A Career Change Strategy – What Career Counselling Can Do for Job Advancement
Introduction to Changing Careers
Working professionally can naturally over a long time, become tiresome. If you have also lost the zeal and interest for your existing position or profession then it is doubly hard to keep plugging away at the same job day after day. You may need to develop a career change strategy.
It’s important to make sure that you know how to advance your career and keep yourself both marketable and motivated over the long term.
If you’re not paying attention to your career, you may find your years of experience and skill set being wasted due to a lack of career advancement — even if you already have a great foundational skill set!
Throughout your years of experience, you will probably have bumped up against several challenges that have influenced your professional career path. These may have affected your career development and how easily you’ve been able to move up the corporate ladder.
At the end of the day, no matter how big your paycheck, an important aspect of true career longevity is to make sure that you can easily progress into a next level or challenge PLUS be highly marketable on the open job market.
If you find yourself stagnating, it may be time for a successful career change strategy.
Tips for a Sucessful Career Change Strategy
Here are a few tips that clearly explain what a career change strategy and professional career counselling can do for you.
1. Figure Out Your Motivation
Don’t waste years doing a job that you don’t have any long term interest in or that doesn’t match up with any of your personal values. Job unhappiness can hamper your work life balance. It can leave you feeling frustrated and unmotivated. There’s nothing worse than getting up for work only to wish that the day could end as soon as you arrive at the office. It can also lead to career burnout.
A great first career change strategy is to identify what moves you forward in your career path and goals. Your underlying or true motivation is what will help direct you to be in a good career for you. It will allow you to feel confident, ready and motivated to positively progress. You may even choose to work your way to the top of your profession.
The thing is that many of us don’t know what motivates us or truly makes us happy (and can still pay the bills!).
If you don’t already know which type of job is going to make you happy, using a reliable and expert career coach can help you to more easily determine the right type of employment search or a better way to progress in your career post secondary education. Working with a career counsellor, (s)he can point you in the right direction based on your background, goals and motivations.
2. Use Your Skills to Create a New Experience
You should always make your job search easier by making sure that you align your existing skill set to new jobs or positions in your existing company that meet your career change criteria.
Let’s say for instance you would like to change your permanent full-time job as a Program Manager at a top Toronto based company. After doing an endless job search, sending cover letters and CVs, and even taking part in informational interviews, you may still be frustrated.
Every job position posted on LinkedIn or Indeed seems just like the previous PM position you worked at or the job you are currently in… yet you know you are capable of doing so much more!
This is when expert career advice can make a huge difference to your career change strategy. You might decide to hire a career coach who can guide you to new possibilities and opportunities… like switching industry sectors, becoming a freelance consultant or even becoming a PM Trainer who teaches others on program management and certification.
A career coach can help you to drill down on what your transferable skills are and how to market them to a new and more desirable career.
Yes, this can take some time yet it is a great foundation for your future!
3. Define New Objectives
Even as you’re earning a living in your current field, it’s important to note that career development and advancement often can’t be achieved without defining new objectives or goals. These goals are what can push or motivate you to meet future demands in a new job or position.
People struggle to set goals though. We often hit a wall on being able to uncover the true tangible outcomes that we want. What is realistic versus a dream.
Goal setting might be what you choose to initially focus on during a coaching session. You would be supported and encouraged to meet your own higher expectations while building a solid foundation of new marketing materials and identifying your transferable skills for your career change.
4. Package Yourself for Your New Career
Your career change strategy has to drill down into how you are going to present or ‘package’ yourself to the world in the best possible way. This includes your resume, CV, cover letters, LinkedIn profile, outreach to connections (new and old), follow-up strategies… it all builds on itself. These are your marketing documents and strategies.
Your marketing documents need to be part of your career change strategy.
One of the best ways to ensure you succeed in landing or succeeding in a new job is by checking the requirements and skill sets you need to qualify. Then you will need to revamp or tune all of your marketing documents. This ensures you make your job search process a lot easier and successful.
A good career expert will tell you that in order to establish that your skills transfer to your new career change, you need to clearly establish 3 conditions to the Hiring Manager:
- You have the skill set that you claim.
- You understand how the skill is useful for the new role or industry.
- You can show how you would apply that skill to your new industry or role.
Number 2 and 3 are the critical pieces that many aspiring career changers forget to demonstrate to a new employer. You can’t fault an employer for not recognizing how transferable your skills are to a new job or career. That is your job!
You must connect all the dots for the Hiring Manager.
5. Use Your Side “Hustle” as a New Career
Working a ‘regular day job’ can be limiting at times because it often has a fixed return. This is why some people opt to have a side job or ‘hustle”. It helps them earn some more money over the long run.
Using a solid career change strategy, you can transform your side hustle into a full-time job if that is what you want.
A good example might be that you may be involved in the field of digital marketing and have a part-time web design business. Your dream may be that you want to become self-employed. Using your skills and experience, you can easily propel your career plans towards your objective. Tie your digital marketing and your digital design together. Then you can offer a full service marketing, branding and design company for small to medium sized companies is doable.
If you are well connected, have a corporate portfolio of brand name clients or design portfolio you may want to make even more connections by networking so you can target ideal small to medium sized clients for your new endeavor.
Your side job is probably something you’re comfortable with and one that you would enjoy making money out of. As a result, it might make it much simpler to develop a better work life balance. To be frank though, a good career coach will probably explore your current work and home responsibilities. Being self-employed can often mean you are solely responsible for all the office work, quotes, project workload, client follow-up, customer service, billing, etc. Everything – until you can afford a team after paying yourself first.
Therefore, a step-by-step roadmap provided through professional career counselling could cut out a lot of angst and trial and error.
Time is often money. It pays to figure it out the easy way.
6. Develop New Networks & Professional Connections
You need to establish new networks and personal/professional connections in your potential new career area. You need to have connections to a lot of people. This should include colleagues, clients, vendors, contractors in the career area that you wish to pursue. The more the better.
“It is not just what you know yet who knows that you know it”.
These people might also include your coach, recruiters, references, sponsors, mentors and/or from your personal or volunteer life. The more people who know you and what you are capable of doing the better!
You become your biggest salesperson when you meet new people.
I call it your “Circle of Influence”.
Conclusion
Deciding and executing career plans is all about proper planning, strong self-evaluation and successful self-promotion/marketing. Your career change strategy can leave you feeling much more confident and motivated.
No matter what your situation is, you don’t have to spend an entire lifetime working in the wrong career. So you still have time to make a permanent and positive change in your life.
Looking for more professional corporate career coaching support?
Contact me for a free career strategy session.