INTRODUCTION

Changing careers is one of the greatest challenges many people face in their careers. Even those employed in secure, lucrative jobs often find themselves unfulfilled by their work. Still, they remain, too afraid to leave a familiar work environment, a job they’ve mastered and a paycheck on which they’ve learned to live.

Changing careers need not be a prolonged agony. In fact, if done right, changing careers can be painless and immensely satisfying.

LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY: Medium-Advanced, depending on your current career and the career to which you’d like to change.


STEPS

1. Isolate the real pain points in your career: Don’t prematurely exit a promising career path until you are certain that a career is the only way to improve your current career. Don’t quit your current job until you are certain a job change will address your issues with your current career or job. Often, a job change within your existing career path will alleviate much of your dissatisfaction, replacing it with new challenges and responsibilities, and a new opportunity to find career satisfaction. To ensure that changing careers and/or leaving your current job is the appropriate course of action, take the time to identify, specifically, the factors responsible for your lack of job or career satisfaction. If your career dissatisfaction is due to your boss, a job change within your current career path—either a lateral job change or a promotion—will get you a new boss and a new lease on your old career. If your dissatisfaction is due to the type of work you do—technical work or work involving negative interactions, for example—changing careers is your best option.
2. Define the lifestyle you want: Maximize your career satisfaction by ensuring that your new career will allow you to maintain or improve your current lifestyle. We all feel better about the work we do if we believe that our work will secure the things that fulfill us in our personal lives. Before changing careers, consider your lifestyle needs. If you need a mini-manse and a European car, trading in your investment banking career for a freelance writing career may not bring you as much satisfaction as you might hope; your anxiety over the loss of your pricey home and car, and your big fat paycheck, may outweigh your satisfaction with your new job duties.
3. Be willing to sacrifice: Changing careers almost always requires some sacrifice, even if it is nothing more than remaining at your current job longer than you’d hoped. More often than not, changing careers requires taking a step backwards on the career ladder (with a corresponding pay cut), investing in career training, or furthering your education in order to learn new skills and gain new knowledge.
4. Don’t overlook opportunities with your current employer: Changing careers does not necessarily require changing employers. And, in many cases, remaining at your current employer but changing jobs is the smartest career change strategy. Many employers welcome the opportunity to retain talented employees, even if that means allowing them to transfer to a new department, adjust their schedules to attend a weekend MBA program or take part in an “intrapreneurship” pilot program.
5. Create your own “foot-in-the-door” opportunities: If you wait for career change to happen to you, you’ll be waiting. The best way to break into a new career path is to create your own opportunity to prove you can do the work. For instance, if you want to be a technical writer, write a few manuals or synopses on spec and send them to potential clients. If you want to be a home stager, offer to stage homes in your community free of charge in order to build a portfolio. If you want to manage an online community for a hot Web 2.0 company, start your own to show potential employers what you can do.

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