How to change your career?

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How to change your career?

10 Useful steps to do a successful career transition.

The need for a change

There can be various reasons for the feeling of need for a change in your career. This can be a thought that floods into your mind at any given time of your life. A few of the most common reasons would be work stress, insufficient flexibility, better opportunities, low income, and appreciation. Regardless of what your reasons are and what time of journey it is, a career transition should be well planned using effective research and strategy. By doing so, you will be eligible to experience a smooth transition with better job satisfaction. Let’s look into a few useful steps to do a successful career change.


Evaluation of current employment satisfaction

The very first step that would be ideal to take as a start is doing a thorough evaluation of the current job satisfaction in what you do. Take your time to list down all the drawbacks that provoked the thought of changing your career. This list can include all your daily reactions towards the current job role, varying from positive to negative reactions. The main intention of following this step would be to identify all the themes that recur in order to have a better understanding of the job satisfaction that you seek.

Analysis of personal interests, core values, and other competencies

Analyzing what kind of things interest you, finding your core values along with the set of competencies will be the next step you should follow. The G+P+V formula introduced by the well-known career counselor Richard Leider will be a suitable approach for this. You might need a better understanding of overall aspects: interests, values, and competencies in figuring out what your next amazing career should be. Therefore, always try to align these key factors when you start gathering and shortlisting career opportunities to try next.

Review of alternative career opportunities

After you have figured out the above-mentioned key factors, you can work on looking for alternative career opportunities that you are interested in giving a try. Conduct a thorough job research focusing on the areas such as the hiring outlook, remuneration growth, and the specific skills required for the particular career fields that you are interested in. Doing a couple of informal interviews with people whom you know in these fields would be a better way to grasp quite a lot of information that you will need.

Overall brainstorm

While you continue to research career opportunities, have a couple of brainstorming sessions to come up with alternative career ideas with your family and friends. You must first brief them with the skills you have and the areas that you are interested in to get ideas from them. Involving a career counselor to seek professional advice will also be applicable to this step.

Personal rebranding

Once you get a clear idea of the job role you would like to try next, you should start rebranding yourself in such a manner that your profile will suit the job role you wish to apply for. The most important part of this step is to find how you can align the current work experience you have with the new one you are willing to apply. An ideal approach would be to write up a convincing personal statement in your resume, that will be powerful enough to cover up gaps and unparallel areas in between. The rest should be convinced by the cover letter that you will be providing with the resume.

Shortlisting career options

Make sure that you don’t make choices based only on the earning potential. Low salaries can be an obvious reason for being dissatisfied with a job but it won’t probably be the only reason. Pay attention to all the aspects we addressed in the previous section about interests, values, and skills while you shortlist the options you have.

Channeling via the professional network

Make efficient use of the professional network you are in, while you are doing your shortlisting. Make sure to do a refined search on your network for people who are in the interested fields and people who work for the particular companies that have posted vacancies. This will help you to get into more and more information where it will eventually help in multiple ways to succeed in the final few steps.

Job shadowing

Job shadowing is one of the main opportunities that you can look out for when contacting your professional network. By seeking such opportunities, you might get a practical understanding of the job role that you are interested in. This kind of firsthand experience comes in very handy when you are about to finalize choosing your next career.

Powering up skills

Once you have gained enough experience from job shadowing, you might be quite thoughtful about the additional skill that you need to develop to perform the job better. Therefore, the next step would be to add some skill-boosting. Look for opportunities such as volunteer activities and paid/ unpaid internships where you can gain more experience.

Staying motivated

The tenth and last step will be playing a major role here, as motivation will be the elixir that pumps up the energy to follow all the steps required to do a successful career transition. Therefore, make sure to stay motivated at all times until you succeed with your dream job. Be mindful to take breaks whenever required as that would keep you from getting exhausted. Likewise, keep a track of everything by using a to-do list or spreadsheet, this will help you enjoy your small victories in the journey.

Wrapping up

Career changes can be challenging to some, the continuous thought about the risks that need to be taken weighs them down from changing careers. However, when you convince yourself to work out the initial steps here, the worrying might come to an end by developing confidence eventually. Therefore, the last piece of advice while wrapping up would be to start today.

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