New research by The Recruit Venture Group has uncovered the truths behind Brits’ career aspirations including:
· 45% of construction workers say they have always wanted to work in the industry.
70% of employees are doing jobs they don’t want to be in
· The top most desired career is to work in is education/teaching
· A third of full-time employees secretly want to start their own business
· Business owners are most likely to say they’re in their dream job
· Almost 1 in 10 don’t want to start a company because of uncertainty around Brexit
The research shows that business owners are six times more likely (74%) to be in their dream job than employees(13%). Interestingly in construction over 54% of Business owners have always wanted to start their own business.
36% of construction business owners said their main reason for starting their business was it is something they have always wanted to do.
It seems Brits have taken to starting their own company to create their dream job rather than searching for it elsewhere; 39% of side business owners say that their side business is their dream job and 31% of full-time employees want to start their own company rather than staying in employment.
The research also looked the top ten dream Jobs Brits aspire to have compared to what they wanted to be as children which shows an interesting contrast:
The main reasons for not taking their side business full-time were money, family arrangements and friends at work. These echo the reasons for employees not starting their own business which were:
1. Lack of capital (58%)
2. Fear of no regular income (43%)
3. Fear of failure (42%)
Almost 1 in 10 don’t want to start a company because of uncertainty around Brexit.
Despite not being in their dream job, a quarter of employees do want to stay in their current job, with the top reasons for staying being:
1. Money (37%)
2. Location (27%)
3. Family Arrangements (21%)
4. Lack of skills required to obtain the job of their dreams (20%)
5. Unsure how to achieve the job of their dreams (19%)
Age seems to have an impact on changing career with over 45s are most likely to fear it’s too late to change careers, although surprisingly 10% of 18-24-year olds also fear it’s already too late. Almost half of 65+ year old employees aren’t in their dream job with 35% thinking it’s too much hassle to find another.
71% of employees weren’t always sure on what career they wanted but over half (55%) of business owners always knew they wanted to have their own company.
As a third of employees admitted to secretly wanting to start their own company, they were also asked which products or companies they wished they’d invented, with technological advancements being the most popular
Paul Mizen, Managing Director at Recruit Venture discusses these findings: “Initially we predicted that more employees would be unhappy in their job over business owners, but we didn’t expect it to be that high. It seems that many people could be happier by starting their own company and looking at the statistics we have got back from business owners, employees should think about their options and work out if their dream job is feasible by creating their own business and if so what the next steps towards this goal could be.
There is always another option and a different career path has no age limit, especially when looking at setting up your own company.”
