Career Change (The Ultimate Guide)
Are you thinking about changing careers? Read our Ultimate Guide to Career Change to find out more.
So, you want to change your career? It’s straightforward, right? You just think about what else you want to do and do it …..
In theory, that’s what happens, but changing a career can be more problematic. Over the years, I have worked with individuals to help them change and pivot to a different career direction, and it’s not always as straightforward as it seems. You are reading this article, so you may be experiencing feeling stuck or having problems moving forward to pivot in a new direction. Having worked with hundreds of clients who want to switch careers and have changed careers a few times, I know different issues tend to come up through the process. For example, you may not enjoy what you do and may be looking for a career change, but you do not know what you want to do for work. You might think, “I need a career change”, but do not have any ideas. Or, you may have too many career ideas and not know how to make those life-changing career decisions between one idea and another. For many, it is difficult to understand how to change career paths. This can be especially true if you have little or no experience in your new career direction.
In this article, you will discover how to change careers. We will be focussing on the following:
What is a career change?
Why do you want to make a career change?
How to change your career
Where can I get help with my career change?
Am I too old to change career?
1. What is a career change?
A career change is a process of moving to work different from your previous experience. It can be by choice or involuntary. You may want to change careers because you feel dissatisfied with your work. Or you simply want to do something else where there are potentially more opportunities for your future career.
Different types of Career Change
Career changes can be big or small. The main types of career change are:
Promotion - you move vertically to a role, usually with more responsibility. The role content can be similar or quite different. For example, moving from a specialist engineering role to a generalist manager’s role can involve different job content and responsibilities. You can move internally or to another organisation.
External moves to similar roles are horizontal moves to a different organisation but a similar role. These moves are often made to change environments or salaries. This is not a career change as such but a job change.
Internal move to a different role - you move from one type of position to another. Such as from a job in logistics to one in buying. Different organisations vary in their attitude to whether this is possible. It also depends on the qualifications and expertise involved in the different roles. For example, you are not likely to go from an occupational therapist to a doctor in the NHS as different qualifications are required for each career type.
External moves to a different role—you move from a different role and different organisation. This is arguably the trickiest move and often involves retraining and reskilling, depending on the types of roles involved.
Reengineering your role means changing what and how you do your role. This is also referred to as crafting your role. For example, you could change your work hours from full to part-time, which can positively impact work-life integration. You may also take a sabbatical or take a course to enrich your learning and expertise. You may do the job differently, such as using more technology. Reengineering your role can be a way to enrich job satisfaction.
Changing types of employment - you move from being self-employed to employed or vice versa. Or you become a contractor rather than employed or vice versa.
Portfolio career - you do more than one role at a time. Having the main job and a side project (also known as a side hustle) can be a good way of testing out a career change. For example, you build websites after work to build that into a business once you have sufficient clients. For some, having two quite different part-time jobs can add interest and be a career change to consider. You may find that one job is the one you feel passionate about, whilst the other pays the bills!
Change of Mindset—This is not strictly a career change, but thinking differently can help you become happier at work. In many situations, trying to be happier at work just doesn’t cut the mustard, and a full career change is required. However, it is a good starting point. If you really cannot be happy at work, perhaps it is time to switch careers.
2. Why do you want to make a career change?
The first thing to consider is why you want to make a career change. This really defines the problem. If you know what the problem is, it is easier to develop a targeted approach to finding a solution.
What is going on for you? Take some time to ask yourself what is not working for you at work. What are the current issues? What is missing? How long have you felt like this - is it a phase or sticky patch, or is it time for a career change?
I am not putting you off changing careers. It is perfectly possible to change careers at any age. I also believe everyone should be happy at work. If you are unhappy, it can have adverse effects not only on your work but also on the rest of your life. But it is good to really understand what is going on, so you can take the appropriate action. Sometimes, a small change, such as moving to another job in the same environment, can make big improvements to how you feel about your job.
The main reasons to know it is time for a career change are:
1. Your job is making you ill
Some tell-tale signs might be that you always feel exhausted and find it hard to get going, even on the weekends or days off. Or you feel emotional or weepy for no apparent reason and find it hard to control this. Or it’s hard to get to sleep, or indeed to stay awake during the day. If you feel like this and it is down to the stress of your job, it may well be time for you to think about a career change.
If your job is making you ill, it can be for various reasons. This can be due to external reasons such as having a toxic boss or the type of environment you are working in that is too stressful for you. Or, it can be due to internal reasons, such as doing work that does not suit your natural abilities, your skills, your values and your personality. It helps enormously to be interested in what you do. Your mindset can affect how happy you are in general and, therefore, how happy you are at work. Being resilient and optimistic makes you more likely to be happy. If you are always negative, you are more likely to be unhappy wherever you are.
2. You dread going to work
Do you go to sleep every night dreading the next day of work? Do you have a Miserable Monday every Monday? You stay awake late on Sundays, so the weekend is more extended? Everyone has ups and downs in their work, but if you truly, deeply dread those eight or so hours at the office, it is time to make plans to change what you do for work. We work an average of 90,000 hours in our lifetime. That’s a lot of hours. Work out how many years, weeks and hours you have left before you retire ….. does that motivate you to switch careers to something that makes you happy and satisfied at work?
3. Your work feels meaningless
If you are counting the hours until the end of the day and you are bored and feel you are wasting your life with pointless and meaningless work that you don’t enjoy, it’s time to find something else. One of the keys to workplace happiness and work engagement is having a sense of meaning and purpose in what you do. If you can’t find it in your work, you might want to think about what would give you that sense of purpose elsewhere.
4. Your work doesn’t match your values
If what you do clashes with your values or work in a culture that doesn’t fit with who you are, that is a reason to leave the job. Values are so crucial to how you feel about work, and it is vital to feel your values match those of the organisation. Think about what matters to you at work. For example, if you have values such as autonomy or work/life balance and are in the sort of job where you have to be available 24/7 – that’s not going to be a job that works for you.
5. Your negativity outweighs your positivity
Think about your conversations with friends and family members. Are you constantly complaining about your boss, co-workers, workplace, or job itself? Your job should bring positive energy into your life. Apart from anything else, it is exhausting for others too, if you constantly complain. If you constantly complain about work, that’s a sign that you either need to think differently about your work, or it is a reason to leave the job.
6. Your workplace is constantly negative
Emotions are contagious. Having a negative boss or colleagues can be catching! A negative organisational culture can mean that complaining, negativity, and a victim mentality are rife throughout the company. It is not conducive to a healthy work-life, and it is a reason to leave the job. It is an excellent idea to question whether your environment is common to your industry or the organisation. If just the organisation, then maybe its tim’s time to try somewhere else, rather than a new career.
7. You are being unfairly paid or treated
If you feel overqualified for your job or underpaid for what you do, that can affect career satisfaction. Sometimes, we do have a sense of unfairness around pay that is not necessarily founded, so do your research on the going rates for pay. When an organisation is not doing well, people can be paid below the going rate. But if the company is doing well and your pay doesn’t match up with your level of expertise, with no changes to this happening on the horizon, that is a reason to leave the job. It is being poorly paid due to the career path you have chosen or the organisation you are in. Again, is it a change of career or organisation you are seeking?
8. Your confidence is eroded by work
If you have a manager who does not bring out the best of you or give you feedback, in an oppressive environment where you cannot express yourself or speak up, you may feel your confidence is being eroded. Your confidence can also be affected by the work itself if there is no room for growth or you feel you are not using the skills you have; you may feel you are being “deskilled” and your confidence is going downhill. It is a reason to leave the job and find work where you can grow and flourish.
9. Your environment does not suit who you are
Sometimes, certain environments just do not suit who you are. For example, I have had clients who work offshore in the oil and gas sector. If you do not like to work offshore, being away from home for long stretches of time and are a petroleum engineer, it might be time to look for an alternative career. If you are working in a fast-moving environment, such as an accident or emergency and prefer to work at a slow pace, it may not be the right environment for you, and you may want to consider changing careers.
10. Your career does not have a future
Factors such as industrialisation, globalisation, society, culture, and information technology have played a massive role in our work-life and the careers and jobs available to us. Over the years, we have seen job types come and go. Think about the demise of jobs in shipbuilding or coal mining. Who would have thought you could have a blogger or influencer career? Not to mention the myriad job types in information technology and artificial intelligence. Covid-19 has played its part in changing careers and we see many jobs being substituted by artificial intelligence. If the future of your career is not bright, it might be an idea to start to think about other career options.
11. You just fancy a change!
Perhaps you have fallen out of love with what you do, or it no longer interests you. You want to explore other career options and change direction to work that appeals to you and that you feel you would love.
As we have seen, the reasons for a career change can revolve around being in the “wrong job or role”—that is, one in which people are not suited to their role in terms of their natural abilities, motivated skills, interests, values, and personality.
Everyone is unique, so everyone needs different things in their career. A person may feel they are in the wrong job for various reasons. For example, they may feel bored and not interested in what they do. They may feel that they are not matched because the job does not suit their values and feels meaningless and lacking in purpose. They may feel something is missing because they are not using their abilities or motivated skills.
Other factors come into play as well. For example, people can also feel they are in the wrong job if their environment does not suit them or if they have complex relationships at work.
Research varies regarding how many people feel they are in the wrong job. In the UK, it seems to vary between 30% and 50% of people feeling they are in the wrong job or role. It will be interesting to see how the pandemic has affected these statistics. For some, their job has improved (e.g., less travelling, meetings, the content of the job has changed, busyness), and for some, for the same reasons, it has changed less positively.
Do you need to change your career or get a new job?
It is important to understand if your career or your job needs changing. Try taking our questionnaire to see if you get clarity:
3. How to change your career
When you think about a career change, the best place to start is with you!
We have discussed your starting point—why you want to change careers and what is going on in your life.
The next step is to conduct a personal audit of the main areas that affect career happiness. Everyone is unique, so finding out what is important to you at work is essential. The areas that affect career happiness are your experiences, natural abilities, motivated skills, interests, personality preferences, and values. Your mindset also comes into play, as we have already discussed.
Once you have a good idea of who you are and what you need from a career, you can evaluate the career ideas you have come out of this process. At this stage, you need to think realistically - what is possible, given your circumstances, what is available, and what you can make a living from. So you go from looking inside to evaluating what you need to look outside the marketplace and the options. So now, you will have an idea of the sort of work you want to do, how and where you want to do it and potentially who you want to do it with. You then research the options to find out more and evaluate those options versus your needs.
You now have direction. The next step is to think about how to follow that direction. Think about what you have that matches the job requirements and what you need to get. This may involve rewriting your CV, getting relevant experience, networking with the appropriate people, retraining or studying. Your action plan will be developed based on your further research.
4. Where can you get help with my career change?
Having worked with hundreds of clients over the years, I have developed a career change programme that follows this process and takes you from not knowing what you want to do for a change in your career to being on your way to a new future career.
Find out more about The 7 Steps to Love the Work You Do Career Change Programme below or contact me now to arrange a free-of-charge discovery call.
The 7 Steps to Love the Work You Do, Career Change Coaching Programme
This programme includes over seven hours of one-on-one coaching with Diana Dawson, an Accredited Master Coach, Coaching Psychologist, and qualified Career Counselor.
You will receive a Career Change Workbook (over 64 pages), two psychometric assessments - The Highlands Ability Battery and Myers Briggs, career exercises and quizzes and plenty of career resources to guide you. We work through a 7-step process to get to where you want to be:
Step 1: Where are You Now - why do you want to change your career
Step 2: What has Bought You Here - explore your experiences
Step 3: Discover What You are Naturally Good at - find your natural abilities and motivating skills
Step 4: Explore What You Love to Do and What Motivates You - find your interests and personality type
Step 5: Create a Vision of Your Successful Future Career - bring things together to visualise and create career options
Step 6: Explore Your Options and Find Your Dream Job - research your options
Step 7: Take Your Next Steps to Where You Want to Be - your action plan going forward
Find out more about the career change programme by arranging Zoom or telephone calls with Diana:
5. Am I too old to change career?
I have included this question as I am always asked: Am I too old to change careers at 30? Too old to change careers at 40? Or am I too old to change careers at 50? And what about changing careers in my 60s?
The short answer is that it is never too late. There is always an opportunity to improve your working life. As already mentioned, work takes up so much of our lifetime. Being miserable at work at any age just isn’t acceptable.
Throughout a lifetime, you change, your work changes, and those you work with change. And sometimes, you simply stop enjoying what you do. You may find that your priorities in life have changed. Or you realise you have never really enjoyed your chosen career path and have simply put up with career misery. Sometimes, you tell yourselves that your job pays the bills and you should just get on with it. Or, you might even feel you don’t deserve to be happy at work.
Change career in your 20’s
You will make career decisions between the ages of 17 and 25. It could be a decision to continue with further education or to start the first job; either way, this sets you on the path to your first building stage.
Change career in your ’30s
You tend to continue your path at the second transition point for five to seven years. From age 25 to age 33, you will reassess and reevaluate that path. You may make some modifications to it to make it more satisfying. If an initial path turns out to be completely unsatisfactory, you may start over at this transition point. This is often referred to as the Quarter-life Crisis. Thoughts of ‘Is this it? Have I got to do this for the rest of my life?’ may arise. There can be feelings of disillusionment or even depression.
I have worked with several clients who have started on a career path, such as law at university. They hated it but thought things would improve after completing their professional qualifications. However, when they eventually start their first job and find that things don’t improve, they continue on the same path simply because they have invested so much in going down this particular career route for so long.
With the right support, a career change can be relatively straightforward at this age, especially when responsibilities and ties such as children and mortgages are not considered.
Change careers in your 40’s
At this point, commonly known as the mid-life crisis, you may want something different from your career than what you wanted earlier. It may be a goal or value that was felt to be important at an earlier age but then left behind or a goal or value that is completely new. You may want to use this opportunity to modify directions chosen earlier or, in some cases, to start over again if choices were very unsatisfactory.
A career change can be more complex when financial aspects and ties such as children or mortgages are involved.
Change career in your ’50s and beyond
The 50s seem to be the new 40s, and you may realise you want to change your career at this point. In some respect, a career change may be easier if financial burdens and expectations are less. This is potentially a time of great integration, satisfaction and happiness. Some careers are more appropriate for you with life experiences. Some might feel less so if you are less in touch with technology.
I am Diana Dawson, Founder of Working Career. As a Professional Career Coach, Career Psychologist, Career Counselor, Career Consultant, Executive Coach, and Well-being at Work Coach, I help organisations and individuals manage their careers.
I am an Accredited Master Coach with the Association for Coaching, a Coaching Psychologist and a Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapist with nearly 20 years of experience in the field.
I work with professionals from different sectors and backgrounds to cope and flourish. I also run Career Workshops and Wellbeing Workshops for organisations.
I can provide one-to-one career coaching on Zoom. I can provide Career Workshops at your organisation or remotely. Find out more about me here.