Are You Ready For a New Career?

Are you thinking, “I need a new job!”
Are you thinking it every day?

Do you dream of starting a fresh, new career where you feel challenged, fulfilled and energized? Where you can flex your professional muscles and be valued for your expertise? Or maybe reinventing yourself into an entirely new job role or industry where you’re doing something completely new and different?

Maybe you’ve been pushing away that thought because it seems impossible, or overwhelming, or maybe because you simply don’t know how to change your career?

I’ve successfully reinvented my own career four (4) times and I fully believe that life is way too short to stay in a meaningless job where you’re unfulfilled, unchallenged and under-valued.

As a leading career coach, the #1 biggest question I get asked is, “How can I reinvent my career without decreasing my salary?” Each time that I reinvented my career, I received anywhere between an 8% – 32% salary increase. A client of mine, Matt, just reinvented his career from being a manager in the TV industry to becoming a manager in high tech, and he received a 17-percent pay increase.

So how did we do it?

Reinventing your career means repackaging your skills, qualifications and successes so that you can transition into a new job role, company or industry. It takes a strong vision, a solid plan, and someone who can coach you through your transition, but yes, it is possible! Below are four steps I take with my clients to teach them how to reinvent their career –

1. Identify your transferable skills.

   If you’ve been working for at least five years, then you have transferable skills. These are skills that transition from industry to industry, or from job role to job role. Examples include: managing projects, teams, clients or budgets, as well as negotiating contracts, helping a company generate revenue, save money, or gain market share.

   Other transferable skills include personal characteristics such as demonstrating leadership, mentoring or training others, risk taking, being goal driven, results oriented, a problem solver, or having the ability to influence senior managers. These are great skills to have, and they transfer from industry to industry. All kinds of industries and companies value employees with these types of skills and characteristics.

2. Match your transferable skills to job roles.

   Read job descriptions posted on Indeed.com, CareerJournal.com, CareerBuilder.com and Monster.com, as well as business journals and industry-specific websites. If you want to work for a specific company then check out their website’s on-line job postings. Learn the skills and qualifications required for various job roles.

   Then, match your transferable skills to those jobs you want to go after. If there’s a gap between the required skills and the skills that you currently have, then look for ways to gain that experience such as taking on an extended assignment in your current job, or if you’re in between jobs then try freelancing, consulting, or volunteering.

   Also, attend industry conferences, trade shows, business networking events and association meetings. Talk to people who work in the industry to learn about their career path, key skills, and advice on how to break into the business.

3. Blow up your resume.

   The first thing I always did before I transitioned into a new career was blow up my resume. Trying to piece together a resume that highlighted the skills I used to get my last job with the skills I needed to land my next job was like trying to weld together Lexus parts on a BMW. It doesn’t work. You need a brand new resume.

   Hiring managers don’t care about every job you’ve ever had. They just want to know, Can you do their job? In order to get noticed you’ll need a clean, polished and professionally written resume.

4. Attitude is the key ingredient!

   I’ve found that getting a new job really boils down to two things: confidence and passion. I’ve never walked into an interview having met all of the job requirements. In fact, for the television interview, I lacked the two biggest requirements which were a minimum of two years experience in television, and a reel to show my TV work.

   There’s a kind of quiet confidence that we all have down deep inside. A confidence that comes from knowing what we’re capable of doing. When you transition into a new job role or a new company, you need to show the hiring manager that you have confidence in yourself and know that you’ll be successful in the job. When it comes to reinventing your career, it’s not just your skills and talent but your attitude that counts!

 

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Sherri Thomas is a Career Strategist, international speaker and award-winning author of the “BEST CAREER BOOK of 2012” by Indie Book Awards for independently published book authors for her book “The Bounce Back – personal stories of bouncing back higher and faster after a layoff, re-org or career setback”.  She also authored, “Career Smart – 5 Steps to a Powerful Personal Brand” – which is on AMAZON’s TOP 10 LIST for personal branding books. Sherri is the President and Founder of Career Coaching 360 which provides resume help, interviewing support, and personal career coaching packages for executives and professionals who want to change their career.