Switching career path is nothing if not exciting. This can also come with a great degree of worry too. For people who are used to switching from job to job this can be an easy decision, but making the leap when you’re already decades into a certain field can feel quite overwhelming. Bringing up your anchor after such a long time can feel destabilizing to anyone, but thankfully in today’s modern markets, working hard can lend you every chance of success.
However, switching career paths without a plan in advance can be an exercise in silliness. While you may wish to tear down everything your previous career had in mind, you may be best suited to the following options, potentially scoring a higher pay grade, or most importantly something you are happier doing:
Consider Retaining Your Skills
It might be that your skills could also be well utilized in another field, perhaps part of a field you weren’t expecting. For example, if you have excellent project management skills, who’s to say you wouldn’t make an excellent assistant producer for a movie studio near you? If you have excellent set dressing skills for movies, who’s to say you couldn’t be well-utilized designing showrooms for high-end furnishing stores? Switching up your career is never a negatively informed choice, so long as you understand that your skills can and will often transition to aid you in a new field. This can help you get the head start you’re looking for, prevent the initial awkwardness of slow training, and help you begin to build specialist competencies in your new environment.
Utilizing your set skills can also help you develop into specialisms that you may not have expected. For example, you may use your experience as a chef in order to become a health and safety kitchen inspector in the conglomerate you work for, identifying hygiene issues in kitchens around the world. You may decide to use your highly polished skills in a technological field, undergo technical recruiting training, and begin to fill the most essential vacancies in fortune 500 tech firms around the world. Your skills are never fixed, they are malleable, and with a little creative thinking you may find this out yourself.
Learn How To Network
Learning how to network is an essential part of switching careers. Without forging connections, none of us will make it to the higher echelons of our career. However, when moving to a new industry, we often lose the previous connections we have made. Or do we? Using to utilize connections we have already built to potentially give us an in into other fields is a smart move, as is attending working event, ensuring you put your name out there via volunteer projects at your new employer, or potentially bringing the trade secrets from one industry into another, helping you raise your profile in that business. When you learn how to network, you learn how to continually refine yourself and your personal brand.
With these tips and the willingness to absorb the new career path you choose, you are sure to enjoy a lucrative second path.
