In 2016, Jen Hibbert launched her dream business – a fitness club for new mothers – but found she had no work-life balance
Identifying the elusive “dream job” is often a challenge. School leavers are pushed towards certain careers more than others: teaching is most popular, according to a report by, followed by vets, doctors and professional sports, due to exposure on TV or films. But in a landscape of economic uncertainty, the criteria for an aspirational career is changing.
The business model, targeting new and pregnant mothers, inevitably meant that the membership was constantly being replaced. Finding the work increasingly repetitive, Jen eventually decided to sell the business in 2022. Lydia dreamed of being a primary school teacher but it was nothing like she imagined. Sal went from studying medicine to working in HR
In 2020, she started teaching full-time in a primary school in Lancashire, where she lives, and found little improvement. “To start with, you have that excitement – you’re surviving off adrenaline. But within the first couple of weeks, I found that I was really struggling: mainly with behaviour, the amount I had to do, and the fact that I felt I didn’t have time to teach because there were so many other jobs, like safeguarding, planning and accountability.
Sal failed her exams at the end of her third year, resitting them over the summer. In her fourth year, she actively began to look for a way out. After visiting the university’s careers counsellor, she completed an MA in Business Management between her fourth and fifth years of medical school , which sparked a desire to learn more about the corporate world.