help please. interview question re career change

Hollywood

I used to work as accounts admin yrs ago doing sales & purchase ledger and credit control, reconcilliations etc but never really knew what i was doing as such; in depth. The last accounts role i was in i was doing basic stuff and got v bored. I had always been interested in childcare and being a primary school teacher, i left my job to work at an after school club and later a childrens centre where i work still. Now i know teachers and how it really is i dont want to do that anymore and childcare is not challenging so im half way through my aat level 2 and want to go back into it but my question is.....

How do i handle that in an interview, theyre bound to ask why i left accounts to do childcare and have now decided to come back to it???? I cant think of any good way to put it!!?? Any way makes me sound undecided although the real reason is i wasnt prepared to comit to aat untill i was 100% sure what i wanted to do but does that make me sound flitty/flaky?

Pleeease help.

StuartW

Hi @Hollywood

Most people change career at some point in their lives - I don't think doing so, and then changing back, necessarily makes you appear 'flaky'.

I would concentrate on the positive traits your journey illustrates - you're not afraid to make difficult/disruptive decisions, and having made a change in your career it clarified for you what you actually want to do.

It can take some people longer to work out what they definitively want to do with their lives, and that's not a crime. I guess if you were asked a question along the lines of 'well how do we know you're not going to change your mind again?', you could say that having done this once only helped clarify what you want - if you didn't want to come back to accounting you would have gone off to do something else.

Don't worry overly about what you *might* be asked - but do prepare a positive spin on it just in case it does come up. Best of luck!

Hollywood

Thank you, i was hoping i can spin it in a positive way but just curious if other people would view it that way. Thats made me feel much better thank you and il get prepared how to word it in interviews