Opening Pathways To A New Career
By Careers Desk
Thursday, March 23, 2017.
Why change careers? Why not? If you’re working at Dairy Queen when your dream is to become an actor, or a vet – you’ll be unhappy if you miss your chance. We all want to be happy in our lives, and while we all can’t achieve our dream career paths, we still need to have a role that fulfills us and our ambitions.
Firstly, we need to think about the fact of the matter – is a career change the right thing not only for us, but the family in our charge? If you don’t have a family to care for, you’ll find it easier to break free of your current role, but if you do have a family, bills need to be paid and mouths needs to be fed. It’s not impossible though! If you want to change career, you need to give it some serious thought – once some doors close, it is not often that they re-open. Not under the same circumstances anyway.
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A career change can be sparked by a number of things – namely a need for change itself. You need to assess the reasons why a change of career would work for you and question your reasoning. It might be that temporary circumstances in your current role are what is sparking your desire to move, temporary circumstances that might change in the near future! If you can identify why the idea of a career change has emerged, you might be on the right path – however, it’s always worth seeking change in your current role before making the huge decision to change careers.
Furthermore, if you have already identified the line of work you want to jump ship to, you want to make sure it is something you are interested in. A big monthly salary can hide issues, but if you aren’t satisfied with your new career, you may have wasted a lot of time. Will the money be enough to prevent you from seeking yet another change of career?
Time?
A career change takes time mainly because of the research and training you need to do. Once you have identified the line of work that you want to get into there are very specific pathways into that line of work that you can open with the right connections, research and training. Acting is a good example – if you’re an English expat in Los Angeles looking to be an actor, you’ll find work as an English character, but American accent training can boost your prospects. It’s an example of how you can learn new skills to open paths. Of course, some pathways may require professional training, group memberships and academic qualifications but that will vary. It all depends on where you want to work!
A new career can be easy to unlock, but you shouldn’t jump ship unless you’re certain it’s right. You don’t want to find yourself constantly hopping about – sometimes, settling is good! Figure out why you want to move and find out how to open the pathways that will allow you to excel.
