Changing your career path can be a very daunting prospect, especially for people that have been in a similar role for a number of years. Before taking this huge leap into the unknown, it’s definitely worth weighing up your options and considering everything properly. In many cases there are other factors that make you think that changing your career path is the only solution.
I personally experienced this dilemma back in 2005 when I had a comfortable five years of advertising sales underneath my belt and decided to take the leap to recruitment. I know what you’re thinking and admittedly this wasn’t the biggest transition, I wasn’t going from a ‘run of the mill’ role to Brain surgery, but it was still a difficult decision nonetheless, as online recruitment was completely alien to me.
Lucky for myself, a lot of the skills were transferable, which proved very helpful. My reason for the change of career was that I could see that the recruitment industry was adapting to the online model and newspaper advertising was proving to be static; therefore progression for me into an online recruitment agency felt like a logical forward step and I have never looked back.
Many people facing this question might be considering this for a number of reasons, some of these are below:
1) The salaries aren’t good enough in my industry
Salary is a huge motivator for anyone in any type of role. Why wouldn’t you want to be paid more money for the job you do every day? Many people consider a change of career because of this reason; however if you enjoy the job you do then why would you want to change this? It would surely be best to stay in your industry and look to progress your career within it.
Take social care for example; a Care Worker or Care Assistant has a starting wage between £6.14 – £8.03 an hour and many people are unaware that there is a lot of potential for progression within this amazing industry. Once you gain experience, qualifications and take on extra responsibilities you can see your salary rise to £21,000 as a specialist Support Worker or Team Leader. Once you have all the relevant qualifications under your belt, you can then progress to an Assessor role in which you could earn up to £30k! So there’s no need to move away from an industry that you love.
This is a similar story for a lot of industries and if you do some research, I’m sure that you will be pleasantly surprised.
2) I’m fed up with my role…
Are you fed up going to that place you call ‘work’? Dread Sunday nights when the Monday morning gloom is looming? You’ve come to the conclusion that only a change of career can rejuvenate your working life? Well. This isn’t always the case.
It might not be the role that is the issue and the first questions that you need to be asking yourself are:
Is it your Manager who’s the issue?
Sometimes when an employee is stuck in the same role with no progression then the job can become stale. Looking for more responsibility in a higher position might be the answer. Why wouldn’t you want to use the skills that you have already gained as a stepping stone for your career? It’s always important to remember that by changing your career path you are going to be most likely starting from the bottom of the pile again.
Is it the employer who’s the issue?
Often a company can make you doubt your role and resent your job. Picture yourself at another company and if you see yourself in a similar role, then it might just be a case of finding a new job in a different company.
3) There really aren’t many opportunities within my industry/role
If you enjoy your job, but you struggle to find any roles within your profession then this can be disheartening. Try to remain positive and be as proactive as possible. There’s no point moving away from a role that you are good at and enjoy. Unless you’re the highly successful salesperson for chocolate fireguards, then it might be worth reconsidering – by that, I mean if you are in a sector that is on the way out then it would definitely be worth reconsidering or adapting your skillset to something more future proof, like I did!
Recruitment trends come and go and you never know, your current industry could be on the climb. Take out a bit of research and see what you find out. Who would have thought years ago, that Cloud and Distributed Computing would be the most desirable skillset in 2016? (According to LinkedIn) or that there would be an upcoming risk to delivery roles from pilotless drones!
The other option would be to find out what qualifications are desirable in your industry and take a course. This will make you a more attractive proposition for the hiring manager and put you ahead of the competition.
Try not to give up and stay strong if your role and profession is a good fit. If you are currently going through this dilemma, please share your comments below.
