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I have officially changed careers from my original profession (practising law) twice. I pivoted from legal practice to career counsellor and eventually leading a university’s law school career office. Then, I pivoted to human resources professional at a major financial institution (with zero corporate experience and zero human resources experience). Both moves were, in hindsight, far from easy. They took time and persistence, but they were both planned out to match my skills, interests and ultimate career path. Actually, if you add up all the jobs I’ve held previously and the laundry list of industries of which I have been part (health care, tourism, hospitality, government, retail), apparently changing roles is something I do pretty well. I’m a weirdo who embraces change, gets acclimatised quickly and is always thinking about learning and self-development.
So, I have a lot to say on the subject of career changes. In fact, former law students, former law classmates, colleagues and individuals I mentor through volunteer engagements will seek me out asking “how I did it”. As always, I’m happy to share my own details, but for the purposes of this post, let’s focus on some key steps you can take to make the switch.
Whether you are pivoting to a new role or trying to shift to a new industry entirely, here are my top ten tips for a successful career change.
1. Conduct a Self-Assessment
How many of us pursued a career path heavily influenced by the expectations of parents, teachers or societal values? I provided career counselling to law students for years and it was not uncommon for students to be pursuing their parents’ dream, rather than their own. My entry into law school was utterly under-researched, but I definitely understood that becoming a lawyer was a “solid” career path. “You’re only a lawyer? Wow, you should have tried harder in school” said no one ever.
If you aren’t already a self-awareness guru, there are lots of ways to assess yourself to better understand what your next career pivot could be. Several assessments and personality tests exist (Strong Interest Inventory, Myers Briggs Type Indicator, Values Test, Interest Profiler) to give you a sense of where your interests and strengths lie. You can meet with a career coach or career counsellor to take an assessment or run through potential options. While I have done these assessments, I never found them to be exactly on point. For example, I can be interested in almost anything, so interests-based assessments turn out too vague. My grade 11 social studies career assessment determined I should be a “plate maker”, still not sure what that is, but fairly confident it wouldn’t fulfill my lifelong purpose.
When I’ve managed to navigate major career changes, I’ve always spent time going through a thorough self-assessment exercise where I examine all past roles (paid and volunteer), what specific aspects I liked about them, what specific aspects I disliked, where I feel I excelled, where I struggled well outside of my comfort zone. Writing these down in a chart will help you to see themes. The more themes you gather, the stronger your self-assessment. At the end, you should ideally have a list of your top skills, your interests, tasks you enjoy completing, tasks you dislike, gaps in your skills you may want to improve upon.
2. Get Your Action Plan In Order
You can approach your search for a new career or role at whatever pace is comfortable for you, but I always recommend and have benefited from an action plan. What steps do you want to take and when do you want to have them completed? Are you ready for a change now or happy to pursue other opportunities while you keep working in your current role? Do you have someone in your network who you can bounce ideas off and who can help hold you accountable to your action plan?
There are lots of ways to keep yourself on track, but feel free to download my Sample Action Plan you can adapt.
3. Explore and Connect
Although it may seem daunting, cold calls (or emails) to individuals working in roles of interest is a common practice and a great way to understand exactly what the role or career you have been coveting actually entails. In fact, it’s expected in a professional environment. I routinely get approached to have conversations with job seekers on my current role, past role, industry, etc and I am always thrilled to share my experience. If someone doesn’t have time to speak with you, they won’t make the time, so don’t worry about asking. The worst case scenario is a no. The best case scenario is you get to ask someone in a position you eventually want to be in for insights on how they made the transition to that role, what they enjoy about it and advice to help you plot the same path. Woah. And while cold calls happen all the time, you can also meet people through referrals from people you already know in your network, or at an event IRL.
When you get the chance to conduct an “informational interview” (or some would call it a “coffee chat” but it’s tricky to share a latte through a Zoom call) be ready with your specific questions. See the Sample Action Plan mentioned above for a step by step approach and Sample Questions to guide your these research meetings.
4. Ask for Help and Follow-Up
Chances are when you are researching your next role or next stop on your career path, the research won’t be linear. By that I mean you won’t easily identify one role of interest that perfectly matches your skills, speak to one person in the role to learn more, apply to one role posting and start your new role easy peasy. There will be a lot of paths you’ll go down to narrow in on the next best step for you. As you will learn from speaking to those in more senior roles than you or further along their career path, there are always several routes you could follow to land that ideal role.
If you get stuck along the way, know that this is completely normal and don’t hesitate to ask for help. Asking for advice from trusted advisors can be incredibly useful. Speak to a counsellor, a coach, colleagues, friends or family to talk through your research so far and help you get unstuck. Remember those cool professionals you met in the last step? Feel free to follow-up with them if you have specific questions they may be able to answer or, if you have a good relationship with them, use them as a sounding board for your conundrum. Sometimes it just takes one person’s external view to help you decide if route X or route Y is the best course of action for you.
5. Research Critical Requirements
So you’re at the stage where you know where you’re going but you are not sure exactly what you need to get there. Some roles may require you to complete additional education, obtain a certification, learn a particular skill or obtain specific experience on your resume. Hopefully you have generated some ideas on what these additional requirements might be from step 3 above when you spoke to people working in the role you desire.
Now is the time to research these requirements and understand what is possible for you. Can you take an inexpensive course on your evenings and weekends to qualify you for your next role? Is there a certification you can obtain online? Is there an association or membership that would benefit your next role and demonstrate you are serious about taking the next step? Determine what is feasible and worth the investment of your time and money and go for it.
6. Craft Your Past, Current (and Future) Narrative
You’re getting close to putting yourself forward for a new opportunity. Spend some time reflecting on how this next role will fit into your career path (past, present and future). An employer will want to understand why are you applying for this particular role, what will you bring from your past experiences to this role and what will you take away from this role to your next step in your career.
Ask yourself some questions such as the following and I find it’s helpful to actually record your answers in a summary document which you can use to review should you get an interview:
- What could you bring to the role?
- What experiences from your past work/volunteer/education would translate well to the new role?
- Based on what you know now, in what aspects of the role would you excel? In what aspects would you struggle or require more time to develop?
- If you obtained the role you are pursuing, what doors would it open for the next stages of your career? Is this one specific step in a long-term path towards an ultimate role or a general step that could take you in many directions?
- Does the role have the potential to limit some opportunities or paths you had considered?
7. Market Yourself by Rebranding
If the new role you are pursuing is well aligned to your current role, you might not need to do much here. You’re smiling because no one loves writing a resume and cover letter…or almost no one. But not so fast, you should always take a critical look at every single entry on your resume to evaluate whether it makes sense to include as you apply to a new role and whether you have highlighted the most appropriate aspects of your work/experience to show the work/experience is translatable to your current role.
If your new role or path takes you in a new direction, you may need to start from scratch identifying critical parts of each experience (education, work, volunteer) that would translate well to the new role. Ensure you have a friend review it to check that your explanations are easily understood.
Since you already have your laptop out, let’s dust off that cover letter at the same time. Cover letters need to be uniquely tailored to each unique role you apply to, but you can spend some time in advance crafting examples of your experiences which tie in well to the key skills that will be required. Be specific and concrete, listing a bunch of skills you have without examples to back them up is not very impactful.
8. Understand Your Unique Value
You are now ready to apply for roles and get your application out there. And, with any luck, interviews are around the corner. This is your opportunity to reflect, you have now spent weeks (maybe months, hopefully at least a week or two) researching the best next role for your unique abilities. You know the role will be the right fit for you, now you need to convince those making the hiring decisions that you are the right person. Easy, right?
There is no way to do this unless you yourself are convinced. This doesn’t mean being cocky or over-exaggerating your experiences, but it does mean being confident in the unique value you deliver. If someone asks you why you should be hired for this role, what answer best outlines how your skills, strengths, past accomplishments and results, attitude and drive will deliver value to the employer? Sometimes this is called your “value proposition” or “unique value proposition”. In my opinion, it’s the most basic thing you should be able to articulate when you come to a job interview.
9. Grit Matters
“Grit” is defined by Angela Duckworth in her infamous book Grit: The Power and Passion of Perseverance as “passion and perseverance for long-term goals”. Believe me, you will need grit for any career change. This next role is a step on your ever-winding career path so keep your end goal in sight and know that with persistence you will be successful in the end.
If you have applied for a whole host of roles and haven’t been successful, think about what you can do to change the outcome in the future. Are there other individuals with which you can network? Is there something you are missing on your resume that is keeping you from the top of the short-list? Can you obtain feedback from a recruiter on what you can improve upon? Do you need to practise your interviewing skills?
It is important to recognize job searches are competitive. There are many qualified applicants out there, but this does not mean you will never land that next role. Remind yourself that you will find a way to progress down your career path, it just hasn’t happened yet. Perseverance will mean you fail sometimes (or many times) but keep getting up and trying again.
10. Be Accountable
Along the same lines, you need to be accountable to yourself at all stages of this process. This means you are committing to follow the steps you have outlined for yourself no matter the energy or time required to complete them. Don’t expect a new role to fall into your lap without you putting in the effort required. Being accountable also means taking responsibility for the outcomes you experience. For example, instead of seeing an unsuccessful interview as a failure by the employer to ask you “the right” questions, you can interpret it as an opportunity to get better at clearly articulating your unique value proposition and prepare better answers to each question you received so you are ready for the next interview.
Conclusion
Hopefully you found these tips and the resources useful. This method has worked for me, however, larger scale changes or leaps between industries may require you to dive deeper. If you are truly ready to make a change and need additional guidance, I also highly recommend Jenny Blake’s second book Pivot: The Only Move That Matters is Your Next One. Her four-step model (Plant, Scan, Pilot, Launch) comes with comprehensive questions to guide you to your next career move.