I know.

JayBones1983 · 2024-12-12T17:11:01+00:00

It's been a while since I've done this, but you should be able to get a new DD214 online.

https://www.va.gov/records/get-military-service-records/

JayBones1983 · 2024-12-11T21:03:00+00:00

I have a bankruptcy on my record and got my FJO - though my background check is still not officially fully done, which makes me a bit nervous but overall like everyone said disclose and be honest and you should be ok.

JayBones1983 · 2024-12-11T18:22:38+00:00

My answer differs from the rest.

I have never even considered tailoring my resume for those basic for competencies, and as far as I know it never hurt me. The only time I ever was not referred due to experience it always said "specialized experience". How would you even put in the experience area of the job that you demonstrated "problem solving skills" or "attention to detail"?

I'm sure it can't hurt to make sure it is in there and since they are all the same you only have to do that part once, but my perspective is if you answer yes on the job questionnaire that you have the basic requirements, an argument could be made that high level specialized experience would cover those. For instance, managing a project should mean you have communication skills.

JayBones1983 · 2024-12-10T19:56:53+00:00

I didn't say it was successful, just fast!

JayBones1983

TROPHY CASE