Active Career

It was one of the most difficult periods of my life.

On the surface, I had a good job in a well-known company. I’d been promoted several times. I had a mortgage, I was travelling with work and had great prospects ahead of me.

Inside though, I was deeply unfulfilled. I wasn’t enjoying my work, I felt like I wasn’t using my full potential, and I longed to wake up feeling like my work was making a difference – to someone or something.

Yet, I didn’t have a clue what else I could do.

Indeed I’d struggled on and off for years to figure out a way to change, but without making progress.

Eventually, as you’ll read below, I came out the other side. But it wasn’t an easy journey.

These are the lessons I learnt along the way.

What you need to know

If you’re stuck in your career change, there are three main challenges – or paradoxes – that you’re going to come up against.

1. It’s you that wants to make a change, but it’s also you that’s your biggest obstacle

In the depths of my despair about my job, there were signals from all around me that I wasn’t in the right place: I was embarrassed to talk about my work with others at parties; I couldn’t imagine doing my boss’s job (nor the one her boss had); and I was petrified that I’d reach 60 or 70 and not feel proud of the work I’d done in my life.

On a day-to-day basis, I just felt numb – uninspired by the meaningless work I was doing, and seemingly stuck in a Groundhog-Day reality of waking up to the same story every morning.

Yet, at the same time, I had no idea what else I wanted to do (or if I did, no sense of whether those ideas were feasible) – and no idea where to start.

Looking back, I now realise something I didn’t at the time – that I was blinkered in my view of the world of work. All I knew was the industry I was in. I had surface-level visibility of some other careers, but there were so many fields and roles that were completely off my radar screen.

I was also scared of taking a cut in salary, scared of what my family and friends would think, and scared of losing the status I’d worked so hard to achieve.

These weren’t obstacles in the outside world; they were obstacles in me. It was me – my lack of knowledge and my fears – that was most holding me back.

Does this also hold true for you?

2. You can’t figure it out by figuring it out

I was a knowledge worker: paid to think, to solve problems, and to interact with others.

Why then, couldn’t I figure what else I wanted to do?

My initial approach was to come home from work, wrap myself in my bedding, and go round and round in circles in my head analysing what else could I do.

I didn’t come up with answers.

I also read every single career change book I could get my hands on, scoured the internet for guidance and did numerous profiling tests.

But still no clarity.

The simple reality is that if the solution to your career change lay in more analysis – in making more lists, reading more books, taking more psychometric tests, or simply figuring it all out in your head – you’d have found it by now.

3. You won’t find a job by looking for one

When I started to look for something different, recruitment consultants were my natural first port of call.

They talked excitedly to me about roles with competitors or other positions in smaller organisations.

But it all just left me cold.

It was more of the same. I wanted to do something radically different and they couldn’t help.

You may have spent hours trawling through job sites or job alerts, and just made yourself more miserable by seeing again and again that you don’t have the experience or skills that are being asked for. Or you may have had similar experiences to mine with recruitment consultants. Or you may have sent off your CV / résumé for jobs in different fields, thinking you might at least get an initial interview. But nothing.

These are all functions of a traditional job market that isn’t designed for career changers.

Through no fault of your own, you’re simply not going to stack up against other people with experience and skills in the different field you’re interested in.

We can help what ever you need. We are here to help if our range of products and services are not the right fit for you we will sign post you to someone or a company that can.