Do you ever catch yourself staring out of the window, wistfully daydreaming about working alongside the gardener who is tending the office gardens, or making frequent visits down to the post room so you can hang out with the facilities management guys? If so, it might be time to think about a career away from the office.

Perhaps you enjoy tinkering in your garage with your car, splashing the paint around at home in a spot of DIY or jumping at the chance to help your neighbour with his leaky tap? If you like getting your hands dirty, then a manual job might be a more suitable career for you, and there’s never been a better time to make the change.

“There is a blue collar renaissance going on right now,” says Joe Lamacchia, author of Blue Collar and Proud of It: The All-in-One-Resource for Finding Freedom, Financial Success, and Security Outside of the Cubicle. “These are necessary jobs and they’re not going to go anywhere. Our nation’s infrastructure is crumbling. We want to turn this country green and we don’t have enough workers to do it. There’s a lot of opportunity here.”

John Pearce from Gloucestershire quit his job in sales to retrain as a plumber two years ago. “To be honest, I was never much of a salesman,” he says. “I felt like a fish out of water. I’m much better suited to manual work – I’ve been doing up our house for the last five years and have loved every minute of it. When a friend asked me to join his new plumbing business, I jumped at the chance.” John gained his NVQ on a part-time course while working with his friend and is now a qualified plumber.

Phillip Sweet from Bedfordshire currently works for the NHS but is also looking to change careers to do something more manual. He too has been renovating a property for a number of years and has discovered that he is particularly skilled in carpentry and masonry, as well as being very able at plumbing, electrics and plastering. “The thought of doing my 9-5 job doesn’t fill me with joy anymore,” he says. “It’s more of a hindrance now – I can’t wait until the weekends, when I can get back to working on the house. I definitely want to look into the possibility of making a new career out of my building work.”

While leaving a secure job can be scary, the great thing about changing careers into something more manual is that you don’t need to go back to college for years at a time. Most qualifications can be gained on evening or part-time courses, and experience counts for everything. If you simply can’t envisage the rest of your working career staring at a computer screen in an office, then it might be worth taking the plunge now and researching any courses that are local to you. At college, you will also make contacts in the industry that can be hugely beneficial for essential apprenticeship schemes.

No more suit and tie, no more office commute, no more office politics: changing scenes may be the best move you ever made!

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