Do you wake up every morning and dread going to work? I mean really dread, not just the sinking heart we all have when our alarms go off but real pure hatred and dread of what the day brings. Now if it is finically possible you may thinking of a career change, and why not? But before you write your letter of resignation and hand it in gleefully to your boss there are a few things you need to think about.
1. First of all why do you want to change your Job?
You need to fully understand your reason for leaving so that you can minimise the risks of this situation reoccurring again. Do any of the reasons listed below match your feelings?
- Your feel like you’ve been there far too long, you are bored and stuck
- You are no longer interested in the subject or the work
- Due to reorganisation within the company and this restructuring have changed your role and you don’t like it
- You aren’t making any progress
- You don’t get on with your colleagues or your manager/s
- You feel ready for change, as if you are like me then you get itchy feet and need a change in your life
2. Do you really want to change Career?
You need to think long and hard about whether it really is your career that you want to change and it’s not just the place of work that needs changing. A check list is the first port of call, if you start by making a list of all the things that you love about your job, whether that’s your peers, your role, your boss etc. and then you have all of the negatives about your job. What exactly would make you your working life more enjoyable? Once you’ve established what it is that you are after, you may realise that you could make a change in a less drastic way. For example you may just need to change your sector, or even moving companies.
3. What work do you want to do?
After answering the first two questions you probably have a good idea of what you want to do. Now you need to focus on what you want to be doing on a day-to-day basis. For example;
- Less/more paperwork and admin
- working with different kinds of people, customer facing/ working in a team rather than on your own
- more/less outdoor work, more/less travelling
- working from home
- working more flexibly
However before you jump ship, perhaps you could make some adjustments to your job at present, by talking to your manager you could potentially change some of these factor and not have to move jobs. If you have an idea, write it down and approach your boss with it. Don’t forget to include any benefits for your manager or the institution/organisation.
4. What are your Skills?
If you are set on changing your career then you need to think sensibly about what your transferable skills are and whether that will fit with you proposed job area. Some key skills you may have include:
- organisational skills
- teaching
- detailed research work
- fundraising knowledge and ability
- people/customer skills
5. Do you want to use them?
Yes you may have some great qualities but you may not want to actually use these skills as you may be looking for a complete change of career – in which case you need to be prepared to retrain and maybe even start up from the bottom again. Of course, if you are already committed to a complete change, you will need to think of the implications for you and your family – not only the loss of status but also the finical cut backs you will have to make in order to afford to be able to take the pay drop. Not only this but if you are going to need to retrain then you must think about the cost of any courses or qualifications you may need; for example a fireman training and the cost that is entailed with the training, and you must also think about future training, most courses are not just one-offs and you may need to refresh them in years to come; for example if you are looking at going into the construction business you need to be aware of courses like NRSWA renewal training which you have to keep renewing.
6. Money, money, money
Are you prepared to drop your income level? This is crucial – take a long hard look at you current finances and write it all down: outgoings, income, and extra expenses. See where you can make cuts and get a very clear idea of exactly how much money you need to make over a year.
The saying goes that you only regret what you didn’t do. So take a long hard long at your situation and your happiness to establish whether or not in 5 years’ time you are going to regret making this move.