The Purpose of This Article is to Give you Some Useful Tips on How to Change Careers
There comes a time in your career when either by choice or with limited options you need to switch careers. Switching careers is not an easy thing to do, and many individuals do not know where to start.
How to Think of New Career Choices
1. Consider careers based on your interests and hobbies. The most obvious place to think of when thinking of changing careers is your interests and hobbies.
2. Look at another person’s success. Do you know people who are in careers that you could see yourself doing or you have an interest in? Ask them for pointers or ideas.
3. Research on YouTube. Check out different YouTube videos to get ideas of potential career choices. Enter “career search” in the search box and see what comes up.
4. Meet with a career counselor. Career Counselors can work with you to determine potential careers that are a good fit for your education and interests.
5. Do a career exploration test. These tests will point you to a career that matches your personality and interests.
6. Research on Google. In Google’s search box, type “career search” to look up information on different career ideas.
7. Ask friends and family for possible ideas.
8. Look on Job Boards. Major job boards (such as Indeed, Monster, and CareerBuilder) will show you what kinds of careers are out there.
9. Go to your local library. Look up books on different career ideas. Or ask a librarian for help.
10. Check out government labor sites. Most countries have websites that provide great info on jobs and labor trends.
My final recommendation is to think of something you are passionate about as the more passion you have for something the more likely you will do well and like it.
Be Realistic in Your Career Choices
When considering career choices be realistic in terms of education and experience. If you want to be a lawyer, and you do not have a law degree and a license to practice law you will not be a lawyer. Your new career choice must match your education and or experience.
In many cases You are going to have to start at the bottom of your new career. That being the case if you are a retail manager and you want to be an accounting manager realistically speaking you are going to have to start as a junior accountant.
Get the Right Education for Your Field Obviously, you must get the right education in your new chosen field if there is a need to. For instances if you want to get a job as a developer, and you have no academic experience in this area you will need to do this.
The good news is today many professions you can take short academic programs to find employment. A good example is the numerous developer boot camps. An example of this is Udemy where you can even learn how to program in the comfort of your own home. https://www.udemy.com/the-web-developer-bootcamp/
For some professions you can do an apprenticeship to master a skill. In my previous career as a recruiter I personally taught hundreds of individuals from scratch how to become a recruiter.
Also, there are many professions you will find that require no previous education in the field. An example of this is many sales roles where on the job training is the education.
Many people knock sales roles but there are many examples of salespeople who have made over six figures to over millions of dollars in sales without any formal education and experience.
Creating a Resume and LinkedIn Profiles that Match Your New Career Interests
You might not have exact experience in your new career choice, but you might have relevant career experience for that field.
An example might be you work in real estate in sales and want to switch careers into finance and in your current job you do some accounting and finance work like creating financial models using Excel. This experience you would focus in on your resume and LinkedIn profile.
Also adding in courses and volunteer work related to your new career aspiration is a must. For instance, if you are looking to get into finance and you have taken accounting and finance courses, you would put this in your resume.
To learn how to create an effective resume please see this article
https://eliteproresume.com/2019/09/17/how-to-create-a-resume-for-an-executive-or-professional/
Creating your new resume and LinkedIn profile to reflect your new experience can either be done by yourself or hiring a company like my company Elite Pro Resume Services.
Looking For jobs in Your New Field.
Please see my article on the top ways to look for a job as a good start
https://eliteproresume.com/2019/05/28/top-10-best-ways-to-look-for-a-job/
Another avenue is to focus on entry-level jobs in your new field. For this type in the word entry level or junior along with the job title you are looking for in the title section on the job board you are using. An example would be typing in “Junior HR” or “Entry Level HR” if you were looking for an entry level HR job.
How to Interview For your New Chosen Occupation
As a starting point I recommend reading an article I wrote about the top 20 interview Questions that HR asks. https://careers.adventhealth.com/blog/how-to-answer-the-20-most-common-interview-questions
Before your interview in your new field think of all your current, relatable skills be it either academic, professional, and any other relevant skills.
When you have an interview use these examples to show the interviewer you have some related experience. For instance, if the hiring manager asks you about your experience with marketing you can mention academic courses and projects with marketing.
If you even did basic marketing at your last job you can even mention that experience. For example, if you were a retail manager who created in-store marketing that would be something you could mention.
Be Positive
Changing careers is not an easy thing to do, and you are going to have a lot of negative people in your head convincing you that will not succeed. You should do your best to ignore these negative people and move forward and try to keep positive.
There are many examples of many people who have successfully changed careers. A great example of this was a former school janitor who switched careers and eventually became the principal of the same school. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-48594032
I am personally another great example of someone who found success switching careers. In my early career, I switched careers a few times until I found my profession. If I never switched careers, I would never have become one of the leading experts about job hunting resumes and recruiting and a 2-time best seller on the subject B00IW54CJ0
Conclusion
Switching careers is difficult to do but by learning some of the useful tips from this article you will get a good head start in your quest for a new job. I wish everyone the best of luck!
