Tips on Changing Jobs, Career Fields or Industries

Choices! Choices! Choices! It's almost like being a kid again. Here you are, an adult, having worked for a number of years, now facing many of the same choices you had when you first graduated. The difference is that now you have a lot more experience and obligations. You also may feel your choice is more important now; you have less time to recover from a mistake. Now you must put forth the effort to make a good decision and achieve success.

All Mid-Career Changes Are Not Alike

All through your life, you have had the opportunity to assess the security of your job and to recognize the effect that values have on job satisfaction. You have been able to appraise your knowledge and skills and see how they can be transferred to other career fields while retaining your career equity. This article's objective is to help you understand the effort, time, and dollars required to make any one of the four different changes available to mid-career people. These changes are:

1. Change job and stay with the same company.
2. Change job and company, but stay in the same industry.
3. Change job, staying in the same profession, but change industry.
4. Change profession and industry.

Each of these four changes requires a different level of time, money, and effort. Your time investment can be as little as a few months or more than a year. Your dollar investment can range from nothing to more than $25,000, depending upon what you choose to do. By recognizing the differences, you can weigh your emotional needs against your time and financial needs to determine which change is best for you.

Job Change: Same Company, Same Career

After studying the guide, you can see that the easiest change to make is that of transferring within your present company. Moving from one department or division to another requires that you take the time to assess your skills. Then make it known within the company that you are looking for a change. To enhance your effort, attend in-house training programs or outside seminars where you will meet new people who can assist you in your networking.

The cost and time required for such a change is minimal; yet the reward can be great. You may get the chance to broaden your skills, gain new responsibility, or increase your overall knowledge of the company. You may be happy with your present company but have stress due to a values conflict with your boss. This type of change eliminates that problem and allows you to stay with the company.

Job Change: Same Industry, Same Career

This second change requires more effort, time, and money than the first one. Changing jobs within the same industry enables you to keep your career equity. Your senior knowledge will be easily recognized by a prospective employer.

You need to develop a marketing plan and to network with others in the industry. You also need to work with a professional recruiter who specializes in your industry. Remember, a recruiter costs you nothing; their fee is paid by the hiring employer. The cost of this type of change should not exceed $1,000 unless you decide to go to an industry conference that is located at an expensive resort.

This type of change will offer you the opportunity to find a company that more closely meets your values standard. Also, very often a mid-career change of this kind results in a promotion and pay increase.

Industry Change: Same Career

Now the real work begins. Your challenge in an industry career change, is keeping your career equity. Make sure you understand how to convey the value of your transferable skills to a prospective employer.

One of your first steps is to join the trade association for your target industry. It is strongly recommended that you attend the industry's national conference. This will increase your costs, but greatly improve your chances of finding a plum job.

As a mid-career changer, you can enter a new industry, quickly establish a credible reputation using your experience, and then move ahead.

Career Field Change

A career field change is the most difficult to make. It often results in starting a business of your own. Mid-career changers are the primary prospects for people who sell business franchises. Today there are about thousands of different franchises in the different industries. The choices are fantastic. The range of investment can be as low as $25,000 and as high as $250,000. Experts say that most good franchise opportunities are available between $25,000 and $50,000.

Before you go very far with a change in career fields, be sure to assess your willingness to take both financial and emotional risks. As you can see, there's a high cost in time and money when changing career fields, and there's a good chance your change won't work out as planned. The grass-is-greener delusion is the primary cause of such failure. Too often people have a romantic ideal of a different career field. Once they enter that field, they find that many of the problems they wanted to leave behind still exist, plus additional ones.

To assess your risk tolerance, make a list of all the things that could go wrong with a career change and the possible solutions to those consequences. Then list the benefits you realize if you do take the risks and do succeed. Do the benefits outweigh the consequences? Are the benefits great enough that you can tolerate taking the risks?

To validate your list, talk with someone who made a similar change or who works in your target career field. Ask them if your assessment is realistic and if you have accurately weighed the consequences and benefits.

Then determine what your next step should be. Do you go on with this career change or do you step back and select an alternative?

This article gave you some points to consider in charting a direction for your career change. The greater the change you make in your career, the more effort required for its success and the bigger the risks.