Drupal as a career change? In Newcastle?

Hi Rebel,

I thought I'd chime in on this one because my start in Drupal a few years ago was quite similar to where it seems you are at right now. Much like you, I was working in a non-profit and was given the task of maintaining the Drupal website and slowly went further into the Drupal internals until I was setting up a CiviCRM installation for the organisation.

The two things that really helped me were having a mentor to give me some help when I got stuck, and then getting a job as a junior developer. Although you can always learn to do Drupal by making websites on your own for yourself, friends or organisations in need, I really think the quickest and best way is to try and find yourself a junior position somewhere. I hit so many dead ends battling through on my own, and it wasn't until I had other developers to mentor and guide me that I really started to get the hang of it.

I don't know what the Newcastle scene is like, but I would go along to any meetups or social evenings and do some networking. Have a chat to the developers and find out if they or anyone they know have a position available for a junior. Or if they aren't specifically after a junior perhaps you can convince them they need one to do all of the button clicking and CSS tasks that their more senior developers are fed up with. Everyone seems to be looking for intermediate/senior talent at the moment, but there is not a lot of it around so I think there's a real need for us to be nurturing enthusiastic people like yourself up into those higher roles. Plus you don't come with any of the baggage of previous experience, so the lucky shop can train you up exactly the way they want to.

As far as training goes, there aren't really Drupal-specific courses, but you can always brush up on your CSS/jQuery/PHP, as a solid base in those skills will really help when applying for positions. I would also keep an eye out for any of the Acquia Drupal modules being delivered in your area, as they are a really great way to skill up in stuff like theming and module development. I did the module development training after this year's Drupal Down Under and it finally made me understand PHP and the Drupal API.

And my last piece of advice is if you end up doing Drupal on your own don't be afraid to ask for help, particularly in IRC. I spent full weeks stuck on problems when I first started because I was too scared to ask a question in #drupal-support on IRC. #drupal-au is also a good place to be, as our time zone means the support channel can be a bit empty, although I try and help out a bit with newbie questions there during the work day while waiting for things to build. There's also #drupalchix for the ladies, which is a bit empty during our work day and could do with some life.

Best of luck!
Erica.

Thanks Erica and Kattekrab... I know I'm not going to be happy until I make a career change.
I haven't used IRC in 15 years... I'll have to go have a squiz!
Thanks again,
Reb.

Shifting into another career may consider many factors like if the career you are entering into has a background or knowledge about it, also the passion you posses so that you may last longer on the career you are taking into and lastly be sure that you are 100% sure of what you are entering into.
police interview