Career Change?

If you are thinking about changing your career then this blog will provide you with some pointers.

Perhaps the first thing to ask yourself is what is driving your wanting a career change?

Ideally this will be something positive such as wanting to pursue a career area that has interested you for some time.

If the drivers are negative you may want to explore these issues further to see if they might be resolved such as a high workload. These drivers will likely exist in any role these days. In the case of a high workload, for example,  developing your skills in prioritisation, assertiveness and delegation may help.

Of course there may be other negative drivers that are significant enough and have occupied your mind for some time to lead you to the decision that you really do want to change your career.

Quite often you will be driven by a combination of positive and negative drivers such as wanting to use your best skills and talents whilst at the same time fulfilling a role say closer to home, where you have more autonomy about what you focus on, want to experience being your own boss and so on.

If you have decided to change careers and before attending careers coaching I would suggest that you think about and document the following:

1. What is driving me towards a career change? Note both positive drivers moving you towards other options/a specific career and negative drivers moving you away from your current career.

2. Consider transferable skills that you have in relation to your new path. For example, if you want to move from a role in teaching to a project management role, consider specific communication, organisation and time management skills critical to this role. This will need to be reflected in your personal statement.

3. Consider aspects of your current role that you enjoy and would want to maintain such as working with others/mainly alone, giving advice, helping others to develop. Again, these are positive experiences to take into a new role.

4. Consider your values. What specifically is important to you? For example, is work/life balance important to you and what would that look like? For example, length of commute, working day and level of pressures. Would you trade some salary for working less hours? Would you be prepared/able to return to college to study even on a part-time basis?

5. Consider areas of work that really interest you, that you have thought about or looked into. What type of organisation suits your personality? For example, you may prefer to work in a small team in a role that is highly structured, target driven and paid by results.

6. Is your CV updated, approximately two pages long and can it be tailored to specific job roles?

By answering these questions you can enter a careers meeting with a good chance of progressing more quickly into a new career.

For all of your career coaching support please get in touch via www.westofenglandcoachingandcounselling.co.uk