5 TIPS : Your Career Reinvention Roadmap

Each career transition journey is ultimately personal and unique.

That said, some dynamics of career change are relatively universal and challenging. 


#1 : Doing Work That Matters

When considering changing careers, I spent time and effort trying to identify future work that I considered important.

But what matters to me, may not matter at all to you!

So, I have no right to impose this perspective on you.

If you see work as a financial means to a lifestyle end, that’s perfectly valid.

Permission to skip forward granted!

If you target work that you think matters, benefits can include greater:

• Alignment between your future work and personal value system
• Motivation and perseverance to overcome obstacles
• Application of creative problem-solving
• Contributions that positively impact targeted groups of people
• Long-term career fulfilment, work engagement and job satisfaction

Changing careers is really confronting!

You have invested significant time, effort and money to position yourself in your current occupation, field and industry.

Also, your social identity is often tied up with your type of work, level of responsibility and, sometimes, level of power.

Put another way, you have a built career in which you (and others) have a strong vested interest. 

So, career change is tough because it is likely to demand:

• Identifying your motivated, transferrable skills (and letting go some which proved rewarding in the past)
• Acquiring new knowledge, skills and qualifications valuable to your future career direction
• Developing new networks
• Determining the realities of working in new target occupations, fields and industries.

Career change often involves a period where you have one foot in the old ‘career camp’ and the other in a new ‘career camp’.  

Put simply, you have dual purposes and competing demands during this phase of career transition.


So, you be challenged to:

• Apply disciplined time management, prioritisation and boundary-setting skills to handle commitments (i.e. performance in current role and progression of your future career agenda)
• Select and schedule new learning, in parallel with existing work commitments
• Systematically engage with, and allocate time to, new occupational, field and industry networks
• Develop a support network prepared to help you reach your future career goals (e.g. family, close friends, mentors)
• Maintain your mental and physical well-being

It's hard letting go and chasing new work goals, without any guarantee of success.

The whole project can, at times, seem overwhelming.

So, it is important to:

• Treat your career change as a high value, strategic project
• Conduct research that indicates that potential long-term rewards of your new career direction outweigh the alternative of staying in your current line of work
• Set achievable milestones and goals, and celebrate wins along the way 
• Closely consider how you will manage financially as you transition (e.g. take advice, save, create a financial buffer)
  

Career change is not executed in a vacuum.

It is true that you need to take a leap of faith.

If you lack confidence in your proposed career change, it will be difficult to convince others of its merits!


Based on my own career transition, and those of my clients, I would recommend the following tactics to accelerate  your understanding of, and visibility in, your target occupation, field or industry: 

Understanding

• Conduct extensive desk research to gain knowledge of occupation, field and industry dynamics and trends
• Interview people already working in target occupations, fields and industries, to gain informed insights into what it is like to ‘live’ in their worlds ('informational interviewing')

• Join target occupational, field and industry associations, attend live and online events, engage professionally, and actively consider taking a low-key voluntary position (to demonstrate reliability, capabilities, passion and integrity)
• If studying, learn about your peer learners, trainers and academics, their employment contexts, and networks
  
• If studying, find ways to involve your expanding network of contacts in assignments (e.g. as survey participants)
• Meeting regularly with your ‘advisory board’ (including, ideally, a mentor in the target field)

All these strategies and tactics will be timed in accordance with your wider career change agenda.

At a time that is right for you, you can then conduct a ‘creative’, multipronged search campaign.

It is then that you need one important person to take a punt on you, either as your employer or as your first client!