12 Tips for Changing Careers
In this tight job market, more people are able to do it

by Richard Bayer, Ph.D.

The average American has been in his or her job only four years, and can expect to have five different careers -- that's not five different jobs, but five different careers! According to The Five O'Clock Club, the average professional, manager or executive, who participates in their program makes a career change in only ten weekly sessions. How do they do it? Here are a few steps to follow:

• Decide what you want to do. Pick a career direction -- what are the things you enjoy doing and also do well? Which industries interest you? Where do you see yourself in fifteen years?
• If possible, pick growth fields. Better to go into the telecommunications or wireless field rather than farming or manual inventory management.
• Explore them. Check out these fields on the Internet -- as a quick pass -- just to see if they still interest you. Find out the prognosis for the field. Is it growing? Stagnant?
• Meet with people in your target fields and industries to see if it is what you imagined it to be. You may think you're interested in the pharmaceutical industry, financial services or the art world until you actually have a few meetings. Do you REALLY want to be a lawyer? A lot of lawyers are very unhappy because they did not explore the field ahead of time.
• Reposition yourself on your resume. Use buzzwords from the new industry rather than your old one. For example, a bank operations manager wanted to work in hospital operations. He had to change all the mentions of "check processing" on his resume to "transaction processing." Hospitals process a lot of transactions, but not that many checks.
• Consider making a half step. A tax accountant wanted to get into Internet sales. First, he took a job as a tax accountant in an Internet company. Then he moved to sales. Now he's head of Internet sales. Total time for the complete change: 13 months.
• Develop a "consultant" mentality. A senior executive in bank marketing became the head of marketing in a hospital. He met with lots of hospital marketing executives, read hospital marketing trade journals and attended the hospital marketing association meetings. He uncovered the industry issues and was able to speak knowledgeably about them. On his eighth interview at a major hospital, the executive said to him, "Are you sure you never worked in a hospital before?" He got the job.
• Offer Proof of Your Interest and Competence. Outsiders never get hired; only insiders do. Those who successfully change careers become insiders. Here's how you can prove your interest and capability in the new field or industry.
  1. Read the industry's trade journals.
  2. Join its trade associations; attend the meetings . Get to know the people.
  3. Be persistent.
  4. Show how your skills can be transferred.
  5. Write proposals.
  6. Take relevant courses, part-time jobs, or do volunteer work related to the new industry or skill area.
  
  
• Meet with dozens of people until you start hearing the same names again and again.
• Get a few offers from inferior companies -- those who would consider themselves lucky to have someone like you. THEN …
• Make yourself more desirable by telling your primary target that you are talking to a lot of other companies, and in fact, have a few offers.
• Do not think that you will have to take a pay cut. This is the best job market we've had in thirty years. Don't sell yourself short!