“I want to change my career, Naishadh, but don’t know how to begin?” is one of the most common question I get asked.
I concede Career Transition or Change can be daunting, confusing and chaotic experience.
People change careers due to multiple reasons – redundancy, retrenchment, work-life balance, injury, illness, and more. Today’s jobseekers are anticipated to change their careers three to five times during their lifetime.
I have seen some remarkable transitions in last eight years; from a triple zero operator to teacher’s aide, from a waiter to customer service consultant in a bank, from a mechanic to swimming instructor and more.
Today, I will show you how to undertake a better career transition using five steps. I will demonstrate the concept with a real life example.
Amar was an electronics technician back in India. He had over 10 years of experience in troubleshooting electronics equipment. When he met me, he was disappointed as he could not find a professional work and he also wanted to change his career. Amar followed the above described model.
Source: SBS
Self-Awareness:
Amar identified that he has a genuine interest in troubleshooting and fault finding, and wanted to stay within similar vocation. He also wanted to leverage electronics knowledge and experience. He decided to transition into an IT career.
Opportunity Awareness:
A second and most important step; where you validate your career transition goal. A step, in my view, many job seekers completely neglect.
When analysing opportunity, you need to take various factors into consideration; such as current and future labour market trends, career potential and growth, impact of technological changes on the position.
As part of this step, Amar interviewed and met several IT professionals who were currently employed.
This exercise gave him insight and intelligence that he would not have accessed by reading online materials.
Amar also studied Australian Jobs report to ascertain the labour market growth. At the end of this exercise, he was much confident about his transition.
Employability Gap:
In the third step, you identify the vocational and non-vocational gap that currently exists.
You could bridge the vocational gap by completing a course.
In case of Amar, he was required to complete Certificate IV in Informational Technology – one year full-time course.
A decision that was very challenging due to the financial commitment he had.
He decided to work part-time and on weekends to ensure he was able to look after his family.
To bridge the non-vocational gap, he became member of Toastmasters Club and also started volunteering at the Australian Computer Society.
Both these strategies helped him to acquire necessary communication, presentation and organisational skills.
Self-marketing Documents:
Lot of job-seekers ask me if they need to change the resume and cover letter. My answer is YES.
READ MORE:
3 tips to write a winning cover letter
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