Career change and career transition are real concerns nowadays. People lose or give up their jobs for various reasons. Today’s aggressive, performance-oriented business ethos mean that career change and career transition happen to a lot of people; this is quite unlike before when one could get into a job and stay in it for life.

Considering a Career Change

If the change is a voluntary one, then the person undergoing the career change should take as much care as possible. Not only is one’s income-less (or non-existent) during such a time, but change itself always puts stresses on a person as he or she strives to steer his life in a new direction.

Nevertheless, not all is doom and gloom: the time spent between careers offers a chance for value appraisal and career assessment. The shock of finding one’s self adrift may provide a good impetus to accomplish a useful task that has often been set aside because of lack of time or lack of motivation. Indeed, once in the middle of a career change and career transition, you may find yourself exploring new and better career paths that you thought were closed to you.

Marketing One’s Self to Potential Employers

In the midst of your career change and career transition, you must carefully assess what job you wish to take on next. You must list down your credentials and skills, your interests, and your goals (house, car, salary grade, position, prestige, etc). Your credentials and skills will be your basis for assessing your worth to potential employers. Your interests will dictate the direction that you can possibly take. Your goals will be your basis for choosing the specific direction that you will take.

The time spent reevaluating one’s career direction is followed by a time of writing cover letters, updating one’s resume, leveraging whatever influence one has on people in a network that might help one get into a new job or completely different line of work (which is one reason why it’s nice to cultivate friends). It’s not necessary to have experience when shifting into a whole new profession, as long as you stay educated, can play up your strengths to the recruiter, and transfer the necessary social skills to your new setting.

As you sit down to write your resume, it is helpful to remember something that salesmen and marketers know but others often overlook: you must be able to sell yourself in order to profit in the job market. To increase your value to potential employers, recruitment agencies or headhunters, you must do your best to highlight your value so you will always remain on top of the recruitment heap. Only then can you be sure of a successful career change and career transition.



By: Scott Wilson

About the Author:

Austin

novdanb asked:


I am finding it extremely difficult to expand on my financial services background and need some suggestions. I have worked in back office operations management (collections, customer service, cash application) for 7 years and need a change desperately. I have applied for numerous positions as an admin asst to traders, operations support, etc. and keep getting turned down due to lack of experience in investment banking. Additionally, I only have an Associates degree in Business Admin. Why don’t these companies want a seasoned professional willing to start from scratch? I understand and accept the pay cut, just give me a chance…..

Kirk

meshia69us asked:


I’ve been in the customer service business for over 15 years. I’ve done everything from Telemarketing (outbound cold calling) to inbound service and sales. I still would like like to be in sometime of “service friendly” atmosphere but not customer service where I’m on the phones. My resume is filled with customer service and sales experience, but I want to change careers into a different field. I’m a quick learner and adapt very well into any area or task that I’m given. How do I convince potential employers to give me a shot when my resume does not support these factors.

Alston

bobbyzimm03 asked:


Any one have a suggestion on how to get a foot in the door for either career fields? For the financial analsyst looking for a good program to learn MS Excel financial modeling.

Maxwell

NoraLanor asked:


I am at a point where I want/need a career change. I am looking for legitamit telecommute/work from home jobs. Also, I have 20 years in the hospitality industry and have been told many times I would be a shopper or quality control person for corporate hotels and restaurants as I know the standards. Can anyone provide some suggestions of legitimate jobs to look into. Everything I seem to find on line is a scam.

Kyle

Wishing asked:


I’ve always been interested in having a career in the entertainment industry , either music or movies ….not as the artist ..but behind the scenes …i.e make up artist , screen writer ……etc…doe’s anyone know of any Schools In Canada (where I live ) or the USA where I can either do a correspondence course or get an “on the spot education” by being around that type of enviroment…or any workshops that teach you how to have a career in that type of industry.
Is it ever too late to change your career ?
I have mostly worked in the care industry , mainly because I really like working with my clients who are mentally challenged individuals , and because there is plenty of jobs in that area where I live.
However I have always deep in my heart had a love for the arts …Music ..Theatre…Movies …(my friends have been telling me for years that is right up my street as a career) Is it really too late to change careers at my age (late 40’s) and how do I go about it ? Thanks

Bud

Change your career? In midlife? One catalyst of midlife crisis is a life not truly aligned with your present shifting values. You no longer find fulfillment in the same things you did when you were younger because your values may have shifted and this disconnection contributes to a sense of midlife crisis.

In midlife you may begin to feel bored with your job and start to think about making a career change. You may also notice yourself feeling irritable, frustrated and even depressed in your current job. These negative feelings may be a result of thinking about what you have given up by pursuing your current career. You may start remembering the dreams you have left behind.

So now what do you do? Should you change careers?

Two Exercises to Help you with your Decision:

1.   The following five questions are based on a model created by Linda and Sandra Perosa. Ask your self these questions:

What would it mean for me if I did not make a change?

Are there serious risks if I do change?

Am I being realistic to hope to find a better solution?

Is there adequate time to search and implement a change?

Take some time to consider the above questions and write your answers in a journal. It may help you to get your thoughts down on paper so you can thoroughly address each issue.

2.   The following is another exercise* I use with my life coaching clients that you may find helpful. On a scale of 1-10 rate yourself for each of the following. 10 being the strongest and 1 being the weakest:

How willing you are to do what you need to do to make this career change.

How strong is your belief in your ability to plan the steps necessary to make this change?

Do you feel you have control over making this change?

Are there people in your life who will support this change?

Is your decision to change careers your own decision?

After you have assigned a rating pick one of these areas to address and see if you can do something over the next week to raise the score ½ point. So if you rated number three a 5 is there something you can do this week to make it a 5.5? How can you increase your control over this change?

The Enemy – The Negative Chatterer If you decide to take steps toward creating a new career you will notice the old familiar voice of the negative chatterer trying to stop you. The negative chatterer may come from within or without. The external negative chatterer may be a family member or friend who has always been afraid of change and has tried to hold you back in the past. Find someone who supports your decision.

The internal negative chatterer is also an old familiar friend who rears his ugly head every time you try to move forward. You may fear failure or commitment. It is also possible for old negative feelings from childhood to rear up and to try to stop you by telling you that you are not good enough or smart enough to make this change. Speak back to those negative thoughts and think back to a time when you broke through the barriers and succeeded.

Let me know how you are doing!

References: *Heppner, Mary (1998). The Career Transitions Inventory: Measuring Internal Resources in Adulthood. Journal of Career Assessment Vol. 6 Number 2

Perosa, L & Perosa, M. (1997). Assessments for Use with Mid-Career Changers. Journal of Career Assessment Vol. 5, Number 2.

copyright 2008 Donna Deming All Rights Reserved



By: Donna Deming

About the Author:

Henry

My friend, a highly-paid financial professional, often complains about her job. She doesn’t like the long hours, the difficult people, the office politics, and so forth. Usually, I just sit and listen to her, because it feels like she’s more interested in a sympathetic ear than anything else. But one day, I couldn’t help but suggest that, if she really dislikes her job so much, she consider what she really wants in a career and possibly even make a change.

She looked at me incredulously. “I’m focused on surviving right now,” she said. “I don’t have time to think about what I ‘really want.’”

I’m surprised at how many times I’ve heard professionals with incomes well into the six figures worry about their “survival” in the event of a career change. Generally, I suspect most of them could handle at least a few months of their current expenses even with no income at all. Some, for various reasons, are genuinely living from paycheck to paycheck—they may have student loans they need to repay, or maybe they just racked up large expenses leading the “high-powered professional” life. But even they, if they had to, could probably reduce their expenses enough to eat and have a place to live if they had to live on a reduced income for a while.

Why, then, do highly-paid professionals often phrase their concerns about career change in terms of their “survival”? Actually, I think their use of that word is appropriate, because it speaks to deeper truths about the way we see our careers. When we say “but if I change careers, I won’t survive,” we’re not actually concerned about the survival of our physical bodies. We’re not worried that we’re going to starve or have nowhere warm to sleep. We’re worried about the survival of the identities we’ve created for ourselves in our minds.

It’s no secret that, in our society, we tend to closely identify with our occupations. When someone asks what you “do” or what you “are,” I’ll bet you usually respond with your job description—“I’m a lawyer,” “I’m an engineer,” and so forth. Often, when a person loses their job or retires, you’ll hear them say they feel like they’ve “lost part of themselves,” or that they aren’t sure what they’re “good for” anymore. The way we tend to perceive our careers, it’s as if they’re limbs or organs of our bodies, and removing them would endanger our lives.

We can also get attached to others seeing us in certain ways based on our jobs, and to the prestige and material things those jobs bestow on us. If we have high-paying careers, for instance, we start seeing “wealthy” as part of our identities. If we have demanding jobs, we identify with being “hard-driving” and “no-nonsense.” If we have jobs with exposure to the public, we identify with being glamorous or “high-profile.” And so on.

This way of thinking about our careers is common, but it’s also problematic. When we feel like our careers are who we are, we naturally become consumed with fear of losing, or performing badly in, our jobs. We wake up in the early hours of the morning worrying that we made a mistake on a project. We’re afraid of change and innovation in doing our jobs, because rocking the boat presents a risk we can’t afford to take. If you totally identify with your career, of course, this way of thinking is perfectly logical—if you are your career, losing or changing that career would mean your annihilation.

While money isn’t everything, it’s interesting that the people who are most financially successful in our society seem to be those who are least closely identified with their careers. These are the entrepreneurs and business owners, whose incomes are based on the profits and losses of their businesses rather than steady salaries. Owning a business requires you to be willing to take the risk that the business will fail. If you tend to completely identify with the occupation you’re in, you’ll perceive yourself as a failure if your business fails, and thus you’ll probably be afraid to start one in the first place.

What, then, do you do if you want to make a career change, but your current job feels so embedded in your identity that you’re afraid to take the next step? The answer is to understand that you are not your career, and that you don’t need to completely identify with your career to lead a fulfilling life, but I’m not going to simply tell you that. I want you to experience that fact firsthand, on a physical level.

What I’ll recommend may sound a little metaphysical, but bear with me a moment and see if it gets results. Find a place where you can sit alone in silence with your eyes closed. Once you’ve done this, focus your attention on your hands, and allow yourself to feel the sensations arising in them. Perhaps you feel a warmth, a tingling, a prickly sensation, or something else. When you’ve done this for a little while, gradually bring your attention up your arms, across your torso, up your neck and into your head, and then down into your legs and feet. Notice how each part of your body feels when you place your full attention on it.

After doing this exercise a few times, you’ll likely experience feelings of peace and aliveness in your body, as if your body were suffused with an inner glow. When you’re feeling this sensation, you’re experiencing what you are at the most basic level—what we might call “energy,” “consciousness” or “life.” This is the energy of which you, and all other life forms in the universe, are composed. You’ve been made of this energy for as long as you’ve existed. No matter what happens in your life—no matter what job you do, what you accomplish, who you love, and what you own—you will always be, at the deepest level, this energy.

We start identifying with our circumstances in the world—our jobs, relationships, cars, and so forth—when we lose touch with this energy. Life starts to seem pointless when we forget what we really are, and we grasp for things in the world to give it meaning. Thankfully, the energy that we are is always there for us to reconnect with, and to give us peace when our lives seem busy or stressful. When you’re truly connected with your life energy, you understand at a deep level that no career change can ever threaten your survival, and you find the fear of the unknown that restricted you fading away.



By: Christopher R. Edgar

About the Author:

Gabriel

want_2_b_better asked:


If you ever thought of changing your profession or have changed it or want to change it, then please go ahead and answer these questions…

1) What is your current profession ?

2) What do you want your profession to be ? (it can just be a change of position rather than the profession, more or less, what your profession or position you have to progress to, 3-4years down the line)

3) What would you like your profession to be ?

4) Why do you want to change your career ?

Arlen

mayank j asked:


Why are you considering a career change at this time?

What are your strengths? What are your weaknesses?

Why should we hire you?

Willis