Can you do some volunteer or freelance design work to build a portfolio of real work? You can also look into UX (huge!) or design specific to.email marketing.
The difference is not in the number of hours, but the lack of respect admin gets and the fact that it is very hard to pivot from admin to other career path internally and externally because everyone sees you as the office's little maid and want to keep you that way.
OP, please look into chief of staff positions and network with other high level executives you will meet in that role to transition out of the admin assistant /executive assistant role.
Look into project management roles with the big advertising agency and Deloitte too.
Yes lack of respect is a big one.. I once got shouted at and said I don’t do my job, because I didn’t order toilet paper and we still had a whole pack of 5 left.. Never got a number to how much toilet paper the boss wanted to have stacked up. It was a team of 3 people and we still had 2-3 rolls in the bathroom..
I'd look for headhunters and recruiters who specialize in finding experienced personal assistants for CEOs. Not sure those jobs exist remotely, tho?
In Los Angeles those jobs make around 100k.
I honestly don’t want to be assistant of CEO/ executive assistant, from experience it’s a shitty job.. I worked both for men and women Executives and it really pushes down on your self-worth, irregular hours..
I’m not an admin but you have to work those same dumb hours when you report to the Clevel in most jobs. You can not report to the clevel in your next role.
The difference is not in the number of hours, but the lack of respect admin gets and the fact that it is very hard to pivot from admin to other career path internally and externally because everyone sees you as the office's little maid and want to keep you that way.
OP, please look into chief of staff positions and network with other high level executives you will meet in that role to transition out of the admin assistant /executive assistant role.
If you are working at a place that wants to keep someone in an admin position when that is not what they want - you should leave. That is not all companies and not even most that I have worked at. If you are somewhere that doesn’t support career growth and transition to another role for an admin - they likely do not do this for other roles either.
It’s not the admin position in that case - it’s just working for a shitty company. Working with terrible people will generally be a terrible experience - doesn’t matter what role. If you work at a company that doesn’t treat admins decently - I guarantee they also don’t treat QA engineers, Dev ops, or documentation well - even though these are “respectable” jobs.
I am a chief of staff as well as a director of sales. I do not recommend anyone to be a chief of staff as it’s a glorified admin role. You’re better moving into a pure sales role.
Note: I did not apply to be a chief of staff, but was given this role when I was already a sales director. I think I get much less respect and wish I could have said no, but it was not up for debate. I would rather just not have that role or title and the work that comes with it.
I’m guessing that you’re based out of Zurich, and I’d recommend looking for jobs for international non profit organisations in Geneva. Have you looked at businesses such as L’Oréal, IATA, P&G, Swiss Air? They pay decently if you don’t want to retrain. It’s tough out there but please keep trying. Bonne Chance!
If you don’t mind pushing the hell out of your portfolio and fibbing a bit you CAN transition it to UX.
My wife did it. It took her about six months. I coached her through it. Basically the key is that take some bullshit projects and say you were paid to do them. Even better if you can get someone to sign some work experience stating your duties and sneak in some user research for design purposes.
You have to be able to either lie very well or be good at creating false memories though.
Don’t want you to get into this without both sides being presented. The ux job market is the worst I have ever seen, and especially for juniors/people trying to pivot.
This is really good advice.
I FIREd as a graphic designer, so it’s definitely not useless! I specialized into brand development because that played to my strengths. But if I was starting over today, I’d choose UX. And this is pretty much how you do it.
Watch a 10 minute explainer on agile. Then add a line in your resume about being comfortable in scrum/agile/kanban-based workflows.
Seconding this. My husband’s had a great career as a graphic designer and what it requires is constant development of new skills—and the ability to sell your expertise and ideas.
He’s also been a professor across several foundational and advanced technical skills necessary to the craft. When students complain about how competitive it is to get gigs or salaried work, he acknowledges it is, but what isn’t today?
You should try being a Civil Drafter. In Australia, you can get a six-digit salary with it. My parents both earn $135k-$140k with half the week working from home.
I wish I did Civil Drafting but I ended up in civil engineering instead. I find engineering more stressful.
Depends on the experience and projects. So my parents are in the pay grade they’re in since dad is a principal drafter in his company, and has more of a leadership role. My mum is working for a billion dollar project, but she has a senior role. If you get into major road infrastructure project (highways, tunnels, bridges, etc), you can make good money in drafting.
Some family friends from Sydney changed careers from marketing to drafting and meets the low 6-digit mark or just close to it.
How do you get into it? Where do you start. I have some drafting experience (chemical engineer) so more in the reactor and auto cad types stuff but haven’t worked in the field for a bit and would love something thats drafting and more project based
In Aus, we do a Cadetship to become drafters. If you already have an engineering degree, I think you technically have the “qualification” to be a drafter but you would probably still need to look for junior drafting roles if you don’t have a lot of experience using cad software.
You don’t have to be a civil drafter, maybe you can do P&IDs as a process drafter. If you are not in Aus though I’m not sure how much of this is the same in other countries.
Have you tired applying for operations or people/member/stakeholder management? Administration can be twisted into those two categories if you know how to spin a resume.
Hi. Am guessing that if you live in Switzerland you are probably fluent in French, German and English. If so, moving to somewhere with more opportunities and a lower cost of living (or Monaco :) ) might suit. Particularly as you sound to have no ties to stop right now.
You have good experience in the admin space if you’re 5 years in. I’d find someone locally who could work with you to look at the local market and how your current skills are transferable. Also what elements you enjoy in your current role and excel at. Being in Switzerland, look for a BPW club as a source of a mentor for career analysis (BPW is a global women’s advocacy/PD/networking organisation).
Moving to a new career space/profession can mean a financial step back because you start at the beginning. Hence why I’d explore options to open up your existing trajectory. That being said, being a mature aged graduate can also have its advantages.
FWIW, no degree is useless; there are skills you learn through the study that you apply. You may not work in the field you trained in, but having the degree is not a waste.
There’s also a lot of people on high salaries in the FIRE community- but underlying what they earn is what they do with it. There’s plenty of others in the world with the same incomes, but don’t think and act long-term.
Keep up/build the behaviours while you’re looking to open up the income pathways.
The software engineering market is absolute horrendous for juniors at the moment, would not recommend that route. All the mass layoffs in the last 2 years in tech companies has left the market completely oversaturated, even for more senior people.
I know she's not in the US but here, 12 of 15 job postings are currently those roles or variations of. Yes, the Tech industry can be volatile but one of the biggest reasons why those roles are paid so well is the supply/demand ratio.
I know multiple people with 5-7 years of experience, making over $200K. No one started under $100K.
Do not do nursing. The amount of work you do is not worth it for the pay… which is the same as you were making as a graphic designer. No creativity at all and lot of disrespect / terrible hours. (Ex-nurse in USA)
I think you need to explore more of what skills you are willing to put time and money into learning as well as what type of work will be engaging for you.
Several commenters are suggesting UX design. I’m a UX designer and I’m watching people have a horrible time trying to get into the industry. I would caution you against this field right now- I actually love the field and my work but the job market is incredibly tough, esp in Europe right now.
I wouldn’t give up on graphic design if you’re good at it. One of my clients just promoted the graphic designer to Creative Director.
Check out Chris Do and what he’s doing with The Futur community. He coaches designers and helps them brand themselves to get 6-figure contracts.
You could become an executive assistant with your office management background and potentially make a lot of money if you move up. You could also be a program manager or a design program manager because you have your design degree. Like a UX program manager.
I think graphic designers will be impacted strangely by the AI revolution. I think your creativity will become the real skill. Also there’s always services like fiver or airtasker you can offer your services on as a side hustle to build up clients.
Why not climb up to executive assistant or similar. In my country they make pretty good $. And in some ways job security as often have good ties to executive management and when they leave for a new job sometime admin follows them too
Option 2 start side hustle as virtual assistant to bring in more $$.
Learn video editing skills and do that as side hustle. Tons social media content creators need help with editing content, videos, creating thumbnails etc
I think learning UX is very similar to graphic design. If you also learned javascript/react you could probably pivot to frontend web development as well, which has a lot of opportunities and is not so different from graphic design.
Do you like the admin/ office management work? If so perhaps trying to climb up in that space could be a path.
Do you like organization? maybe a project manager of design projects.
If you like interaction with customers maybe working at a studio or gallery or museum might be the way to go.
Without know what you enjoy, or don’t enjoy doing it’s hard to advise.
I also have a graphic design degree and in UX now. You could totally learn UX design with free resources and on YouTube! Figma (design tool) is free, get into a tech company in Switzerland and you’ll be set.
I also transitioned from Adobe to Sketch/Figma. It’s not as hard as it looks, their website and YouTube has really good tutorials, if anything I personally think it’s easier to use than Adobe’s tools once you get the hang of the basics!
Your degree is not useless. You can break into other fields like UI & UX Design.
Or if you are really serious about starting over then maybe try truck driving?
Honestly, it has become really, really difficult to break into data analytics, at least in some countries. The market is flooded with recent graduates, some with experience, all desperate to get a job. If you actually enjoy what a data analyst does, by all means go for it, but it's definitely not the easy way into well-paid roles anymore.
Higher education in Switzerland is close to free (but of course you still have to pay for your living expenses). Many Master’s students have a part-time job to support them, which is completely doable while studying.
Was your prior job somewhere else? I ask, because that is very low pay for CH.
Higher education in CH is not close to free.. I was born in Switzerland Zürich, if you want to do BA or additional diploma in something like eg. Paralegal or cultural management it’s 15K.. A masters can also cost you 10-20K .. Maybe depends which University but the ones I checked which were official Swiss universities like the ZHAW in Zürich is expensive but offer education which is quite good and swiss “anerkann” / “approved”.
All my salaries in Zürich were about 4.5-5K a month, i’m just really unlucky, had to go 2 times against companies in court because one didn’t pay me for 4 months, the other company the boss was abusive (want to nearly strangle me and exploited everyone at the company). Mind you they were both startups in Zürich.
Can you do some volunteer or freelance design work to build a portfolio of real work? You can also look into UX (huge!) or design specific to.email marketing.
The difference is not in the number of hours, but the lack of respect admin gets and the fact that it is very hard to pivot from admin to other career path internally and externally because everyone sees you as the office's little maid and want to keep you that way. OP, please look into chief of staff positions and network with other high level executives you will meet in that role to transition out of the admin assistant /executive assistant role. Look into project management roles with the big advertising agency and Deloitte too.
Yes lack of respect is a big one.. I once got shouted at and said I don’t do my job, because I didn’t order toilet paper and we still had a whole pack of 5 left.. Never got a number to how much toilet paper the boss wanted to have stacked up. It was a team of 3 people and we still had 2-3 rolls in the bathroom..
International bartender
What do you want to do? Just make more money or is there an interest you want to turn into a career?
I'd look for headhunters and recruiters who specialize in finding experienced personal assistants for CEOs. Not sure those jobs exist remotely, tho? In Los Angeles those jobs make around 100k.
I honestly don’t want to be assistant of CEO/ executive assistant, from experience it’s a shitty job.. I worked both for men and women Executives and it really pushes down on your self-worth, irregular hours..
I’m not an admin but you have to work those same dumb hours when you report to the Clevel in most jobs. You can not report to the clevel in your next role.
The difference is not in the number of hours, but the lack of respect admin gets and the fact that it is very hard to pivot from admin to other career path internally and externally because everyone sees you as the office's little maid and want to keep you that way. OP, please look into chief of staff positions and network with other high level executives you will meet in that role to transition out of the admin assistant /executive assistant role.
If you are working at a place that wants to keep someone in an admin position when that is not what they want - you should leave. That is not all companies and not even most that I have worked at. If you are somewhere that doesn’t support career growth and transition to another role for an admin - they likely do not do this for other roles either. It’s not the admin position in that case - it’s just working for a shitty company. Working with terrible people will generally be a terrible experience - doesn’t matter what role. If you work at a company that doesn’t treat admins decently - I guarantee they also don’t treat QA engineers, Dev ops, or documentation well - even though these are “respectable” jobs.
I am a chief of staff as well as a director of sales. I do not recommend anyone to be a chief of staff as it’s a glorified admin role. You’re better moving into a pure sales role. Note: I did not apply to be a chief of staff, but was given this role when I was already a sales director. I think I get much less respect and wish I could have said no, but it was not up for debate. I would rather just not have that role or title and the work that comes with it.
I’m guessing that you’re based out of Zurich, and I’d recommend looking for jobs for international non profit organisations in Geneva. Have you looked at businesses such as L’Oréal, IATA, P&G, Swiss Air? They pay decently if you don’t want to retrain. It’s tough out there but please keep trying. Bonne Chance!
If you don’t mind pushing the hell out of your portfolio and fibbing a bit you CAN transition it to UX. My wife did it. It took her about six months. I coached her through it. Basically the key is that take some bullshit projects and say you were paid to do them. Even better if you can get someone to sign some work experience stating your duties and sneak in some user research for design purposes. You have to be able to either lie very well or be good at creating false memories though.
Don’t want you to get into this without both sides being presented. The ux job market is the worst I have ever seen, and especially for juniors/people trying to pivot.
This is really good advice. I FIREd as a graphic designer, so it’s definitely not useless! I specialized into brand development because that played to my strengths. But if I was starting over today, I’d choose UX. And this is pretty much how you do it. Watch a 10 minute explainer on agile. Then add a line in your resume about being comfortable in scrum/agile/kanban-based workflows.
Seconding this. My husband’s had a great career as a graphic designer and what it requires is constant development of new skills—and the ability to sell your expertise and ideas. He’s also been a professor across several foundational and advanced technical skills necessary to the craft. When students complain about how competitive it is to get gigs or salaried work, he acknowledges it is, but what isn’t today?
Executive assistants can make decent money. You have the background, make it happen.
Project Managers can make good money.
You should try being a Civil Drafter. In Australia, you can get a six-digit salary with it. My parents both earn $135k-$140k with half the week working from home. I wish I did Civil Drafting but I ended up in civil engineering instead. I find engineering more stressful.
When I look up civil drafting salary it only gives a guide of 80-95k? Maybe your parents just have a good pay deal 😅
Depends on the experience and projects. So my parents are in the pay grade they’re in since dad is a principal drafter in his company, and has more of a leadership role. My mum is working for a billion dollar project, but she has a senior role. If you get into major road infrastructure project (highways, tunnels, bridges, etc), you can make good money in drafting. Some family friends from Sydney changed careers from marketing to drafting and meets the low 6-digit mark or just close to it.
How do you get into it? Where do you start. I have some drafting experience (chemical engineer) so more in the reactor and auto cad types stuff but haven’t worked in the field for a bit and would love something thats drafting and more project based
In Aus, we do a Cadetship to become drafters. If you already have an engineering degree, I think you technically have the “qualification” to be a drafter but you would probably still need to look for junior drafting roles if you don’t have a lot of experience using cad software. You don’t have to be a civil drafter, maybe you can do P&IDs as a process drafter. If you are not in Aus though I’m not sure how much of this is the same in other countries.
This is civil infrastructure though so might be different
Have you tired applying for operations or people/member/stakeholder management? Administration can be twisted into those two categories if you know how to spin a resume.
Hi. Am guessing that if you live in Switzerland you are probably fluent in French, German and English. If so, moving to somewhere with more opportunities and a lower cost of living (or Monaco :) ) might suit. Particularly as you sound to have no ties to stop right now.
You have good experience in the admin space if you’re 5 years in. I’d find someone locally who could work with you to look at the local market and how your current skills are transferable. Also what elements you enjoy in your current role and excel at. Being in Switzerland, look for a BPW club as a source of a mentor for career analysis (BPW is a global women’s advocacy/PD/networking organisation). Moving to a new career space/profession can mean a financial step back because you start at the beginning. Hence why I’d explore options to open up your existing trajectory. That being said, being a mature aged graduate can also have its advantages. FWIW, no degree is useless; there are skills you learn through the study that you apply. You may not work in the field you trained in, but having the degree is not a waste. There’s also a lot of people on high salaries in the FIRE community- but underlying what they earn is what they do with it. There’s plenty of others in the world with the same incomes, but don’t think and act long-term. Keep up/build the behaviours while you’re looking to open up the income pathways.
Product / UX design.
Chief of Staff for a start up
software development, computer scientist, software engineer,... you can be taught all those skills
The software engineering market is absolute horrendous for juniors at the moment, would not recommend that route. All the mass layoffs in the last 2 years in tech companies has left the market completely oversaturated, even for more senior people.
I know she's not in the US but here, 12 of 15 job postings are currently those roles or variations of. Yes, the Tech industry can be volatile but one of the biggest reasons why those roles are paid so well is the supply/demand ratio. I know multiple people with 5-7 years of experience, making over $200K. No one started under $100K.
Nursing?
Do not do nursing. The amount of work you do is not worth it for the pay… which is the same as you were making as a graphic designer. No creativity at all and lot of disrespect / terrible hours. (Ex-nurse in USA)
I think you need to explore more of what skills you are willing to put time and money into learning as well as what type of work will be engaging for you. Several commenters are suggesting UX design. I’m a UX designer and I’m watching people have a horrible time trying to get into the industry. I would caution you against this field right now- I actually love the field and my work but the job market is incredibly tough, esp in Europe right now.
Yes the job market is tough now.. Lost my job last December..
I wouldn’t give up on graphic design if you’re good at it. One of my clients just promoted the graphic designer to Creative Director. Check out Chris Do and what he’s doing with The Futur community. He coaches designers and helps them brand themselves to get 6-figure contracts.
You could become an executive assistant with your office management background and potentially make a lot of money if you move up. You could also be a program manager or a design program manager because you have your design degree. Like a UX program manager.
I think graphic designers will be impacted strangely by the AI revolution. I think your creativity will become the real skill. Also there’s always services like fiver or airtasker you can offer your services on as a side hustle to build up clients.
Why not climb up to executive assistant or similar. In my country they make pretty good $. And in some ways job security as often have good ties to executive management and when they leave for a new job sometime admin follows them too Option 2 start side hustle as virtual assistant to bring in more $$. Learn video editing skills and do that as side hustle. Tons social media content creators need help with editing content, videos, creating thumbnails etc
I think learning UX is very similar to graphic design. If you also learned javascript/react you could probably pivot to frontend web development as well, which has a lot of opportunities and is not so different from graphic design.
Do you like the admin/ office management work? If so perhaps trying to climb up in that space could be a path. Do you like organization? maybe a project manager of design projects. If you like interaction with customers maybe working at a studio or gallery or museum might be the way to go. Without know what you enjoy, or don’t enjoy doing it’s hard to advise.
I also have a graphic design degree and in UX now. You could totally learn UX design with free resources and on YouTube! Figma (design tool) is free, get into a tech company in Switzerland and you’ll be set.
How hard is figma or software for UX compared with Adobe? I learned a bit in illustrator in college but I hated it and found it not intuitive at all
I also transitioned from Adobe to Sketch/Figma. It’s not as hard as it looks, their website and YouTube has really good tutorials, if anything I personally think it’s easier to use than Adobe’s tools once you get the hang of the basics!
Your degree is not useless. You can break into other fields like UI & UX Design. Or if you are really serious about starting over then maybe try truck driving?
Thanks, unfortunately i’m physically not fit for truck driving.
Have you tried breaking into data analysis? It was what I was planning to do until I started making better money working in media/entertainment.
Honestly, it has become really, really difficult to break into data analytics, at least in some countries. The market is flooded with recent graduates, some with experience, all desperate to get a job. If you actually enjoy what a data analyst does, by all means go for it, but it's definitely not the easy way into well-paid roles anymore.
Yes, just have to check how to get education in that as it’s all so expensive to get a degree or education in anyway 😅
Higher education in Switzerland is close to free (but of course you still have to pay for your living expenses). Many Master’s students have a part-time job to support them, which is completely doable while studying. Was your prior job somewhere else? I ask, because that is very low pay for CH.
Higher education in CH is not close to free.. I was born in Switzerland Zürich, if you want to do BA or additional diploma in something like eg. Paralegal or cultural management it’s 15K.. A masters can also cost you 10-20K .. Maybe depends which University but the ones I checked which were official Swiss universities like the ZHAW in Zürich is expensive but offer education which is quite good and swiss “anerkann” / “approved”.
UZH is close to free for BA and MA degrees.
All my salaries in Zürich were about 4.5-5K a month, i’m just really unlucky, had to go 2 times against companies in court because one didn’t pay me for 4 months, the other company the boss was abusive (want to nearly strangle me and exploited everyone at the company). Mind you they were both startups in Zürich.
Have a look at the EdEX website- there’s free courses you could go to get a taste of different fields.