Choosing which career change route to take can be a complex decision. There are more options and opportunities than ever, which adds to the wealth of information and decisions to be made. This article aims to break down the career decision-making process into simple steps, so that you know that you are on the right track.
Whether to Change Career?
Before starting the process of choosing which career change to pursue, consider whether a career change is the right action. Are there things that you can do to increase satisfaction in your current career? Read this article to get six tips for how to enjoy your work more: ‘Should I Change Career?‘
Choosing the Right Career Change for You
Make sure that you are clear about what you want out of your career and what you can contribute to a new role. You can take psychological assessments to be more self-aware about your values, strengths and personality. You can set your priorities and most important career-related aspects before looking at any job. Taking these actions before you look at which career change to choose ensures a quicker career search, and only focusing on roles that are relevant to you and your current lifestyle. For more detailed information about how to choose the right career for you, read this article with handy links to online psychological assessments for this stage: ‘What Career Choice is Right for Me?‘
Researching Relevant Careers
Now you are ready to consider potential careers in light of the information you have about yourself. Start with a broad consideration of the job market. You can use career databases relevant to your location, such as O*Net in the US (https://www.onetonline.org/), or the National Careers Service in the UK (https://nationalcareers.service.gov.uk/explore-careers). Create a large list of careers that you wish to consider as possibilities for your career change. You can exclude careers that are irrelevant to you, but be careful not to exclude entire industries unless they are against your values. For example, you may wish to exclude the military if you are strongly pacifist, or certain parts of the energy sector as an environmentalist. However, there may be roles related to those industries where your values and skills will enable you to benefit the industry and move it in a better direction.
Narrowing Your List of Careers
When you have a list that includes all of the careers you want to consider, you can rapidly reduce that list down to a manageable amount. Psychologists Gati and Asher (2001) recommend no more than seven careers on your list before you start to do any detailed research. To reduce the list, but keep only the most relevant careers to you, take your most important priority or career-related aspect and remove any careers from your list that do not meet that condition. For example, if you require to work evenings or night shifts, you would remove jobs from the list that require daytime hours, such as daycare and classroom teaching. You could leave on your list baby-sitting and tutoring at this time.
If your list is longer than seven, take your next most important priority and remove the careers that no longer meet that requirement. Continue down your list of priorities and careers until you have seven or less careers that you are happy to consider in more detail. Check that you have not removed any careers that you would still like to consider, even if they did not meet one of your top requirements. Could you compromise on that factor?
Detailed Research
Now you can get into the details of each role, and consider your own ability to be able to take on that career change. With only seven or less careers on your list, you can now go beyond the career databases. Use qualitative information about each role, from a wide range of sources, including articles, podcasts, interviews, networking, etc. Check the reliability of information by comparing with more than one source of information. Now is the time to find out the requirements of each role, and what you would need to do in order to be capable of fulfilling that role. This includes any education or training, specialised skills or equipment. You can then budget and prepare for any time or resources you may require for getting ready to take on a new role.
This new information can be used to reduce your list down further, to three or less careers. Remove careers from the list that do not meet your next top priorities and where you feel there is too big a gap between where you are now, and where you need to be capable of the role. Do not be put off by some new training, skills or qualifications that may take time and/or money to achieve. There are plenty of routes into different careers, funding available and skills that you can transfer.
Which Career Change to Choose?
Find yourself leaning towards one particular career? You can use your emotional response toward the different careers to gauge how you feel about them as possibilities, and help with your choice. If you feel no preference between the last three choices, you can now conduct a detailed comparison between them. Compare the pros and cons of each, or assign attractiveness rating scores to the core features of the roles, especially focusing on the differences between them. These activities can help you to see if one career is better than the others. A combination of emotional response and logical comparison can help you to feel happy about your choice of career change, and confident to pursue that choice.
Thank you for reading. If you would like any further support for your career choice or career change, please visit this page, or contact us at info@careercognition.com with your questions.
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Reference:
Gati, I., & Asher, I. (2001). The PIC model for career decision making: Prescreening, in-depth exploration, and choice. In F. T. L. Leong & A. Barak (Eds.), Contemporary models in vocational psychology: A Vol. in honor of Samuel H. Osipow (pp. 7–54). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers.
