Search Results for: career change statistics

It’s a big decision!
You’ve worked in a job for a number of years but recently you’ve been thinking about training for a different career.

But the possibility of extensive career change training to fulfill your new dream career doesn’t have much appeal.

I’ve put together a list of the common questions and answers that you are likely to ask yourself when considering if career change training will be worthwhile for you, together with other career change advice comments.

1. Are you sure that formal career change education is absolutely necessary for the job you are considering?

2. How do I know there will be a job at the end of my training?

3. When considering training for a different career, how do you compare courses and find out who provides the best quality training?

4. Am I really motivated [and financially able] to see through the prescribed career change training?

5. When I have all my facts in front of me, what is the best way to make a final decision?

1. Are you sure that formal career change education is absolutely necessary for the job you are considering?

Often you can enter a new career through the ‘back door’ that doesn’t require formal career change training.
For full details on this question see Do you really need retraining to change careers?.

2. How do I know there will be a job at the end of my training?

This is a difficult one.
Although the job market for your new career may look good now, job markets can change quickly.
There is never a guarantee that you will get a job after you have finished your training, but there are some things you can do to minimize the odds of finding yourself unemployed after completing further career education.

a. You would probably want to go and talk to education providers, but sometimes they will paint a very rosy picture of the potential job opportunities after graduation.
They have a vested interest in selling you their courses so don’t put too much weight on their comments.

b. Probably the most important thing you can do is to ensure that when you do finally start applying for jobs, you become a front runner in the minds of prospective employers.
But how do you achieve that? The best way is to ensure that the career you are training for, and the jobs you are applying for, are the best possible fit for your innate skills and giftings.

If you haven’t completed the free career assessments, this is a great place to start.
Completing this assessment is some of the best career change advice I can give, as it will provide some great insights into your core giftings and the skills you are most motivated to use.

It will ensure that you don’t start spending a lot of time and money on career change training that in the end is likely to result in much long-term job satisfaction.

c. Once you are confident you know the skills and abilities you like to use the most, the next step is to go and talk to workers who are already doing the job you are contemplating.

This will allow you to find out what the current supply and demand is for the job.
Richard Bolles coined the phrase informational interviewing to describe this information shopping process.
Through networking, find people who are already doing this type of job and arrange a short meeting with them [this could be over the phone, but in person is best]to find out what the current and future demand for this type of job is.

You will also be able to obtain information that will help you with question no. 3 as follows.

Find out all about the job and the training that they went through [if any] to get there. You might also want to ask them questions like:

A. Do you know anybody in the industry who does this type of work but did not go through any formal career change training?

B. What training did you go through to get into your position?

C. What courses or training establishments are more highly regarded than others within the industry?

D. What is the current state of job openings in the industry?

E. Do you know of any organizations that have an apprenticeship type scheme or allow some other form of on-the-job training or allow formal education to be completed while working in the job? Question them hard on this issue. Can they think of even one example where this has happened?

F. How long ago was it that you were employed?

G. How did you obtain your job?

H. How difficult did you find the process of securing the job?

I. What did you feel were the most sought after attribute by your employer?

J. Who else do you know that has been employed in this type of work more recently? [Get contact details and arrange a similar meeting with them]

d. Passion for the work you do is one of the greatest ways you can increase the chances of successfully securing a job at the end of your career change training.

Very few employers are not impacted in a meeting with a potential employee who exudes tremendous passion for the work on offer.
But passion is not something you can manufacture.
It is a byproduct of genuinely loving that type of work.
And the way that happens is for you to be intimately in touch with the gifts and abilities that you love to use the most.

3. When considering training for a different career, how do you compare courses and find out who provides the best quality training?

The best way is to ask people in the industry.
Questions C. in the box above addresses this issue when asking it to workers.
But this question should also be addressed to employers in the industry.
It is their answer that carries more weight than anyone else because they are the ones doing the hiring.

It is also a good idea once a career education provider has been selected to ask them for contact details of recent graduates so you can call them up and discuss their satisfaction levels with the course.

4. Am I really motivated [and financially able] to see through the prescribed career change training?

Generally speaking, if a person is questioning their potential lack of motivation when considering training for a different career, then there is a very good chance they are on the wrong track.
If you have completed the free career assessment, you should have a pretty good idea of where your passions and motivated gifts are.

Normally if a person is struggling with the question, “Will I stay motivated?” there are usually doubts lingering.
And if there are doubts lingering in the beginning, there is a good chance those doubts will turn into a lack of action down the track.
Sometimes, however, the motivation issue may be related to not having enough information regarding the course or the career that you are considering.

This is where the informational interviewing will hopefully solve those issues.
The financial side of things is usually quite a lot easier to assess and manage.
It’s really just about doing a projected cash flow for the period of study including any upfront education fees.

This can be done on a simple Excel spreadsheet, or there are numerous free online budgeting software programs.
Financial reasons are another motive for trying to enter a career through the back door without standalone formal career change training.
In this situation, not only does the learning usually result in better training, but you are also earning money while you learn.

5. When I finally have all my facts in front of me, what is the best way to make a final decision?

Choosing to undertake significant career change training is a big move!
And there are a lot of factors to consider. Here is a great little decision-making tool that I used to make decisions when there are multiple factors to consider.

It only takes a few minutes to use it and I haven’t found a better way of making decisions systematically and logically – and it’s free.

This career development article provides links to seven career keys to help you achieve your career plans faster (see bottom of page).

Professional career development is about considering where you would like to go and what you want to achieve in your work life…and then creating an action plan to achieve it.

Most importantly, it’s about discovering what your natural abilities are, and ensuring they are fully developed as you implement your career development plan.

Professional Career Development Is A Win-Win For Employers and Employees

Career development is becoming an increasingly important part of the employment market, for both employees and employers.

Organizations are increasingly aware that not only do businesses have their own visions and goals, but so do individuals.

Although the primary purpose of this career development article is to help employees with their professional career development planning, organizations can also benefit by increasing their understanding of what workers want most from a job. And if you as an employer can provide more for an employee, you will attract better staff and keep them longer.

Increasingly successful organizations want to become Employers of Choice.
More and more they are creating a culture where individuals can fulfill their personal career goals within their organization while the organization also achieves theirs.

‘A company that implemented this philosophy of releasing employees to be their best, is the reputable U.S furniture manufacturer, Herman Miller.

They developed a culture that not only wanted to employee the best designers for their furniture but also gave them incredible license to push the boundaries of design in ways that other manufacturers were not, and would not do.

The net result was an extremely low staff turnover, a company that produced more profit per worker than anyone else in the industry and products that became global leaders.

Herman Miller was rated by the Fortune magazine as one of the Top 10 best employers in the United States to work for.’

And one of the primary ways they are achieving this is by offering professional career development to their employers.
There is no working environment that is more efficient, more productive and happier to work in, than one where workers and the work needed to be done, are well matched.
My hope is that these career development articles will encourage both employers and employees to discover and implement this win-win work environment.

Although the number of organizations implementing professional career development over recent years has increased, it still only amounts to approximately 50% of employers

7 Career Development Articles to Maximize Your Career

1. Career Development Theory
An Old Theory About the Way People Choose Careers Makes a Comeback?
Read more…

2. What Is Career Development?
What is career development and why should you be bothered with it?
Career development is simply about deciding that your career is important enough that it should have some type of planning framework associated with it.
Read more…

3. What are the best Career Development Tools?
There are a number of career development tools that can help you in your professional career development.
Using the right tools can dramatically speed up the realization of your career development plans.
This career development article looks at six different career development tools to facilitate a career change.
Read more…

4. Career Development Coaching: Does It Work?
Is career development coaching worth the investment of your time and money?
This career development article looks at why career development coaching can be a very effective strategy for both employers and employees in achieving their respective goals.
Read more…

5. Six Ways A Career Development Plan Can Help You Achieve Fulfillment in Your Career.
A professional career development plan is instrumental for you to achieve your career objectives.
Of all the career development tools, this is probably the most important.
Read more…

6. A five-year career development plan is often the ideal time frame, to begin with for career development plans as it is a comfortable balance between being not too far out, yet far enough to allow time to accomplish reasonably ambitious career development goals.
Read more…

7. Sample Career Development Plan
Free Worksheet and Instructions on How to Create Your Own Career Plan.
Use the link to this career development article to download a free sample career development plan and use it as a template to creating your own career goals.
This sample career development plan will provide a good basis for you to develop your own plan.
Being able to see someone else’s finished plan speeds up the process of creating your own career development plans.
Read more…

A professional career development plan can be instrumental in achieving your career objectives.
Of the many career development tools on offer, this is probably the most valuable.

But exactly what is career development?
Quite simply, it is about setting and implementing goals that are related to your career.

(If you would like to see some career development plan examples, including a free downloadable career development plan template, see the sample career development plan page.)

1. Research Suggests a Professional Career Development Plan Will Work

There is evidence to suggest that planning in any area of our life produces better results than if we don’t plan.

I used to be involved in motor racing. And for quite some time I would finish in the top four or five place getters but could never finish first until I implemented a very specific goal setting plan on how I could win.

The very first time I implemented this plan, I won my first event.

This Guy Had a Plan!

Two friends were hiking in the woods and spotted a vicious-looking bear.
One immediately opened his backpack, pulled out a pair of sneakers and started putting them on.
His friend turned to him and said,
“You’re crazy – you’ll never be able to outrun that bear!”
“I don’t have to,” he said.
“I only have to outrun you.”

I know that the reason I won that race was that I devised and implemented a very specific plan.

I have used goal setting in many areas of my life, including to achieve my career objectives. When I have used it faithfully, I invariably got better results.

For many years I used a written program from Success Motivation Institute, but more recently have been using a free online goal-setting program called Lifetick.

2. A Career Development Plan Will Increase Your Income

How could implement a professional career development plan increase your income?
The people who get paid the most in any field are usually the people who are the best in their field.

And the people who are best in their field are those who consciously use their innate, inborn abilities in their job. These inborn skills are skills that you are naturally motivated to use and with which you were born.

One of the great benefits of implementing a professional career development plan is that the process should force you to identify your inborn job skills.
If you haven’t done this yet, you can’t effectively implement a successful career development plan. Click the link above to complete it now.

There is no other single way to more effectively increase your income than by finding a job fit where your natural inborn abilities match the type of work you are doing. Many people try to do this without getting this critical foundation in place. Job frustration nearly always results.

Because you will achieve your career objectives faster with a professional career development plan [see #5], you will be earning more money sooner.

The other way you will be financially better off if you implement a career plan, is through the money you will save by the simple act of planning ahead.

Achieving anything in life by planning ahead will result in cost savings compared to achieving the same goal without planning.

For example, let’s say you were going on holiday.

If you decide to have a vacation three months in advance and you plan your transport, accommodation and arrange other responsibilities to be taken care of while you are out of town, you will do it much more cheaply if arranged three months ahead of time, than if you do this only two weeks from when you leave.

With your holiday only two weeks away, you are much less likely to be able to secure better deals on accommodation and transport, etc.
And that next-door neighbor who you were planning to use to feed your pets and look after your yard while you were away is not available at only two weeks notice. You really should have let her know earlier. You now have to arrange a last-minute professional pet carer or pay for kennel charges.

And this type of last-minute planning will cost you more in all areas of your vacation.

Applying this same principle to your career change will result in more costs and a delay in realizing your best income through things like failing to plan ahead for further education and relocating to another city if required to fulfill your career goal.

3. A Career Plan Removes Distractions

If you have written down your career development plan and are reviewing it on a regular basis, this forces your brain to become repeatedly reminded of your career objectives.

This proverb reminds us that:

As a man thinks, so he becomes.

This is one of the secrets of any successful goal setting plan. We set up a system that forces us to regularly tell our mind about something important to us.

In the absence of clearly defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it.

Robert Heinlein

If the mind focuses often enough and for long enough on any particular issue, that issue will begin to become a reality in our life.

4. A Career Development Plan Increases Your Self-Confidence

One of the wonderful benefits of implementing a professional career development plan is that your chances of realizing your career goals dramatically increase.

One of the benefits of this is increased self-confidence.

Self-confidence in your career, among other things, enhances your natural inborn job skills even more.
When you combine your natural inborn skills with increased self-confidence, it allows you to push the boundaries just a little more than you otherwise would.

And pushed boundaries sooner or later result in more successful outcomes

The result of this is that you keep getting better and better at your chosen career.

It also means that those around you will see your competency levels rising. This opens up more opportunities for them to utilize your skills and for you to gain even more confidence as a result.
And the cycle continues.

5. A Career Development Plan Allows You to Get There Faster

Whether your career development plan is a short 3 month one or a more lengthy five-year career development plan it will allow you to achieve your career objectives faster.
This is because of the increased focus and measurement of the journey towards the goal.

If you are constantly measuring how you are going in your career development plan, you will achieve it faster because whatever gets measured gets completed and faster.

And if you achieve your career objectives faster, a likely result will be to enhance your life balance in general. Other areas are more likely to be worked on simply because you have created more time for yourself.

Planning tends to help us clear the unimportant and time-wasting activities from our life and gives us a sense of being in control again.

6. A Professional Career Development Plan Should Allow Room for Planned Happenstance

Some of your best chances in life will come from unexpected opportunities that you cannot see right now.
There is an element of luck in life, but luck comes to those who are most prepared.

Planned happenstance is a career development theory about planning for unexpected opportunities.

Peter Drucker, one of the world’s most respected business consultants of this century and author of 34 books, says that we should never box ourselves into a situation, where if an unplanned opportunity arises we would be poorly placed to take advantage of it.

I always tell my clients to begin the journey, to go down the road as far as you can see at the time and then you will see to go further, often in a slightly different direction than your career objectives were pointing. Despite the intricate steering equipment of a large ocean liner, it is totally unable to change direction unless the ship is first moving.

And that’s the same for us.
We can steer our lives a whole lot better when we are moving ahead.
Go as far as you can go and you will see to go further.

I think back to a successful business that I started at the age of 23.
One Saturday night while out getting takeaways, I saw an opportunity that ultimately brought tremendous financial prosperity into my life.

At the time I was pursuing a sales career, but fortunately, I had a mindset that was willing to allow other opportunities to present themselves.

And the result was a very successful business.

So how does this fit with a career development plan?
Quite frankly, it can be the very act of creating a professional career development plan that could well act as a catalyst to a great opportunity ahead.

One of the great side benefits of planning is that it causes you to greatly expand your thinking of the goal you are working on.

As you write information into your career plan about your career objectives and the action steps that you will need to take, you are forced to clarify thoughts and ideas about issues that you could never have thought about otherwise.

This forced thinking on matters close to your heart provides an increased foundation of ideas from which new opportunities can attach themselves.

Other career development articles related to this include:

Career development theory What Is career development? Career development tools Career development coaching Five-year career development plan Sample career development plan

A five year career development plan is a good time frame for career planning as it is a nice balance between being not too far away, yet far enough to allow time to accomplish a reasonably ambitious career goal.

Some people prefer to work with a shorter time-frame than the five year career development plan.
Whatever the case, all career development plans, despite their length, should be broken down into smaller bite-size goals as this increases success.

The purpose of this career development article is to provide you a framework for a five year career development plan so that you can design and accomplish your own career goals.

I have also provided a link to a sample career development plan that you can use as an example.

The concepts presented in this career development article can obviously be applied to a ten year career development plan or any other time-frame.

But when it comes to planning and time frames, I am reminded of the quote:

Most people grossly overestimate what they can achieve in one year and underestimate what they can achieve in ten.

A nice balance between getting things moving with your career development plans, but not being too unrealistic about what can be achieved in a given amount of time.

It’s important to also allow a nice balance between our personal and career development goals.

What Should a Five Year Career Development Plan Include

The foundation of all career development plans, as with any planning is the writing down [or typing] of a series of steps that takes you from where you are now to where you want to be. [See below]

However before that can begin, the first and most important issue is to clarify where you want to be.

What does success look like for you in your career?
In your life?

I would like to challenge you to consider what success really means for you.
And how much of your current ideas about career success are programmed patterns of thinking.

In other words, thoughts that have come from the outside in, rather than from the inside out.
One of the hardest parts of creating a meaningful five year career development plan is this trying to separate ourselves from the success expectations of our culture.

I like John Wooden’s description of success.

Success comes from knowing that you did your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming.

-John Wooden

It’s important to define our own idea of success and not accept society’s ideas of what success is without first critiquing those ideas.

If you get only one thing out of this career development article, I hope it is this: that there are tremendous cultural and societal pressures on us to conform to the norms of what success is.

Finding the real meaning of success is about getting in touch with our core values as a person.
Consider some of these questions;
When I am lying on my death bed and I look back over my life, will I be able to say “I’m glad I dedicated my working life to doing that”.

What things would I need to accomplish in my life for that statement to be true?
Or ask yourself the question ‘So What’, after picturing yourself achieving your career development goals.

What answer do you come up with to the ‘So What’ question, when you visualize your goals being realized.
This is is a great question to ask yourself if you want to find out how meaningful your goals really are.

Getting The Balance Right

Something else to consider is: are my work goals balanced with other aspects of my life?
For example, does my five year career development plan allow for a healthy balance between family, personal and career development goals.

Will I Consider myself a success if I achieve my career goals but sacrifice my family or health.

I don’t believe it needs to be a case of either or.
You can have both.
But it needs to be planned and managed proactively.

Success = Identifying What You Do Easy

I believe there is a correlation between achieving a sense of success in your career and working in a job where your natural giftings and inborn job skills are being utilized.

It’s just not possible to achieve true fulfillment if you are not working in harmony with your natural abilities.

This is the place I start when people come to me for career change advice.

So if you haven’t done any work on identifying your natural abilities, things that you are innately motivated to do, I would recommend you complete the inborn job skills assessment.

There may be gaps between the skills, experience or education you have now and what you need to accomplish for your career goals.

If your five year career development plan is aimed at staying with your current employer, then a discussion with your manager and others who you respect in your organization can be a valuable exercise.

Those you trust and respect in your working environment can be good at identifying your strengths and weaknesses and providing a different perspective than you might see in yourself.

Talk To Someone Who Has Already Done That Job

Another valuable exercise is to find somebody who is doing the same or similar job you aspire to.
Talking with a worker who is already doing the job you desire (or has done it in the past) can provide some great insights into how you might implement your five year career development plan to become where they are.

Here are some questions you could ask that person:

• Would you do it all again if you knew now what you knew then? Why or why not?
• What advice would you give to someone like me who is contemplating a similar career path?
• What do you like most about your job?
• What do you like least about your job?
• Have any of these likes or dislike changed?

You will be able to think of many more that are specifically pertinent to your industry.

How to Create Your Own Five Year Career Development Plan?

A great place to start is to have a look at a sample career development plan.
I have included a couple of five year career development plan examples and template in the link above to give you some idea of the steps involved.

You may find that you can use a sample career development plan and simply substitute sections of the plan to provide a working framework for your own career development plan.

Career Development Tools

To make any plan work you need to be using some good career development tools.
Firstly, You will probably need a goal setting system of some type.

This could be a paper-based system that records your goals such as:

• why you want to achieve them
• documented steps towards achieving them
• dates for final achievement
• perhaps an image that can help you visualize the end goal
• barriers identified and solutions to overcoming those barriers
• some form of accountability to ensure that you achieve what you planned

For many years I used a paper-based system by SMI International but there are now some better career development software programs and goal setting software applications that are probably more efficient and a little more sophisticated than a paper-based system.

One that I like is called Single-Step
It has an impressive range of tools and covers every aspect of goal setting that you are likely to want.

They offer a free trial for the first 20 times you use it.
If you don’t already have a good goal setting system, I recommend you try it.

In your five year career development plan, remember also to be open to planned happenstance.

Planned happenstance is a career development theory about allowing into your career plans a provision for the pleasantly unexpected.

Many great doors of opportunity can open for you that are not expected and cannot be foreseen. Be on the lookout for them while working on your five year career development plan. You need to leave the option open to embrace such opportunities if they arise.

Becoming The Best You Can

I would also encourage you to include becoming one of the best in your field as part of your career development plans.

Find ways of deepening your expertise and narrowing your niche in the industry you are in.

Not only will this be more fulfilling as you become closely aligned to your inborn job skills but as Thomas Stanley and William Danko point out in their excellent book, The Millionaire Next Door, you will make more money.

If you are in touch with your unique inborn job skills, being the best at what you do is not about endlessly striving towards your goal, but it is rather a by-product of your natural motivated abilities effortlessly at work.

In fact that’s a good indication that you are working in your area of natural giftedness, when everything happens relatively easy and work becomes pleasurable.

For more information associated with this career development article, see:

1. Career development theory
2. What Is career development?
3. Career development tools
4. Career development coaching
5. Career development plan
6. Sample career development plan

Career change education is often flouted as your ticket to a new career.
But is career change training even needed in many cases?

Clients who come to me for career change advice are often disillusioned at the amount of required training for a different career path.

Perhaps they may have heard from a friend that to get entrance into career x, you must complete a degree or diploma in xyz as part of your career change education.

Now sometimes their friend is correct, but often they are not.
My career change advice at that point might be to suggest doing some research and informational interviewing to uncover the hard facts.

One question I encourage them to ask once they have found people who are doing the job they are thinking of pursuing is:

“Do you know anybody in the industry who is doing your type of work but does not have a degree or a diploma (or whatever is perceived to be the required formal education)?”

I am amazed at how often jobs that are perceived to require very high education levels have many people working in that job, often very talented and successful people, who do not have the formal education so often stipulated as essential.

Sometimes this is because there has been a change in educational requirements since they entered the industry but more often than not it is because they have entered the industry through a backdoor without any additional career change education.

Qualifications Used for Easy Job Applicant Screening

Many job advertisements carry particular educational requirements that must be met before a candidate can apply for the job.
But this is often simply a screening method to reduce the number of applicants.

If you were to get an honest answer from the employer about whether this formal educational requirement was absolutely essential if a candidate had the other skills and abilities required for the job, you might be surprised.

Often the answer is that they would be prepared to look at a candidate with those credentials and they may not necessarily need to undergo any career change training if they had strongly exhibited many of the other required attributes.

There are some careers that for legal purposes or for other reasons do require very specific training.
But most careers are not like this.
In a tight labor market, many employers simply raise the educational standards required for the job to reduce the number of applicants.

But this doesn’t have too much bearing on whether these people are innately motivated and suited to do the job.

On-The-Job Training Best

I believe the best environment for a person undergoing training for a different career is while they are doing the job.
If necessary, on-the-job training can be supplemented with theory through outside training.

Many employers are disappointed when a degree graduate comes to their employees with lots of theory but no practical experience.

World-renowned career counselor and a Stanford University professor John Krumboltz, says that the very best training anyone can get is on the job.
Krumboltz says the idea of learning the skills and then getting the job is nonsense and that we have this back to front.

How to Get the Job without Formal Career Change Training

If it becomes clear after some research that there are people working in the industry you are targeting who do not have the formal education that everybody seems to be saying you must have, then you need to find a way of talking with these people to find out how they did it.

Often the way they did it was to start in an allied field to gain industry experience or to begin a lesser role within the targeted industry that does not require formal education.

Once you are working in any type of role within your targeted industry, you will always find it much easier to:

1. Find out exactly how people get to do the work you desire without undergoing formal career change training.

2. Network and build relationships within the industry including those who make the hiring decisions for the type of role you are pursuing.

3. See other roles that may be even more suitable to the natural abilities that you could not see before you began working in the industry.
If after further, investigation it is clear that it is impossible to get entry into a particular job type in any way shape or form other than by completing formal career change education, then it is important that this new career change training complements an individual’s existing innate abilities and motivations.

Formal Career Change Education Should Complement Your Innate Abilities

Career change education should always add to your natural inborn talents and abilities.
If the education being considered does not explicitly line up with your innate abilities, you should think seriously about the long-term benefits and how it will add to your job satisfaction.

So how do you know if the training for different career lines up with those things that you are naturally good at?
The best way is to do some deep personal analysis of what your inborn abilities are.

You can do this by using this free career assessment.
This is an assessment exercise that addresses your past and creatively finds the things that you have most enjoyed doing, whether they are work or nonwork-related.

My main career change advice, therefore, is to never accept at face value somebody who tells you that training for a different career unequivocally requires that you gain a specific qualification.

Often it turns out not to be so.
Do your homework and ask the same question to lots of different people in different subsectors of the industry.

If you find somebody who is doing the type of work that you want to do but did not undergo any formal career change education, then you have found a gold nugget in your quest to enter the field you want.