6 Steps to change your Career
Let me present you Jane (or John if you prefer). Jane has been working for quite some time in her company. Since she started to work she had an average career progression in her line of work. She has great colleagues, her salary allows her to enjoy her life and by all means her boss is OK. But Jane is not happy at work and wants to change job……for years now.
Raise your hand if this story feels similar.
Most of us aspire at a career change at some point in our lives. I myself have changed career 4 times. In fact, according to a survey from Indeed, 49% of surveyed US employees changed careers while 65% of the rest consider doing so. While this aspiration is natural, it can be scary. Moreover, if you do not have the tools to tackle it, you might find yourself in an endless loop of doubt and inaction.
I have been helping friends, colleagues and people outside my close network to manage their career transition. In this series of article, I aim to give you the means to achieve a successful career transition. I hope you will find the information helpful to support you in this change.
6 main steps for a successful change
Changing career should not be improvised to be successful. Due diligence and strong processes are needed to guarantee success and happiness down the line.
Through the years I identified 6 main steps for an effective career change.
Step 1: Clarify why & what
The most important component of all as it lays the foundation. Any change starts with understanding why we want to leave and what we seek next. Without a thorough introspection, your next career might present the same roadblocks to your happiness. In this part you will first learn how to make an audit of your current situation. The information you will generate will help you pay attention to what matters. You will also learn the 6 main career changes to help you identify a new opportunity.
Step 2: Analyze the gap
Having identify a new path, you will want to understand how realistic is it for you to get this job. You want to be an astronaut next? Great! But which skills do you have today that fit this role and which would you need to acquire? How long would it take? Is it a time frame you are comfortable with? We will review the key skills area you need to pay attention when changing career, and point out methods to help you in that process.
Step 3: Re-align skills
In this section we will review the options to bridge the skill gap identified in Step 2 . In particular, we will see how some options determine your career transition path.
Step 4: Engage your network
Doing a career change by yourself is almost impossible. You need to use your network and even enlarge it. It is important to rely on your connections throughout each step of the process. In this part I will detail how to leverage your network efficiently.
Step 5: Establish a support system
Achieving any major change in our lives requires commitment and support. We will review in this section the tools that can help you plan your change, and support you every day.
Step 6: Relentlessly try
The final step is to try, try, try. Expectations should be clear: a career change that takes time and is packed with failures. But these failures should be a source of growth and not reasons to give up. In this final section I will give you the means to go through the potential hardships.
The C.A.R.E.E.R. framework
These 6 steps: Clarify the why and what, Analyze the gap, Re-align your skills, Engage your network, Establish a support system, and Relentlessly try, combine together in the C.A.R.E.E.R acronym as each of them aim at helping you define the career that will makes your life happier.
What you will find in this series
In the articles that follow, you will find a step-by-step guide on how to change your career effectively:
