How To Make The Leap To A New Career

It is quite common for people to feel as though they are stuck in a career that they don’t want to be in. This can leave you feeling trapped and unhappy. Often, when you are stuck in this type of situation, it may have been a problem that has been brewing for several years.

The problem occurs when you take a stop-gap job in a completely different career area than you would have liked to have worked in. Often, people will get stuck in this type of job for some very good reasons. Firstly, stop-gap jobs offer a reliable income when you need it most. You may have taken the job that you needed to take at the time. Over time, you may feel as though you are stuck in a rut and you can no longer get out of the job that was only meant to be temporary. You will start to feel a lack of satisfaction with your career, your life, and yourself. This can cause depression.

The Barriers You Need To Overcome To Obtain A New Career

There are lots of different barriers that you may face when trying to get a new career. You may be used to the income that you get in your current position. It may be regular and cover all of your financial commitments. If you have dependants or a house, then your job will no doubt be the thing that keeps everything afloat. It may feel as though there is a lot of risk in jumping ship and starting again somewhere completely new. 

If you do not have the right experience, you might not feel like you can get the job that you want. It may even mean that you do not actually apply for the jobs that you are most interested in because you fear that you will be overlooked for the role. 

There might be qualifications that you need in order to obtain the career that you are interested in. Returning to education may not be an option as you need to maintain the same income that you have at the moment. 

Your confidence can be a major hurdle that needs to be overcome. Feeling as though you are stuck in a career rut and that you are not good enough for the jobs that you really want can leave you with very little self-esteem and confidence. Because of this, you may not put yourself out there and look for the jobs that you are most interested in. 

Gaining The Right Qualifications

A major problem that prevents many people from making a switch into the career of their dreams is not having the right qualifications. Often, education and academic qualifications are a pre-requisite of the job that you are applying for. If your chosen career requires you to have certain qualifications, then you should do your best to obtain these. 

You may not be able to study at a university because you are unable to stop working in your current job. We all need to earn money, but if you have financial commitments such as household bills or children, then you will need to think twice before giving up your job and going off to study. 

A suitable alternative will be to study online. You can pick pretty much any subject imaginable, from accounting to computer forensics investigator degrees. You can study at any level too, meaning that you can do a post-graduate qualification too if required. 

One of the best things about the online study is that you can do it in your own time from wherever you are. So, you can work it around your current job and life commitments. This makes it much easier for you to return to study for your career change.

If are struggling to fund your career change qualifications, then you may want to consider taking out a loan or paying for your course in installments.

Getting Experience

If experience is something that you lack, then the first thing that you should do is to have a look at the experience that you already have and try to find parallels between your current or previous jobs and what you will be doing in your next career. 

There are many transferable skills that are often overlooked. If you do not have direct experience in the field that you are looking to work in, then you can focus your attention on talking about these in your applications. 

If you do want to gain additional experience, look for opportunities to carry out voluntary work within the sector. This will put you in good stead when it comes to applying for jobs. 

You may also be able to get some organizations to let you come and gain work experience with them. This can also be a very handy way of getting your foot in the door for any future job opportunities when they arise. 

Developing Your Confidence

Confidence can often be in scarce supply when you have been stuck in a career rut for some time. You may not believe in yourself or your skills and abilities. However, this can lack of confidence will come over in your applications. It is entirely possible to find a way of communicating with confidence even if you do not fully feel confident in your own abilities. 

The expression ‘fake it until you make it’ is very useful when it comes to getting any type of new job. Nobody knows exactly what they are doing when they start a new job, and everyone learns as they go along. The trick is to not make too much of a big deal of this fact. If you act as if you know what you are doing, people will generally believe in you. This, in turn, can be a major confidence boost for you. Over time, you will develop the skills, experience, and confidence to do your job well, but for now, you can always smile and push yourself forward for every opportunity.

You might also like to read:

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• Could This Be the Year You Pursue Your Dream Job?
• 10 Tips for Studying While in Full-Time Work
• Dealing with debt stress and overcoming debt by paying off debt
• 5 Reasons Why Studying Can Benefit Your Career