10 Steps to a Successful Career Change
Before deciding about a career change, it is important to evaluate your present situation wisely. And if you do decide that you really need to change your profession, then it’s a good idea to explore your career options extensively and choose a career that will be satisfying for you.
Ten Steps to a Successful Career Change
1. Evaluate your Current Job Satisfaction
Before you deice anything, find out the reason behind your dissatisfaction with the current job. You can do this by keeping a journal of your daily reactions to your job situation. This way, you can find the aspects of your current job that you like/dislike and whether your dissatisfaction is related to the content of your work, your company culture or the people with whom you work.
2. Assess your Interests, Values and Skills through Self Help Resources
You can identify your area of interest by review past successful roles, volunteer work, projects and jobs. This way you can also find out whether your core values and skills are addressed through your current career.
3. Brainstorm Ideas for Career Alternatives
You can discuss your core values/skills, and your areas of interest with friends, family, counselors and other contacts to get some new innovative ideas. Search for different careers online by visiting career libraries.
4. Conduct a Preliminary Comparative Evaluation
After brainstorming, cut down your options by eliminating those which you don’t like, and from the rest, identify a few targets for in depth research.
5. Read as Much as You Can
Do some research and read as much as you can about the selected fields and reach out to personal contacts who are in that profession for informational interviews.
6. Shadow Professionals
You can also shadow professionals in fields of primary interest in order to observe work first hand. You can spend some time job shadowing people who have jobs that interest you to look for the one you really want.
7. Identify Volunteer and Freelance Activities
By doing some related work before the job, you can experience the profession and decide better. For example, if you want to opt for publishing as a career, try editing the PTA newsletter.
8. Investigate Educational Opportunities
Try to look for educational opportunities that might help you to change over your career. You can take an evening course at a local college, or spend some time at one day or weekend seminars.
9. Look for Ways to Develop New Skills
While you are still in your present career, doing your current job, you can develop new skills to train yourself for the next job. For example, if you think writing a grant proposal will be helpful to you in your future field, offer to write a grant proposal for your current firm.
10. Consider Alternative Roles
Maybe you don’t really need a career change and you can get rid of your boredom by changing over to a new unit, and a new job within your company by utilizing the current knowledge you have about the industry e.g. If you are a store manger for a large retail chain and want to switch to a new job, you can consider a move to corporate recruiting within the retail industry.
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