How to Navigate the Career 180
Considering an extreme career makeover? You’re not alone: according to the Canadian Federal Labour Standards Review Commission, most Canadians will have about three careers and eight jobs over their lifetime. And given the current labour shortage, there’s no better time to start exploring your options. So take a deep breath and follow this advice from the experts on how to pull off a career U-turn.
Rejig your history
You can’t reinvent your past, but you can change how you present it to potential employers. There’s a lot that you can do, not by embellishing or covering things up, but by rewriting your resumé and retelling your story in
language that the interviewer is going to get. Immerse your-self in the lexicon of the field you’re interested in, and look for links between what you’ve done and where you’d like to go.
Look within
When you’re dissatisfied with your work, it’s tempting to jump into the first available alternative, but that rarely works out. When people make job changes on a whim, they sometimes end up worse off than they were to begin with. It’s all very well to think, “I want to quit my job and do something exciting,” but there has to be a bigger sense of purpose behind it. Denise Mosawi knows. At 34, the career-change consultant abandoned a senior executive job with Microsoft in the U.K. to become a ski instructor.
Put out the feelers
Once you’ve got a sense of what you might like to be doing, start researching the industry you’d be working in and the organizations that appeal to you. Websites and books are great, but it doesn’t end there. Don’t make the mistake of doing your career change in your head. Talk to people. If you talk to 10 people, you’ll be 10 times more clear. If you talk to 50 people, you’ll be 50 times more clear.
Brush up on your skills
If you realize you’re lacking some important skills, it’s time to check out your local university or college. Prospective employers will also be impressed if you’re registered in a program. But be careful not to enroll in full-time academia as an escape. Don’t stop what you’re doing mid-career and take a program thinking it’s going to be the answer to “What do I want to be for the rest of my life?” You should already know the answer.
Put out the word
When you’ve got a clear goal and are ready to launch an assault on the job market, do the legwork. You can’t just look on workopolis.com or monster.com and hope that the perfect job is going to come. Visible jobs are only a fraction of what’s actually being hired for. Vancouver is small enough that if you truly have something to offer and people are willing to refer you, it’s not hard to get introductions.
- Tags
Save over 50% off the newsstand price with a subscription to BCBusiness Magazine
