Employment: is there a better time to retrain?

The labor market can be difficult at times. There are many workers these days who feel out of place in their jobs. Managers, workers or civil servants, these people may feel a need for essential change in order to achieve fulfillment in their professional and personal lives. Thus, more and more people are thinking of engaging in a professional retraining process.

However, a large proportion of these people hesitate and do not necessarily start, often for fear of the unknown or of failure. Sometimes the question of timing arises. Indeed, those who are considering retraining often ask themselves a crucial question: is this the right time?

Arrived at a certain age, workers considering a professional retraining often wonder if they are not too old to start such a procedure and resume a new career from the beginning. They see their age as an obstacle in this project.

For Marie-Ange Delcourt, professional and personal development coach, “there is no ideal age”. “We must start when we feel that we are ready to act, when our desire is stronger than our fears, when we deeply feel that it is in our interest to do it more than not to do it”, adds- she.

According to the specialist, it is therefore a very personal question that does not actually have much to do with age. “The cycles are different for everyone: some will be ready after 5 years in a profession, some after 20 years and others never, even if they say they want to! It is true that the transition from the living environment, called to wrongly ‘the midlife crisis’, promotes reflections on retraining.”

Beyond the question of age, the answer must therefore be made in collusion with his deep desires. It is a decision that remains difficult to make because it is not easy to realize if we are really ready to start.

According to Marie-Ange Delcourt, this moment occurs when “one is bored in one’s work, one no longer finds any source of satisfaction in it, one goes there out of obligation and time passes very slowly. Or worse , when we feel that we are being asked to work with methods that go against our deep convictions.”

However, another problem may also arise. Indeed, when you know that you want to retrain, there is always this question of the financial aspect.

When a person wishes to retrain, the question that arises is also that of financing. It is common to say that we prefer to wait until we have enough savings to get started. But for our coach, “You don’t necessarily have to have savings to retrain.”

Indeed, it depends on the desired project, it is still important to note that, in many cases, solutions may exist. For example, “if this requires training, there are systems such as the Professional Transition Project, which allows it to be financed”, specifies Marie-Ange. Similarly, “for business creation, foundations, micro-credits are possible.”

In other words, the question of finances remains very variable depending on the nature of the project and must be taken into account during construction. “In the construction of the project itself, develops the specialist, we will proceed differently if we are in a hurry or not, if we have savings or not, if we want to train or not … Once the objective of retraining is posed, the strategy and the action plan are relatively simple to decline but depend on each one.”