5.3 Retraining

About half of the returners who took part in the Open University survey had undertaken further study or retraining as part of their strategy to return to STEM. Indeed, you might decide to undertake a completely new qualification that will take you into a different but related career. On the other hand, you may decide to refresh your skills and learn new techniques that will update your abilities in your specialist field.

Shirley, mentioned in Section 5.1, had been a mainframe computer programmer before her career break, and undertook a training course in Java to update her skills. In her case, the qualification provided her with the confidence boost to apply for other jobs.

If you are thinking about retraining, you will need to know a bit more about what the new and upcoming trends are in your sector to help you decide what would be relevant. In Week 3 you’ll be looking at what’s going on in the STEM industry sectors. There is also a Further reading section with links to courses and training opportunities.