Changing Careers in 12 Proven Steps
There are many reasons why you may want to change careers. Usually, its all about money and dissatisfaction with one’s present career.Your career change might be as serious as switching industries, like from being an entertainer to a doctor.
It might also mean switching jobs within the same industry, like from being an insurance sales agent in the finance industry to being an investments sales agent in the finance industry.
But whatever the reasons and kind of career change you want to implement for yourself, you should first think it over and plan your career change move.
This might mean still doing for a little more time the career you are no longer interested in or even hate.
Here are proven steps in changing careers:
Note: This information was taken from my actual experience in changing careers multiple times during my professional life, as well as from professional career websites.
Summary of "Changing Careers in 12 Proven Steps":
1. Know Why You are Unhappy with Your Current Career2. Take Stock of Yourself
3. Study the New Careers You’re Considering
4. Find Actual Jobs that Matches Your Planned New Careers
5. Set Deadlines
6. Rebrand Yourself According to Your Ideal New Career
7. Try to Get Firsthand Information
8. Ask Company Third Parties for Feedback
9. Test the Waters First
10. Become Knowledgeable in Your Ideal New Career
11. Improve Your Old Soft Skills
12. Look Within Your Current Industry and/or Company
Final Words
The Details:
1. Know Why You are Unhappy with Your Current Career
Let’s face it, the only reason why you want a career change is because you have an overwhelming dissatisfaction and/or dislike for your current career.
But make sure you’re thinking with a clear mind. For example, a sudden argument with your boss can make you carelessly decide to change careers.
Think first how much you are really dissatisfied and/or disinterested in your career. This is because all careers have both good and bad aspects. You might change careers only to find out that your new career also has the same bad aspects that you also don’t like.
Try to see first if your dissatisfaction and/or disinterest in your current career is solvable. If it is, try solving your problems in your current career first before trying out a new career.
This is because starting a new career is hard because you’re starting over again, It is also no guarantee that it would be an ideal career to you as well.
Back To Summary List
2. Take Stock of Yourself
By having experience in your current career and/or other past careers, you would already have gained an idea of how having a career or job is like.
Even though you are working for somebody else, you yourself is your own business. Your employer pays for your skills and/or time, just like if they were paying a contractor. The only difference between you and the contractor is that you’re working full time for your employer.
So take stock of your skills, interests and principles. See how it fits in your ideal new career. If it does not, change your new career aspirations or adapt to your new ideal career.
Don’t make the mistake of just jumping straight into your new ideal career. This is because you might not last long because your skills, interests and principles don’t align with your new career.
Back To Summary List
3. Study the New Careers You’re Considering
When changing careers, don’t only consider one new ideal career, but consider several ideal new careers.
Study each of the ideal careers you’re considering: employment statistics, pay, competition, skills needed, and so on.
Speak to you family, friends, and loved ones. Ask for their feedback regarding the new ideal careers you’re planning to embark on and how they fit you. Asking a third party might give you insight regarding things you haven’t considered when embarking on a career change.
You should also try to gain access to a mentor, career counsellor, recruiter, staffing employee, and so on. Anyone who can give you professional advise regarding how to change your career as smoothly and successfully as possible.
Back To Summary List
4. Find Actual Jobs that Matches Your Planned New Careers
Having a job usually means working for someone else in exchange for monetary compensation. But jobs can turn into careers if one has been doing it long enough, usually for decades. So, careers begin as jobs.
This is the reason why you should search and study real world jobs that matches your planned new careers. This is because for the most part, you need a career that you not only like, but one that would pay you adequately.
This would be the time when you would have to check job board websites and other job listings to see if the job requirements for these job positions matches you and your ideal new career.
To get ahead of the rest of the other jobseekers, you could also study and even contact the companies you plan to work for. You might just find a job position within these companies that closely aligns with your new career ideals.
Back To Summary List
5. Set Deadlines
Studying and having plans to achieve your ideal career is important, but you cannot study and plan forever.
You should set a deadline on when you plan to decide on what your ideal career should be. At this deadline, you would have narrowed down your choices for new careers and have even further narrowed it into just one.
Also, when you reached your deadline, you would have narrowed down the real world jobs and companies you plan to apply and work for.
But when you set your deadline, you should make sure that you have adequately allocated enough time for research and study regarding your ideal new career. Don’t set a deadline randomly.
Back To Summary List
6. Rebrand Yourself According to Your Ideal New Career
Don’t expect companies to open their arms to you especially if you’re starting out fresh in your new ideal career.
At this stage in your professional life, it is your potential employers who have the upper hand because you’re applying to them as a career changer.
Make sure that you have the necessary skills and personality that your potential employers want. If you lack the skills for your new ideal career, you should refresh your skills by studying so that you would have the necessary credentials to show your potential employers.
You should also change your resume, portfolio, calling cards, websites and social media profiles if you have them. Nowadays employers just scan resumes in seconds to see if a job candidate suits their requirements.
Recruiters and companies are also increasingly using the internet to research if potential job candidates suits their requirements.
Back To Summary List
7. Try to Get Firsthand Information
Usually, the media usually paints a very idealized image of a job or a company. But nothing in life is ideal. There would always be good and bad in everything. This includes the job you want to have and the company you want to work for.
Whenever possible, try to get information regarding your ideal job and company from actual employees who have experience working the same job and working for the same company.
You can also consult online forums and question and answer sites like Reddit and Quora, usually you could find people asking questions regarding how’s it like to work for a certain position in a certain company.
You could also use company review sites like Glassdoor to see what current and former employees are saying about the past and/or current companies they used to work for or are currently working at.
Back To Summary List
8. Ask Company Third Parties for Feedback
If possible, get feedback from third parties that interact with the job and company you plan to work for.
For example, if you’re planning to be a real estate sales agent for a certain real estate company, ask their past and future clients and contractors if they had bad experiences regarding the company.
This is very important if one of your requirements for changing to a new career is a stable salary. If the contractors of the company you’re planning to work for don’t pay their contractors on time, you might face the same treatment from the company regarding your salary.
Also, if the company has a bad reputation with its past and current clients, you might find it hard to sell the company’s products, which would hurt your selling career overall.
Back To Summary List
9. Test the Waters First
If you can, try to test first if your new job and company suits you. If you have the opportunity, try to take a break or vacation first from the company you’re currently working for, so you can test the situation in the new job and company you’re planning to transition to.
This could be as short to a few days leave or up to a few weeks of break or vacation from your current job and/or company.
Just make sure that your current company would not find out that you’re already trying on a new job in a new company.
Sometimes, you just want a career change right in your very own company, like a career change from being an office administrator to a sales staff.
You can talk to your superior and request some free time to try out the new position within the company. If you realize that the new position doesn’t suit you, you can just request a transfer back to your old job within the company.
Back To Summary List
10. Become Knowledgeable in Your Ideal New Career
Having formal educational certifications would help greatly with your smooth transition to your new career.
For one, you would have convinced your new employer that you have the necessary knowledge to do the job you’re changing careers for.
Also, this would mean that you won’t have to start from scratch which is often a dealbreaker for employers who are impatient in teaching new hires the job they’re supposed to know how to do already in the first place.
This would also mean that you would be on par with the employees of the new company you’re working for. This is because the knowledge they know is also known to you.
Back To Summary List
11. Improve Your Old Soft Skills
Often, the soft skills you have previously learned from your past careers like speaking fluently, leadership, rapport, and so on, are transferrable to your new career. They might just need updating.
For example, if you used to have a career in customer service and now you’re doing sales, you would have already developed the necessary skills to communicate effectively with people.
You just need to further improve your communication skills to also be a persuasive person who is able to persuade people to buy the products and/or services you’re selling.
There are in fact many employers who value soft skills much higher than technical skills. Jobs are mostly repetitive and once a technical skill is learned, it doesn’t need to be updated often. But soft skills need constant updating the more you advance in your company.
Back To Summary List
12. Look Within Your Current Industry and/or Company
Often, your ideal new career can directly be found in your current industry and/or company. You just need to look a bit closer to your industry and/or company.
The advantage of not straying too far from your industry and/or company when changing careers is that you would not necessarily need start all over again.
For example, by changing careers in the same industry and/or company, you already have an established network of contacts via your familiar coworkers, company, clients, suppliers and so on.
Also, all the soft skills and job knowledge you’ve gained from your previous career won’t go to waste, at most they would only need to be updated.
Changing careers doesn’t have to be extreme to be successful, often simple changes to your career are the most effective. For example, many people have successfully transitioned from just being a company sales staff to becoming independent sales agents for the same products.
Back To Summary List
Final Words
Changing careers abruptly because you hate your current career is usually not a good move. For example, if you have an argument with your boss or you don’t get promoted, don’t instantly think about changing careers.
Changing careers need study and planning. Otherwise, you might find yourself encountering the same old problems from your previous careers into your new career.
You should asses yourself: your skills, interests and principles and seek out careers, jobs and companies that suit them.
Once you find your ideal career, job and company, seek out the feedback of your family, friends and loved ones. Most importantly, seek out the feedback of people who have professional knowledge about the new ideal career you’re planning.
This could be mentors, industry professionals, recruiters, and so on. But most of all, have an adequate deadline for your new career, job and company. Get the job. Studying and planning helps a lot, but only actual experience would tell you if your new career really suits you.
Back To Summary List
You Might Be Interested To Read This Article:
How to Find the Job You Love: 15 Questions to Ask Yourself
Your job makes up a great deal of your life. You spend on average between 40 to 48 hours a week on your job, or a minimum of 36% of your waking hours each week. You also spend more than 4 decades of your lifetime in a job.
If you hated your jobs, it would be a very miserable life for you. There are employees who are so miserable in their jobs that they have resorted to alcoholism, drug addiction and other vices to make their jobs temporarily bearable.
This is why if you are just starting out on your career, or are already in a career, it might be time to find a job you love, for your health and sanity’s sake...