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Changing Careers to Stay Competitive

thF1RG551ARewiring your career may be a smart move, experts say, and offer 4 tips to get you started.

Changing jobs seems like a relatively common and simple feat. You leave your project manager position at one firm and pick up a similar gig, maybe closer to home, with better benefits or pay. Changing careers, though, sounds more daunting. Moving from the publishing industry to, say, health care—is it even possible, and if so, how would you do it?

Shifting careers, or re-careering, is possible, experts say, and a wise way to stay competitive in today’s job market. Two fields that hold particular promise for growth are health care and IT. Dr. Eric Darr, interim president of Harrisburg University of Science and Technology in Pennsylvania, says opportunities abound in these areas. Harrisburg is a private institution focused on science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). Darr says the student body includes everyone from recent high-school graduates to students in their 30s, 40s and 50s looking to reskill and “readjust their careers.”

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, health care practitioners and technical occupations are projected to grow 26 percent from 2010-2020, while computer and math occupations are projected to grow 22 percent during that time.

How to Make the Leap: 4 Key Tips

So the opportunities are out there, especially in health care and IT. But how do you seize them? Consider these sage bits of advice:

  1. Conduct informational interviews with individuals working in the field you want to pursue. Meeting face-to-face with people already in your desired area is invaluable, says Mark Gasche, senior director of career services for Empowered UCLA Extension. This is a chance to ask critical questions about salary or potential barriers to entering the field, Gasche explains. Afterward you’ll feel better or worse, he says. If you feel worse, then it’s a challenge to your initial plan. If you feel better, then you’ll be armed with more knowledge about how to continue.
  2. Consider careers that will be safe from outsourcing. Darr says predicting which fields will be outsource-proof can be tricky, “But if you are in health care and the job is to work with patients and analyze data, those things are not going to be outsourced because they can’t be.”
  3. Don’t stop working. “Today you can take courses and certifications at night and on weekends. You do not have to drop out of the system in order to participate,” says Dr. Tracey Wilen-Daugenti, vice president and managing director at the Apollo Research Institute. Many companies give support to workers pursuing education while they work, she notes. If you pursue education or training at a higher-education institution, be sure to select one that doesn’t relegate adult education to second-class status, Darr says.
  4. Volunteer. Wilen-Daugenti suggests that if you’re not working, volunteer for an organization in the area where you want to be hired: “In our ongoing career research, an individual noted that he was volunteering in an IT position at a key hospital so that he understood the systems and when a job opened he would be the first pick to be hired.” Volunteering lets you test the job and learn the systems, while people in the firm get to know you and your capabilities, she explains.

Kristina Cowan

Changing jobs seems like a relatively common and simple feat. You leave your project manager position at one firm and pick up a similar gig, maybe closer to home, with better benefits or pay. Changing careers, though, sounds more daunting. Moving from the publishing industry to, say, health care—is it even possible, and if so, how would you do it?

Shifting careers, or re-careering, is possible, experts say, and a wise way to stay competitive in today’s job market. Two fields that hold particular promise for growth are health care and IT. Dr. Eric Darr, interim president of Harrisburg University of Science and Technology in Pennsylvania, says opportunities abound in these areas. Harrisburg is a private institution focused on science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). Darr says the student body includes everyone from recent high-school graduates to students in their 30s, 40s and 50s looking to reskill and “readjust their careers.”

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, health care practitioners and technical occupations are projected to grow 26 percent from 2010-2020, while computer and math occupations are projected to grow 22 percent during that time.

How to Make the Leap: 4 Key Tips

So the opportunities are out there, especially in health care and IT. But how do you seize them? Consider these sage bits of advice:

  1. Conduct informational interviews with individuals working in the field you want to pursue. Meeting face-to-face with people already in your desired area is invaluable, says Mark Gasche, senior director of career services for Empowered UCLA Extension. This is a chance to ask critical questions about salary or potential barriers to entering the field, Gasche explains. Afterward you’ll feel better or worse, he says. If you feel worse, then it’s a challenge to your initial plan. If you feel better, then you’ll be armed with more knowledge about how to continue.
  2. Consider careers that will be safe from outsourcing. Darr says predicting which fields will be outsource-proof can be tricky, “But if you are in health care and the job is to work with patients and analyze data, those things are not going to be outsourced because they can’t be.”
  3. Don’t stop working. “Today you can take courses and certifications at night and on weekends. You do not have to drop out of the system in order to participate,” says Dr. Tracey Wilen-Daugenti, vice president and managing director at the Apollo Research Institute. Many companies give support to workers pursuing education while they work, she notes. If you pursue education or training at a higher-education institution, be sure to select one that doesn’t relegate adult education to second-class status, Darr says.
  4. Volunteer. Wilen-Daugenti suggests that if you’re not working, volunteer for an organization in the area where you want to be hired: “In our ongoing career research, an individual noted that he was volunteering in an IT position at a key hospital so that he understood the systems and when a job opened he would be the first pick to be hired.” Volunteering lets you test the job and learn the systems, while people in the firm get to know you and your capabilities, she explains.

Kristina Cowan

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What I Wish I Knew Before Starting My Career

1361913275_3248_leadershipThis is a guest post by the daughter of Steve Denning, Stephanie Denning, who writes about leadership issues from a millennial perspective. The views expressed here are her own.

Most of us today, millennials in particular, equate work with meaning. And from afar, it sounds inspirational. But in practice, it’s a lot messier. After graduation, millennials set off to pursue a career that they hope will match their fantasies. The reality they’re faced with is a little less idyllic. Graduation is a daunting thing with the array of career options that await. To navigate a career today, especially since career-switching is so common, is a little like blindfoldedly swinging at a piñata: You’ll have a few hits, and a lot of misses.

I would know. I am, myself, a millennial trying to navigate this new world of career options. In an attempt to understand it better myself, I started to mine my own experience and that of my friends to see if I could learn something, anything, to apply to my career that lies ahead.

  1. Your Experience Does Matter

The commonly accepted assumption is that millennials today have more career options available to them than their parents. And that might be true… right after graduation. When you have little to no experience to speak of. Effectively tabula rasa.

Unfortunately, the rest of your career isn’t quite so neat. The dirty little secret of any career trajectory is your experience holds an enormous amount of weight on what you do next. This can be both a blessing, if you have the right experience, or a curse, if you don’t. That first job you take after college — and every subsequent job after it —  increasingly matter.

There is one glaring reason for this: While companies and jobs have evolved, hiring is largely unchanged. Experience is key. But there’s an awful lot of forecasting involved in this formula. Few of us know the person we want to become in our 20s. Tellingly, most of us treat our 20s as a time of discovery. We think, what is it exactly I want to do?

But while you’re busy contemplating this existential question, hiring departments take no notice.

Don’t let your career atrophy while you’re trying to figure out what you want to do. Instead, find work in a growth area, whether it be the industry, the company, the division or your boss. Growth will most always be a good, no matter where you want to go.

  1. You Leave A Job Too Soon

Job-hopping has become common practice among millennials. Maybe even falsely advertised as a best practice. The Bureau of Labor Statistics released a report in September 2014 stating workers 24-34 held a median tenure of three years in 2014 to date.

Take a step back, three years really isn’t a long time. Less time than a college career. Realistically, it takes about a year to truly acclimate to any new job — between culture, politics, proving yourself, getting your bearing on what the work even entails.

People mistakenly assume that a job is fixed; that that first year is reflective of all the future years to come. But jobs evolve as changes take place in any company. Opportunities come and go. And three years is a very small window to see the full range of those opportunities.

Nowhere have I seen more evidence of this phenomenon than in a quick comparison between friends who have left their jobs versus those who have stayed.

That’s not to say the ones with longer tenure love their job every single day. There will be dark days, buoyed by good ones. Job enjoyment is never linear; it takes the shape of a sinusoidal curve, a series of ups and downs.

That’s where most millennials get tripped up. We focus on job enjoyment more than learning opportunities. In the long run though, learning has a higher return on your investment of time than simply pursuing the jobs you enjoy the most. Only leave when you believe you’ve exhausted all the opportunities before you to learn.

  1. You Have A Unique Career Trajectory

Because there’s no road map to guide us through our careers, most of us latch on to stories of career success. We study stories of success to try to glean the formula behind that success. And then we begin to emulate it. You think, well if I want to be the bigwig in Silicon Valley, you must drop out of school. Or if you want to work in business, you need an MBA.

What you soon learn is emulating anyone else’s path will only get you so far. At some point you have to venture out on your own and start to follow your own instinct. You are the only one that can truly evaluate an opportunity.

I’ve always admired Michael Lewis. And for a long time I felt I needed to follow suit in his path. But I never much liked finance, and having interned, was fairly sure I had no interest in working in it either. But it took time for me to figure out that while I was trying to become the next Michael Lewis, I was losing sight of becoming myself.

Follow what you find interesting like a dog following that invisible scent. Even if it’s something small and seemingly insignificant, like a side project, follow it, follow it, follow it. Following your interests, no matter how small, no matter how little time you can allocate to it, will eventually lead you to where you want to go.

Some Final Thoughts

I venture to write about career advice because most millennials, unlike many past generations, seek ever-elusive “meaning” in a job. At worst, we want to find a job we really like, and at best, one we love.

It can often feel like a Herculean effort to undertake finding the right job. In an effort to minimize that effort, what I’ve gathered here is the best intel I’ve come across.

These lessons have never failed me in my own experience, and I hope, maybe naively, that they might serve you too.

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