Is a career change the right move for you?
Jo Orgill is a coach and speaker. Her business www.JoOrgill.com helps women discover what they want in their life and career
Figure out what it is you want: I suggest you work out what it is you really want to do and then you can try it out with work experience, or shadowing. When you know what you want, you will find you will become so much more focused, creative and resourceful. And when you start with what you want your career to give you, then it is much easier to review ideas/jobs and see if they fit with what you are looking for.
You could start with these simple steps. Firstly work out what you want from a job - what you want to be doing, the kind of place you want to be working, the kind of things you want to be doing and who you want to be working with. Do you want a commute? Do you want to be a manager or be part of a team?
Write yourself two lists:
1. What you want your career to have/be/include
2. What you don't want your career to have/be/include
Next is to work out what your skills and experience are and what you enjoy. You may also get some ideas and benefit from a personality test such as Myers Briggs. Then you can move onto the 'career ideas' stage and review them against your criteria.
Hannah Morton Hedges has 10 years experience as a careers adviser and now runs Momentum Careers Advice. She has experience as an in-house recruiter for major blue-chip companies, recruiting from graduate to senior executive level
How to get work experience: All employers want work experience but few are prepared to offer it so how, exactly, are first-jobbers supposed to take those first steps?
The good news is that there are a few ways around this:
1) Depending on what it is you want to do, a number of qualifications such as NVQs do offer work experience as part of the course. Check out your local college to see what they have on offer.
2) There are an increasing number of apprenticeships available which, like NVQs, offer the chance to gain qualifications and experience at the same time. Check out http://www.apprenticeships.org.uk for more information.
3) Volunteering can be a great way of building work-based experience. The Do.it site has a fabulous database of volunteering opportunities around the UK. These include all kinds of office based and professional positions as well as the more traditional volunteer opportunities such as care work opportunities.
Do you research before you embark on extra qualifications: Before you commit to a course it is always worth doing your research on what employers are looking for. You can do this by browsing job boards, by talking to relevant employers/employees that you may know, or by speaking to industry-specific recruitment consultants.
Lisa La Rue has more than 12 years experience helping people plan and manage their careers. Her career consultancy, CareerWorx, provides web-based career counselling and coaching to clients around the world
You have to figure out what it is you don't want: It's important to identify what it is exactly you find unrewarding in your current role and what you'd like in a new role. Developing an awareness and understanding of your likes, dislikes, preferred work environments, skills, attributes and so on will help you build a picture of what your future career should look like. Once you have an idea of where you want to head it will be much easier to develop a career action plan to take you there. You could work with someone (a career development practitioner or career counsellor/coach) or try out the new National Careers Service website where you'll find some tools that might be helpful.
Make sure you've got a plan: A good career action plan should be guided by a specific, achievable goal and contain identified tasks to reach the goal. It's important to include timeframes for the completion of tasks and the achievement of the goal. Without allocated timeframes, it's far too easy for your career action plan to fall by the wayside.
Sarah Byrne is online editor at Careershifters, an organisation which helps people to change career into work they enjoy
Weigh up whether you need a new job instead of a new career: Clarifying what it is about your work situation that isn't working will help. It may be your colleagues or boss who is creating the most stress, in which case moving to another company could be the shift you need. It may be that you hate the commute and being in an office, in which case perhaps you could consider working from home, setting up your own business, or being a freelancer for a few different companies.
In some cases you can make your current job better by asking for shorter hours, or communicating with your boss about the areas of work you would really love to be involved more in (for example, co-hosting presentations). If it is the actual day to day tasks that are making you feel unmotivated - perhaps you don't care about the actual work itself, or you are an active person stuck in a sedate job, then it may be time to consider changing career. If working on spreadsheets everyday make you feel terrible, then moving to another company or working from home where you do the same spreadsheet work is not going to be the change you need!
Clare Whitmell is a qualified business communication trainer who specialises in writing and presentation skills coaching. She also blogs CV writing and job hunting tips on JobMarketSuccess.com
Jobs themselves change in their specific responsibilities and scope: It's also worth stating the obvious: there are few to no guarantees over job security. Not just the fact that jobs come and go, but also that jobs themselves change in their specific responsibilities and scope. David Winter wrote on his excellent blog Careers - in Theory that what we want out of work also changes, with our values shifting as we get older. Perhaps the way to job happiness is less a question of job title, and more a question of adapting to changing environments and needs as best we can.
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