Endless photocopying, making cups of tea and dishing out the mail. All standard jobs
for the new ‘workie’ at a PR company. Except Namuli Katumba wasn’t a green-and-keen young graduate looking for her first step on the career ladder. She was 34, and had just left a high-powered, well-paid job in IT.
‘I did have days where I needed to remind myself, “Come on, this isn’t a mundane task, it’s helping them to help you to learn about this industry,”’ admits Namuli,
now 35, from Buckinghamshire. ‘I didn’t reveal my age at the start because I don’t look my age and all the other interns were 20, but then I realised I had a lot of skills and experience to bring to the table. I spent those three months living off my savings and being schooled by people 15 years younger than me, but at the end of the placement they offered me a full-time job. It meant taking a £20k pay cut, but I haven’t looked back.’
Namuli is one of a growing number of women taking ‘midternships’ – a mid-career internship – either because they’re changing careers or returning to work after a break to bring up children. Katherine Forster, 48, from West London, made headlines last week after she fought off stiff competition from 20-somethings to become the oldest intern at The Spectator magazine, which operates a no-CV policy (applicants write a covering letter only – avoiding irrelevant details like age or education). ‘I thought people would think it was a joke when I told them, but it’s given me a new lease of life,’ she says. ‘It’s been the best two weeks of my life and also the scariest. It has been pointed out to me that I am one of the oldest people in the building, but I feel like I belong.’
Considering we could now all be working well into our seventies, starting a new career in your thirties, forties – or even fifties – doesn’t seem such a ridiculous notion. The Government estimates that the number of over-45s who will undergo an apprenticeship this year is over 40,000, and financial firms including PricewaterhouseCoopers and Deloitte are now offering later-life ‘returnships’ in the hope of tempting women who’ve had a career break to care for family back to the City.
WATCH: 11 Inspiring Career Quotes
Liv Griffiths, 35, from Kent, worked in customer services for Kurt Geiger before having two sons (aged three and 18 months). But rather than go back to her old job, she decided she wanted a new challenge. ‘I didn’t know what direction to go in, so I took up an unpaid internship at a tech start-up called Happity just to explore what was out there,’ she explains. ‘It was scary at first – I had no idea about email marketing or coding – but it felt so refreshing learning new things and being around interesting people.’ She has now been appointed marketing assistant for the website, which connects new mums. ‘I’d recommend joining a start-up to anyone – why should new graduates get all the fun?’
And being more, ahem, ‘mature’ can even work to your advantage. Joanna Dai, 31, from California (now living in London) interned with fashion designer Emilia Wickstead for three months last year, and says that her background in investment banking meant that she was given responsibilities younger interns couldn’t be trusted with. ‘Of course,
I did all the usual running errands and stuff,’ she says. ‘But because they knew
I had more analytical skills, I was also writing internal reports and analysing data.’ Joanna has since set up her own label, DAI. ‘It did feel daunting starting at the bottom in my thirties, but I had the dream of starting my own label in my mind and I knew that the internship was about gathering experience. If you’ve got the passion and the drive, then age is just a number – you’re never too old to make the leap.’
READ MORE:
READ MORE: