Life Direction

Thanks for the helpful comments. Yeah, these are all things I think about, I would like to go back to school and try a Master’s, I just I’m just not sure about which area, and then future job prospects, etc. I’ve been staying in my comfort zone too long, not sure the best way to climb out of it. But I just know it’s not something I can ignore any longer.

Marketing is a good field to jump into for foreigners in Taiwan with not much non-English teaching experience. Just be prepared to take a pay cut for the first couple years until you gain more experience and can go for higher level roles.

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For someone with absolutely no experience in marketing or the tech industry, what do you think would the best first steps to take? Perhaps finding a recruiter to help me along with the career change process? How did you make your first steps when you arrived in Taiwan?

First answer the question of what you wanna do. It’s a lot easier to sell yourself if you’re passionate about what you want and you’re not ‘just getting into it’ for money.

Then start educating yourself, get skills. I’ve always had a passion for tech stuff, so it was easy to bank on my years of working in a computer store plus my degree to do marketing.

If you can write, maybe you can write for people, but start getting skills required for the job.

I came here and learned Chinese first. It’s not perfect, but it’s made me more employable. It was definitely a bit rougher working on a $100/meal budget.

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What was your undergrad in?

There’s all sort of international firms that would recruit a fluent English and Chinese (speaking and written) none Chinese in certain roles. But since your resume is pretty much in English teaching, it might take a masters back west to get to that pathway.

Here’s the thing. Plans rarely work as you planned.

5 years ago I had no undergrad. Really didn’t know what I really wanted to do to the first time I wen to college and left and came back to Taiwan and found some success doing some odd jobs. Some of them really interesting and fun tbh but not a future I saw for myself.

I decided to finish my B.S. went to school in Malaysia and it wasn’t for me. There’s another thread about that but to sum it up the chronic diarrhea did me in.

So I found a distance learning program from a US school that let me transfer my credits from before, went to Italy to learn Italian while doing that. Decided I wanted to work in finance as I really did enjoy that the most.

Went to UK as I wanted to work in finance in London. Managed to get into a good school for my masters as I finished with a perfect grade for my undergrad the 2nd time around taking it seriously, even got a partial scholarship

Finished my masters with the highest grade possible and got a job in finance in London. I had started a side hustle with my fiancée at the same time. I basically got my dream job that I wanted and 4 months later I resigned as the side hustle became too lucrative and both became a full time effort.

Now I’m trying to start a warehouse in Italy as well and divest from the UK (long list of reasons).

What I’m trying to say is, someone said it above. Literally do something else and move in a different direction. You never know what will happen and you may end up doing something you never imagined. I’m in the beauty industry and I never imagined myself as one of the foremost experts in my industry right now. We’ve even hosted the largest conference for my industry in the UK.

Just move in a different direct and see where it goes.

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Have you organised events (marketing, events)? Have you written any of your own content (marketing , tech writing, education)? Do you have any skills or interests in esoteric areas or sports (biking, gaming, )? Design?

I knew a guy who was teaching and writing English content here for years. He did a Western masters in SEO and has built a nice career in tech now, moved to Europe and earns $$$.

How about finishing that edu degree and becoming an accredited intl teacher? Would seem a very realistic option.

An area with huge demand and very well paid are regulatory compliance managers for the medical, IVD and pharmaceutical industry. Can do a masters or cert in that too. Not the world’s most interesting job but a very solid job and prospects. Helps to be detail oriented.

Project management is another area that is popular.

The corporate world is there still if you do the masters, the best thing I can say about it is that once you get a career going you will start to save good money compared to teaching English and you can move back to Canada ir somewhere else. If I was you I would think carefully which kind of job is in high demand and pays well out there. Otherwise stick to education area and upskill like crazy to get the best jobs.

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I miss the Malaysia saga :rofl:

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I agree with @strung.in about giving ChatGPT a shot. There might be some sound ideas offered

In this article, Slate asks ChatGPT to give advice like it’s advice columnist… in the style of various people. Hilarious results, but the underlying advice isn’t random

What if Dear Prudence wasn’t a living, breathing font of advice? We decided to have some fun with ChatGPT, the scary-good chatbot from OpenAI that’s been garnering headlines. We fed it a fake letter, cobbled together with common tropes, and asked it to reply in a few different ways. Could it fool you?

https://archive.is/thvCD

From “in the style of a certain former President”: Trust me, nobody does weddings better than me, I know all about it. :joy:

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International schools have gym teachers. You’re using your degree, still in education but not really teaching. You will need the teaching degree, but those can be done in one year back in Canada. After that, you can come nack to Taiwan or go anywhere