Published on LinkedIn on 3rd January 2022
Happy 2022! As we start a new year, a lot of us might be going into intense reflection on life and our goals. More specifically career goals.
This used to be something at the forefront of my mind in recent years. This year is a bit different. I get to reflect on the career shift I operated.
A bit about me to set the scene: I studied marketing and started working about 15 years ago in this field. I had the chance to work on extremely thrilling projects in this time, from car launches events and motor shows in the automotive industry, to recruitment in the finance sector and diversity and inclusion in the recruitment world.
My career took a surprising turn this year when I joined the EdTech startup Multiverse, as a Project Management Coach. AND I LOVE IT.
Whilst I really enjoyed my previous roles, I feel like I have found the closeness to people I was longing for (without realising it).
This career change has been a journey that was a few years in the making. In these times of reflection and changes, I thought I would share my two cents about the topic, should it inspire someone out there to take the leap!
Career shifting: where to start?
Some people know exactly in which direction they want to go. How. Very. Lucky! I was more of a ‘I really like what I do but I don’t know what I REALLY want to do’ kind of person. So I started my journey with these:
1. I read books - to be more specific these two:
‘How to find fulfilling work’ by Roman Krznaric
The Quarter Life Breakthrough by Adam Smiley Poswolsky
They were both fantastic as they offered practical exercises to help structuring thoughts, wants and needs. They didn’t give me magical answers, but great tips and directions on where to further my journey.
My humble tip: do make the time to do the exercises/practical reflections in the books, make notes, date them, and revisit them. The whole career change process took a while and I found it interesting to see from a quarter, a semester or year to another, what had been the things that changed or grew in importance.
2. I Attended workshops
I first attended a free online workshop from careershifters, then a little one (not quite free but worth it) from the school of life (them again!)
Here also the key benefit from the workshops has been to give me a different kind of framework, pushing me to ask myself questions I hadn’t even considered when it came to what mattered to me. The most notable ones were:
Do I want/need to be hands on or at distance?
Do I want to work on things that are one-off or scalable?
Do I want an innovative or classical environment
Start something on the side
Getting in motion has been one of the key advice from the previous step. It sounds like an obvious one, but doubt can really be paralysing. This step is all about embracing the concept of trial and error, and taking small leap(s) that could lead towards a bigger one. This is both in terms of self discovery and experience growing.
Here would be the process broken down in small steps:
Reflect on the things you think you would enjoy and lack experience in, or have not enough practical or realistic understanding of
Think of how you could explore it further. Could you start volunteering somewhere? Do you need to take a class? Would you reach out to people and ask for a coffee or a shadowing opportunity?
Embrace the experience and observe: what do you like the most about the experience? Any elements that are different to what you expected? Are you competent in what you are doing?
In my case, I had an inclination for education for a long time, without being too sure what it meant for me. A little over three years ago, as I was a Social Media Manager, I saw that the adult education CityLit was looking for tutors in this field. This was a brilliant opportunity for me to put this interest in practice as well as ‘giving back’. So I gave it a shot!
After a thorough training (The City & Guilds’ Award in Education and Training), I started giving my first classes, on the side of my main role.
How I loved it! Positive feedback from the individuals I helped understand how to operate social media for private or personal use really made my days. It did confirm I loved supporting people this way, but also taught me that I wouldn’t do it as a full time role.
I didn’t know it at the time, but exploring this side of interest would later build into experience I would need for my current role as a Project Management Coach.
Learn from others
I found hearing people’s stories incredibly helpful in the process. It could be to get inspired, reassurance on some potential blockers, or insights into best practices or pitfalls.
You can hear from individuals’ journey from various places:
Talks and events
I found a number of good ones at the time on Event Brite . These events are great to hear live about interesting career paths, but also for the crowd that you can meet there.
In your network
Way back when I was working in the automotive industry, I witnessed a number of colleagues shifting from successful careers in communications, project management or marketing, to start new ventures, sometimes in completely different lines of work.
On this note, I’d like to take this opportunity to shout out the following people, for what they built and how inspiring it was!
David Parkinson, who co founded Brave & Heart, a strategic consultancy and brought together versatile talent to support a multitude of organisations.
Helen Neal, also built on her expertise in communications to found her own agency, HN Communications
Gareth Dean, who co founded non plastic beach with his wife, an online store dedicated to sustainable products
Christelle Gossart, who founded XO Urban Yoga in Paris, innovative yoga classes with Hip-Hop, RnB & Soul.
Wajeeha Hussain, who retrained herself as a chocolate artisan and founded Chocolateeha.
Reach out
Do also reach out to people you might not know but who inspire you. I had the chance to chat with Jim Thomsen, who, amongst many other things, has been an entrepreneur, led the implementation of famous sports brands in Europe and sailed the world. Jim kindly agreed to record a podcast episode with me a while back to tell me about his incredible journey.
You can listen to it here . Here are the key outtakes from our conversation:
Keep on learning: Continuous learning while you work is a great way to keep on top of your existing skills, as well as applying new ones while you learn.
Don’t let lack of knowledge hold you back: hold to your vision and do what it takes to get there.
When it’s not fun anymore, think of what’s next: it’s ok to put an end to projects that were once exciting when you get too comfortable. You evolve as a person and so will your aspirations.
Go over your blockers
There could be many blockers to changing a career, from very material and practical to more psychological.
The key recurrent themes I’ve observed are: concerns over earning less, a fear of failure and worries about not knowing enough for the target career.
Pay cut
Oftentimes, changing career means leaving a well established career, and remuneration, for a new start, which would incur a lower salary, or revenues. This could understandably be a big blocker for a lot of people.
What can be done about it?
Roman Krznaric in his book ‘How to find fulfilling work’ that I referenced above, talked about the concept of elasticity and how one’s budget and life spending will naturally shrink and adapt to the income. In practice, this could mean reflecting on the overall spendings (rent, leisure, eating out) and figuring out what could be optimised (ie moving to a new area, reducing non essential spendings, etc)
Fear of failure
Whilst failure is embraced by some as a means to learn and later succeed, for others this is perceived as something detrimental to one's career that must be avoided at all costs.
I’m French, and although the cultural mindset is evolving, failure in our culture certainly wasn’t deemed an opportunity when I was growing up.
Getting to change how we approach failure can be a real game changer in how we approach career change.
There are lots of great quotes on the topic but I really like how this one sums it up:
“Failure is another stepping stone to greatness.” -Oprah Winfrey
Whilst it’s still advisable to change our perception towards failure, especially if it is paralysing, "failure" when trying out a new career is also far from inevitable.
It could be a good exercise to reflect on why we have this fear of failure. It can take ground into other fears, like the one to not have enough experience or not enough knowledge.
This is when the ‘start something on the side’ tip comes back into play: testing the waters before the big(ger) swim! It’s all about building experience and credibility.
Lack of knowledge
The last main blocker is around the feeling that we don't know enough. This could be technical skills, specific industry knowledge or theories and concepts.
This is an easy one to alleviate! My advice would be to list down the areas where we feel we might need to fill a knowledge gap and hunt for courses and resources.
Where to learn?
Private tutors: for those who prefer a more dedicated support, seeking the help of a personal coach or tutor might be an option.
Evening classes: Getting a certificate or degree from a university can be not only reassuring, but also a solid way to buff up a CV. Many universities have this option available, for a variety of course length. I enrolled a while back in an evening short course at Birkbeck university, which I found offer a very comprehensive range of courses
Adult learning colleges: They offer different types of qualifications and are also a fantastic mean to network with like minded individuals. I’m biased, but would warmly recommend CityLit, which has over 5,000 online and in person courses in a vast variety of topics.
Others
Many more blockers and tips on how to overcome them can be found at these links:
Make a plan… and take the leap!
Changing a career can really feel like a mountain to climb. A good way to actually get started in the process is to break down the different steps that will get us there and assign deadlines to it.
Why a plan?
Firstly, It’s going to make the whole process less daunting. A mountain is always easier to climb if you can see the first refuge!
Taking the relevant time to reflect will help cover potential blindspots. Often one idea might lead to another.
It will hold you accountable. Seeing your actions mapped out will create this sense of ‘realness’ and make them easier to follow up with.
Bonus point: if you speak about it to your friends and families, this will add another layer of accountability.
Ask yourself the right questions
There are A LOT of them. I’ve listed here the ones that have been the most helpful to me:
By when do you aim to have changed jobs? It’s ok if you don’t commit to it, the idea is to be specific, so you can allocate the right amount of time to the actions you’ll need to take to get there (learning, networking, applications, etc)
What are the most important things to you? What are you happy to compromise on? Whether you have a firm idea on your next career move or not, finding ‘the perfect role’ will be a challenge. Be sure about the things that matter to you the most so you can prioritise your research
What do you need to do to get there? This takes us back to the points mentioned above. Depending on how confident you are in your career change or its direction, you might need to take more or less steps before getting there.
What could be your blockers and how could you work around them? It could be that you really want to achieve a particular project in your current role before departing, which would push the date, or how a particular context (like the global pandemic, obviously I know!) could impact your research.
I hope this will be useful to some! Feel free to reach out if you have any questions :)
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