5 Steps to Fast Track a Successful Career Change

People seek to change their careers for a lot of reasons: dissatisfaction, lack of fulfilment, a change of career goals or a need for more flexibility – just to name a few.

You could have years of experience in your current field but with zero industry knowledge or experience in the field you are looking to switch to, even getting an interview can be challenging in a job market that is already competitive.

When you are faced with the challenge of making a career change, following these steps to fast track a successful career change.


1. Evaluate Your Current Position
Most people seeking a career change are aware of their unhappiness or dissatisfaction at their current jobs but are not completely certain of the exact reasons causing it. If you are not feeling fulfilled at your job, you need to verify if it is a professional or personal reason that is leaving you distressed at work. Professional reasons motivating a change could include a difficult boss, toxic company culture, or perhaps a misalignment with the job responsibilities. Likewise, personal reasons such as a desire to learn a new skill, earn a higher salary or have more flexibility also drive people to look into switching careers if possible.

As you evaluate your current job situation, it is entirely possible that you may not consider a complete career change after all. Gaining clarity could mean that you only needed to adjust your role slightly to improve drive and satisfaction. However, making a complete career change might be necessary if the process of switching itself excites you more than your current job!

Without thorough evaluation of your current job situation as well as the process of a career change, attempting to streamline a path for your next few moves can be fraught with lack of clarity.


2. Consider Your Age and Lifestyle
A career change in your 20s is a lot different than a career change in your 40s. Keep your age and lifestyle in mind as you plan to launch your new career.

If you're married with a mortgage and two teenagers, it might be difficult to relocate across the country. Additionally, the way you market yourself to employers as a 20-something is quite different than you would as a 40-something.

If you have senior-level job experience, you'll want to make sure potential employers know about it – if you have the right skills at your disposal, you might not be vying for entry-level positions.

Whether you're in your 20s, 30s, 40s or 50s, there are specific variables to consider in terms of how to change your career.


CompTIA



3. Set Goals For Yourself
One of the most beneficial things a person can do for their career is to set goals for themselves.

A set of well-thought-out goals can serve as a roadmap to success, providing you with objectives to meet along the way as you work towards wherever you want to be in your career.

Besides ensuring that you do what it takes to meet the goals that you set for yourself, the most important part of setting goals is making sure the goals you set are beneficial.

A beneficial goal is one that is challenging without being unattainable and one that will improve you and your career when you meet it.

If you can set both short-term and long-term goals that meet these criteria, it will certainly help you reach the final goal you have for your career – whatever that final goal may be.

Brian Tracy


4. Get Trained 
up a base of knowledge, skills, and contacts in our own industries, and the idea of potentially sacrificing that can leave people wondering how easy it is to make a career change.

However, by taking the right training, and gaining valuable transferable skills, changing careers needn’t be as daunting as it seems.

Training is key to changing careers, and taking courses online – flexibly, in your own time – is the perfect way to gain the skills you need to do so.

Learning platforms like Udemy, Coursera, Metro Courses and more offer skill acquisition courses at affordable rates.


5. Pitch Yourself in a New Way
When you meet with the head of marketing, the social media director, or the VP of sales, you’re going to want to make it clear that you’ve done your research and connected the dots for making this move. Share the “why” behind your desire to change careers from X to Y.

Finally, articulate why you’re a great candidate who should be hired. No matter what field you’re moving into, you want to sell yourself. But that’s not all you want to do. Instead of inquiring about open positions, have a conversation that demonstrates why you’re equipped to make this transition and what the company (or even the industry) stands to gain.

The Muse