Start with honest self-assessment
- Analyze your current skill set, training level, and accomplishments to date.
- Write down the aspects of the work you liked and what tasks or things you disliked.
- Explore different career options. Investigate new fields, industries and potential careers.
- Interview individuals who work at those types of jobs, or in fields of interest to you.
- Look at growth opportunities, salaries, benefits, education level and then determine the job title to target.
MORE IDEAS FROM THE ARTICLE
You and you alone are responsible for creating your own future.
Time to give serious thought to this life-shaping question: What exactly are you going to do with the rest of your life? There has never been a better time than right now to change the course of your life and that means changing your career.
- Use your transferable skills. You have acquired abilities from previous positions.
- Use your strengths. Incorporate your talents into any position you choose to go after.
- Get new skills. Study the industry you want to enter. Take some courses so you can more quickly enter the field.
- Many people prevent their own success. They find excuses, or blame others, for their own failures or mistakes instead of learning and improving from them.
RELATED IDEAS
- Current job or role: This is what you are doing right now.
- Career Goals and Dreams: List your short-term (6-9 months) and longer-term (1-3 years) career goals and dreams.
- Your Big Why: Know why you want to do the work.
- Core Values: What are your top 3-5 core values that you are not willing to compromise?
- Limits and Boundaries: What is it that you are not willing to do? Whom do you not want to work with?
- Top Strengths: A strength is a combination of your talents and skills.
- Desired Strengths: These are the gaps you want to fill in your skills and talents.
- Education investment in Yourself: Are you going to conferences, joining a master-mind group, or hiring a coach?
- Execution Strategies: For instance, you may start a business, a side-hustle, a website.
- Role Models
- Ideal Client or Company: It is critical to know whom you want to serve with your work.
- Ideal Professional Self: A 25-word exercise where you describe your ideal professional self.
- Do an assessment. Make a list of your strengths, weaknesses, what you like and hate to do. Look outside and ask what industry lines up with the things you wrote under strengths and likes.
- Avoid dwelling on the past. Take what you’ve learned and move it to an industry that’s going to suit you better.
- Jumping ship isn’t always the answer. Walking away from an unfulfilling career isn’t always an option, especially for those who can’t afford the financial consequences of making a switch.
- Don’t react too quickly. Know the kind of person you are and the kind of job you would enjoy before you can look out at the universe of jobs that are out there and make the move.
Failed career changes often involve throwing in the towel too quickly.
You can’t make life or career change without significant effort, time, commitment, and usually some substantial money.