Share Your Stories Of Career Reinvention
Can former manufacturing workers make the leap into the knowledge economy? NPR labor reporter Frank Langfitt spent more than two years trying to answer that question.
He tracked former furniture workers in the town of Lenoir, N.C., to see if they could acquire the skills necessary to get a high-tech job at Google. The workers include people like Margo Rice, who lost her furniture job after 24 years.
Margo Rice is a former furniture worker who was laid off after 24 years and decided to change career paths to study information technology. Frank Langfitt/NPR hide caption
Rice struggled to reinvent herself. She took federal trade assistance and enrolled in the local community college to study information technology to try to land a job with Google.
NPR wants to compile some of our listeners' stories of career reinvention. Your success stories may help others who are in the process of making a career change late in life.
Tell us why you switched careers late in life and what made you successful.
Write to us at reinvent@npr.org — or leave a comment below.
We welcome photos that represent the new you.
Upload them to Flickr or attach them to your e-mail.
Step 1: If you're not a member yet, join Flickr. It doesn't cost anything, though if you want to use it to share a lot of photos — i.e., hundreds or thousands — you may want to purchase a Pro account.
Step 2: Upload the pics you'd like to share and tag them nprreinvent. (If you're having trouble uploading, consult Flickr's help guide.)
And that's it; you're done.