The Ultimate Guide To Successful Career Change

Concerned about a career change? There can be several reasons behind seeking a career change. Perhaps you start losing interest. Perhaps some other career now interests you more. Or maybe you want to make more money, or have flexible working hours, to name a few.

Changing a career is one of the most crucial decision in life, because you won’t be doing it every year to complicate your life. Hence, you should take your time to evaluate your current situation, and find career options that can satisfy you, before you make the decision.

Our ultimate guide will help you to assess your interests, explore new career options, and successfully make a move to new career.

1. What’s your reason to change the career?

Out of 7 million people who changed their jobs during the year, around 33% chose to change their careers as well, according to a study by LinkedIn.

This is a very important question you need to ask yourself before making a career change. What’s your reason? Do you really need it?

The common reasons can be— you are too bored and stuck; the current career doesn’t interest you, you are undervalued, making no progress, you don’t like your boss and co-workers, etc.

If you don’t like your present boss and co-workers, or the workplace, then go for changing the job within same industry rather than changing career. If your current career doesn’t interest you, or you find lack of growth opportunities for your profile, or there is no better hike in salary, then you are at the right place.

Note: You must ensure that the need of change comes from within, rather than by opinions of other people.

2. Seek support

Changing a career can be scary sometimes. A lot of people will doubt your decision, and it can make you feel stressed or low. You need to keep your spirits motivated. Seek support of family members and friends who stand by you in your choices.

You can also find a mentor, or someone from the same industry as yours, who made the same choice. If you have decided to change the career, then be confident about it.

3. Self-assessment

Spend some time assessing yourself. Evaluate your past jobs, projects, and roles to identify the skills and activities. Analyze your personality, and try to find what you are passionate about.
What are the first few options that come to your mind when you think of changing the career? Do you have any dreams to fulfil despite the skills?

4. Explore

Make a list of all the career options after considering the factors like passion, skills, achievements, and others. Your list might be lengthy but try to choose three to five options from it, which energizes you or the ones you are really good at.

5. Fill the gap

If you find it difficult to decide exactly which career option will be better for you from the list you made, try getting help from your friends, family and networking contacts. You can also consider meeting a career counselor for some professional advices.

Once clear about the new career, you have to find what are some of the skills and qualities that you are missing for new profile. When you identify these, search for options to fill the gap. You can join some online course, get some on-the-job training, or do an internship to learn the required skills.

6. Identify transferable skills

There are always some skills and experiences which you can carry along to a new career. Effective communication skills, leadership quality, better planner, etc. are some of the skills that can be used in all careers. Moreover, these skills will help you in being confident that you already have relevant experience for your new career.

7. Create an effective resume

Now that you have decided it, it’s time to find that new job. The first step to it is writing a perfect resume that can land you the required job.

Mention relevant skills, education, and past work, using the keywords. The keywords are crucial for resume selection since the employers nowadays use machines to analyze resumes.

Don’t include every bit of information on your resume. Try to keep its length to one page (two pages at maximum). Take care of resume format and readability. You can try some online resume maker tools like Canva too where you don’t need to start from the scratch and you already get some default templates. All that you need to do is to change the information. What makes it better is that it has amazing templates that will not be used by anyone but you.

8. Apply for the job

It might take a little longer to get the job you want, because of the career difference in previous job and new one. So, keep yourself calm and don’t get frustrated. If you think you might face economic issues if you don’t find the job for a certain time, then don’t quit your current job until you find the new one.

Research about the new career on internet, meet people who can advise you, talk to employees who transitioned into same career as yours. Submit your resume at the places you really want to work rather than submitting it everywhere. It can save you time.

Things will work out. As the saying goes— You’ll regret what you didn’t do, rather than what you did.

About Prince Kapoor

 

Prince Kapoor is Independent Marketing Analyst and Blogger. While not working, you can find him in gym or giving random health advises to his colleagues which no one agrees on :D. If you too want some of his advises (on health or on marketing), reach him out at @imprincekapur

This entry was posted in Career Advice, Employee and Workplace, Guest Posts.