Career Change
 

Is anybody going through a career change. I am a guy in my early 30s who is seeking for a career change from semiconductor engineering to other sectors, hopefully biomedical areas, as the semiconductor sector is too volatile for me to stay on and salary is very suppressed given the high influx of FT who is willing to accept much lower pay than Sgrean. I am still actively looking out for jobs in the biomedical area and waiting for opportunity.

Personally i feel change can be scary especially if you are not able to adapt well. Has anybody experience this mid life career change and can share? Can anybody also share how to cope with the change mentally as career change to a different industry may need high level of adaptability to manage new job scope, new industry culture, new process, new expectation of the other industry ?

If you decided to move on, don't think too much. Just proceed on with life and treat your next job as the means of bringing food to your family. If you have the mindset of just trying out, I advice you not to change anything and stay on with your present job until you are retrench.

In your 30s, you should be already setting your career goals on what you want to achieve in 5 yrs, 10 yrs time. And once you have decided to do it, you should whole heartedly pursue your goals. If you are not married, most probably you just want to try out something new and you may be dissappointed. Good luck.

Just go for it. You can also be self employed, like being an insurance agent, property agent or taxi drivers. I heard they earn good money. FTs not allowed to drive taxis so you can earn high salary if you drive hard. There was an article saying a tax driver can earn $6,000 or $7,000 per month, provided you don't laze around at coffee shops.

I am married with 1 kid, so if i were to move on to next job, i must endure even if i feel i am not suited for the new industry as i have family commitment. This is the pressure and dilemma i am facing. There is fear to move on but if I don;t move on, i would be retrenched someday. I have seen a few of my colleagues who have been retrenched more than 1 time in their whole life in semiconductor which is really scary.

Recently, i have been offered a job in the biomedical industry, i did badly during the interview due to my limited experience in the new industry but was still being offered after 5 weeks since the day of interview. I am not sure if the company is desperate for people or nobody actually applied for that role as the scope is not favourable in the eyes of those experienced people.

In a real dilemma now, can anybody advise?

Have you bought your BTO flat? How much? Where? 3 or 4 room?

So you no experience and perform badly in interveiw and they still come back and hire you? Usually not a good sign. This means many people ahead of you have rejected the offer and they are just running through the list to see who is dumb enough to take up.

This kind of high risk jump you should as for at least 25% pay increase because of high chance of not working out.

Hi. I know that semiconductor industry is very volatile, but I'm uncertain how bad an extent can the industry be? Care to share your experience i.e. how frequent or how many have you seen being retrenched? I always feel that being an engineer in that industry is a rather unstable job.

My advice is NEVER EVER join a semiconductor or electronics company in Singapore. Not sure about other country, but in Singapore, it is a sunset industry. I made a bad mistake when i was a fresh grad. I didn't know about this at that time. I have seen at least 5 colleagues being axed at least 1 time, one of time who is in his 50s is being axed 5 times !!
So you can see how volatile it is.

Oh gosh..that's very bad. Thanks for sharing.

This is a start up company and the offer was about 20% higher than my current pay if you include variable bonus. It is quite attractive. So below are the possibilities i have thought of:

1) You may be correct to say that many people may have already rejected the offer and they are just looking for 1 ignorant guy to accept it

2) This is a new start up company so an attractive package is also reasonable to attract people and start up company are expected to be busy.

3) My pay scale is below market rate. The salary that they are offering is actually the norm for that biomedical industry.

Any other thoughts to share ?