Career Change

							              Career change…..it makes me anxious

We’ve all felt it. That nagging sense that the work we are doing is
no longer (or perhaps never was) right for us.

Next stop: PANIC. The thinking goes something like this. “I don’t
know what else I could do…. No body else will employ me….. Oh
well, maybe it is not so bad after all….. I’ll stay another few years
and just see what happens.”

Here are some useful things to know about change and some
suggestions for taking the fear out of it.

       Change in the workforce happens and will continue to
        happen. For example, those entering the workforce now
        can expect to have seven or eight significant career
        changes in their working lives.

       Change is a process with recognisable stages. Once we
        understand the stages we can see that we are actually
        progressing through them. The stages can be described
        as:
           1. ending
           2. neutral zone
           3. beginning

       For some of us security and stability in relation to work is
        very important. We also know that security and stability
        are in short supply in the workforce.

         We can however create some of that security for
         ourselves by
            Knowing what our transferable skills are,
            Being able to articulate them,
            Keeping up to date with who needs those skills
            Thinking of ways to harness our skills in a new way.

      Perhaps it’s time to think of career change like we think of
      change in the rest of our lives. We don’t always relish the
      change (particularly if we haven’t sought out the change) but
      we do understand that when we start a new course, move to
      a new neighbourhood or travel somewhere we’ve never been
      before we will:


         Learn new things
         Meet new people
         Change our priorities
         Develop new interests and pursue new ideas

If we can take some or all of the above and put it into a career
context, it’s not so threatening. In fact it can make the prospect of
a career change actually look exciting.