Making a career change isn’t easy. Having gone through a career change myself more than once, I consider myself to be somewhat of an expert on this topic. With so many options out there in the world, it’s hard to have a good answer to the age old question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” The thing is, as you grow, your path in life can shift. Maybe that means assuming new responsibilities by taking the next step on your continued path. Maybe it means taking classes to acquire new skills or pursuing training courses and certifications related to your present field. But maybe the right choice could mean abandoning your path all together.
After experiencing it myself – including a drastic change I made ten years ago – I learned four things that I hope will help folks who feel stuck in the “wrong” career.
1. Career change is a process and understanding where you are in that process is critical to figuring out where you go next.
If you don’t like your current job or career, then you need to identify what aspects of it you dislike and whether there are external circumstances you can change to make it satisfying. Maybe you don’t need a career change at all but rather a tweak your job duties. It can be as simple as a conversation with your manager about transitioning some less desirable responsibilities to someone else while you take on more challenging and fulfilling duties.
If you’re in a small, flexible work environment where job functions are decentralized, you may be able to carve out a role for yourself by pitching your dream responsibilities to your manager and the value add you’d bring. But if you’re in a larger, centralized environment, it may require you to transfer to another team to build those skills. Making a transition internally is the most practical (and sometimes easiest) path to career change.
In my own experience, my first step was changing employers. I went from a big, 500-attorney law firm in Manhattan where I was the only junior attorney in my department and where I had no real mentor (even though I unofficially had seven “bosses”) to a smaller, 15-attorney “lifestyle” firm in Boston. There, I found an amazing mentor – a Harvard law grad and “Boston Super Lawyer” – who really taught me everything I knew. The work we tackled was hard but we did it together. And since we spent 10+ hours a day together, including many long nights and weekends, it helped that we shared a lot of laughs along the way. Eventually, though, I realized that in spite of all external factors within my control, I was still unhappy. I decided my career needed changing which eventually led me into recruiting. It’s a big change, but has been a good one for me.
Sometimes working with a career counselor can help one through the self-discovery process. My career counselors would administer all kinds of personality tests and questionnaires, and ask me to write how I felt about various subjects. It was therapeutic and eye-opening. There are also tons of self-help books out there which do the same thing and are more cost effective. These books can be a good start before investing time with a counselor.
2. Create a resume for the job you want, not the job you have.
Don’t think of your resume as a bulleted list of responsibilities and mundane daily tasks. Instead of listing what you’ve accomplished in technical terms relevant to your present field, focus on the skills you developed to perform your duties.
In my particular case, my legal representation for clients in high-stakes child custody and property division matters required me to deal with emotion-driven decision-making on a daily basis. Knowing how to help someone through a stressful decision process and being a good listener who can relate to what people are feeling is the DNA every recruiter needs. Relationship-building is the core skill that recruiting is based upon. Another skill which translated surprisingly well is legal research. I was always digging around the internet for information on my adversary. Not only that, but I was a Boolean searcher extraordinaire on Lexis Nexis. Lexis Nexis, career boards – they all require the same skills. Another skill is negotiating agreements and final outcomes in a legal setting which translated very well to negotiating salaries and managing client expectations. See the pattern? My resume had to show why my experience as an attorney would lend itself to recruiting.
How do you know if your resume needs more work? If you’re getting lots of job interviews but no job offers, then there is a problem with the way you interview. And if you’re not getting any responses to your resumes or invitations to interview at all, then there is a problem with the way you present yourself on paper. With career changers, it’s harder to get the interview, which is why your resume is so important.
3. Leverage your network.
I know, I know. This is the most obvious advice that you’ve probably heard thousands of times already.
But really. Leverage your network. You have almost a zero percent chance of making a career change through headhunters and job boards. I’ll explain why.
Even if a headhunter is willing to speak with you, recognize that the companies engaging them to search for talent are paying them to do so. If you’ve only done job X and you really want to do job Y, but lack experience doing job Y, the majority of headhunters wouldn’t bother presenting your resume to that company.
And if you apply to jobs directly, understand that very few companies want to take a risk on someone who’s never done the job before, even if it looks like he/she has a 50/50 chance of being able to do it. You’ll be competing with the dozens of applicants whose resumes show he/she has already done the job before. So, the best option is to tap everyone you know. You need to leverage your network to open doors for you. Someone who can vouch for you, your work ethic, your intellect, and willingness to learn; that will help you get that interview. Then, the rest is up to you.
4. Take a risk or the company hiring you won’t.
I was fortunate to find a great career in recruiting that leveraged my strengths and fit my personality and interests. But my first job post-legal career was also a huge risk to my employer. What if I didn’t like it and quit? What if I didn’t succeed? Then what would my employer do?
In my case, I was joining a recruiting agency where my role would be compensated 100% based on commissions. If I didn’t succeed, I wouldn’t have the job for long anyway. My performance was tied to my earnings. The better I did, the better off the agency would be. Hiring me was worth the gamble.
I’m not saying everyone making a career change needs to pursue a career like this. The lesson is that you cannot take your present salary with you and you’ll have to earn it all over again (unless you’re lucky and traded up in careers). You could mention that you don’t want salary to be a barrier to the role and that you’re willing to do whatever it takes to get up to your current earning capacity. And then openly discuss with your potential employer what a realistic timeline might look like for that and what you’d need to do to get there.
Smaller companies, and early stage startups, might be a good place to start looking, because their appetite for risk might be higher. And if you can find a place where you can leverage your current skill set and then slowly take on (and eventually switch to) new responsibilities, that balances the risk for both.
Changing your career path is no easy feat but it’s not impossible! All you need is the drive to achieve it, an action plan to work towards, courage to take risks, and the resilience to overcome challenges. In the end, you’ll be glad you took a chance on something that better fits who you are.
Sue Fehser is a Senior Recruiter at Carbon Black. You can connect with her on LinkedIn or Twitter.