How to Avoid a Big Career Change Mistake So You Can Do Exciting Work That Makes You Come Alive

When it is time to move on in your career, knowing how to make the change can be confusing and overwhelming.

Launching yourself into the sea of the jobs market, casting your net as wide as possible, can be very hit and miss. And even if you are lucky to catch something, you have to muster up the enthusiasm to sound vaguely excited.

A journey that started with so much promise and hope for a better life gradually begins to sap energy, drain hope, and in many cases, despair can set in.

Three Tips to Avoid Making The Most Common Career-Change Mistake

In this article, I will show you how putting your resume together and signing up to job boards in an attempt to keep the net as wide as possible is just about the worst thing you can do when embarking on a new career move.

I will give you three tips to combat this natural inclination so that you can experience fun and joy as you discover how to make your next career move.

Realise This: Employers and Job Hunters View the Job Search Differently

Starting with your resume and hitting the job boards seems like a great idea because it appears to save time.

But unfortunately, the way employers hunt for job seekers and the way job seekers hunt for employees are polar opposites.

Contrary to popular belief, employers don’t reach for resumes first.

Their main concern is minimising risk and so they prefer to hire people they know or have a strong connection with.

And if they can’t find their employee through a connection, then they want as much proof as they can get that you are the most skilled, committed, and
passionate person for the job.

If you don’t have a strategy to fit with the employer’s strategy, you risk wasting a lot of time which can erode valuable confidence needed for the journey ahead.

You’ll increase your chances for success by getting specific about what you want first, and then figuring out how to reach the employers.

Tip # 1 – Get specific about what you want

When it’s time to move on in your career, instead of working your job hunt like a machine gun, firing off your resume at anything you see hoping you get lucky, start by getting specific about what you want.

Even if you don’t have a name for what you are seeking, knowing its height, shape, colour, and size will help you to identify it when you see it.

If you know the type of people you want to work with, the field, and the kinds of skills you want to use, you automatically start to narrow down the places where
you will find them.

Then you can start tapping into the people that you know in those areas to try and make a ‘connection’ with the types of employers who would benefit from your skills and expertise.

Tip # 2 – Shift your attitude from being a victim of the jobs market to one where you are in charge of your career

Most career changers have a scarcity mindset regarding the jobs market. They believe that there are too few opportunities out there and that they’ll be lucky to get anything. They become a victim of their circumstances.

In reality, employers want people who “want their jobs.” They can spot the desperate, rapid-fire attempts to land a job quickly a mile off — and ignore them.

It’s just like the spam in your inbox. Unpleasant.

If you do somehow land the interview, showing up to an interview you are ambivalent about will require a lot of convincing to get the offer.

If you put in the leg work ahead of time and only go after jobs you genuinely want, convincing the employer will become a breeze!

For example, ten years ago, it was time for a job change, and I took plenty of time to clarify what I wanted. I didn’t know the job’s name, but when I saw a small advert for an HR professional to create work experience programmes in a coaching start-up, it had all the ingredients I was looking for. I thought, ‘that job has my name on it.’ I was so excited that I just called them up and said, ‘you need to see me!’. I am generally not that confident, but I felt it. And because I knew what I wanted, I was also able to negotiate with them to create a role that enabled them to use my HR experience and also allowed me to coach clients.

Tip # 3 – Turn the job-hunting process into a fun journey of discovery by testing your ideas out with others

Instead of partnering with a mindset of ‘is anyone going to want to hire me?’, start asking, ‘is this career or this type of role going to be right for me?’.

Invest time talking to people who are in the career you want to do. Even better, try it out.

Save time from making the wrong move.

You will also learn more about it for interview situations and have your ear to the ground for any potential openings in that field.

I once had a friend who spent years wanting to be a police officer. He had to push through so many barriers to get into the police force, including having a criminal record for theft. It took him years to get in. He phoned me a few months later, saying that he had dropped out because he didn’t like the police officers’ banter in the locker room. If he had taken time to talk to other police officers and done some work experience, he would have saved himself a massive amount of time and energy in getting a job that didn’t suit him.

Save Time, Frustration, and Heartache

By avoiding taking a scattergun approach to your career move and investing time in discovering what you want to do, and taking charge of your career move, you could save a lot of pain and heartache and even enjoy the journey.

Is it time for you to make that big, brave career move?

Are you burned out? At a crossroads? Yearning to do something more meaningful but don’t know where to start? I would love to help you. Private message me on Linked in or drop me an email: email hidden; JavaScript is required