No-brainer shortcuts to changing careers with speed

I’m a bit of a flighty fox when it comes to my career. I am switched on by variety and challenge and achievement and MONEY! Yes, that’s right! I totally make career change decisions based on the potential for a higher salary or income. Because I’m not working for free - my career is not a hobby. 

But when you want to change careers, a few common barriers, blocks and beliefs can totally cramp your style and self esteem.

Here are 3 top career change confidence blocks and how you can kick them to curb so you can change careers with speed and success.

BLOCK #1: “I don’t have enough experience”

Of course you don’t! You’re changing careers and carving a new path, not going through a fast-food drive-thru that’s the same in every city across the state. So some truth talk: When you want to change careers, you won’t have buckets of direct experience. But you know what you will have? Oodles of transferable experience. That’s right - when you go to change careers, you want to celebrate and calibrate on your transferable skills and experiences, not your direct ones. That’s why Change Management is so easy to move into. No one started their career out in Change. They all moved into it and they were ABLE to because of their transferable skills in areas like communications, training, planning, organising, events, marketing, etc. Stop trying to match like-for-like and focusing on your flaws, and start making a matrix of everything that can carry across. 

Shortcut: Celebrate and calibrate on your transferable experience and update your CV and LinkedIn accordingly.

BLOCK #2: “I don’t have enough skills”

It’s sort of like the “not enough experience” issue but this one goes deeper. A lot of people thinking of changing careers get caught up in needing to be an expert in every skill that’s laid out in a job ad before they apply. But you’re meant to have gaps - it gives you room to grow and expand into the role. The job ad list of skills is a wishlist for a unicorn they don’t actually believe exists. Until they discover it does and that unicorn is YOU! Sure, you might need to upskill to learn the basics, get tools and templates, and speak with confidence about how your skills and experiences translate to your future career aspirations. But if you are going to do a course, choose one that is practical and hands-on, where you don’t just learn theories and models but are actually encouraged and supported to practice processes, tools and templates with real-world examples (like we do in my Leading Successful Change program). And choose short, sharp courses over long degrees, accreditations and certifications - procrasti-learning never helped anyone and by the time you graduate, what you learned will be redundant. 

Shortcut: Find a short, sharp course that focuses on practical application of your new-found skills to add value in a new role.

BLOCK #3: “I’ll have to take a pay cut”

Alrighty, more truth talk. So because of your transferable experiences and skills, you are perfectly eligible and within your right to get a pay rise when you change careers. And if you don’t believe me, let’s take myself as an example.

• I moved from Hospitality to Advertising and got a pay rise.
• I moved from Advertising to Marketing and got a pay rise
• I moved from Marketing to Change Management and got a pay rise. 

Every career change I’ve ever made, I’ve gotten MORE MONEY, not less. And that’s because I actively chose career paths that I knew paid more. I made decisions based on the life and lifestyle I wanted to lead, not just what I happened to study at uni or roles I fell into and then took the salary I was given. 

• Advertising paid more than Hospitality (and I got to use the skills I’d been building over my university course and internships)
• Marketing paid more than Advertising (because it was client side with the people who held the budgets rather than the people pitching for the work)
• Change Management paid more than Marketing (because it was project work, a niche skill set, and favoured in industries like Financial Service that tend to pay higher than the average market wages).

It wasn’t luck that I got a pay rise every career change - it was sheer common sense. I simply fished where the fish are and guess what - you can, too! 

Shortcut: Choose a career that pays more - your job isn’t a hobby, you don’t do it for free and you are allowed to have the life and lifestyle that you want.

Change Management is a highly-paid, female-dominated, growing profession the world over and relies on transferable experiences and skills to move into it. 

So now we’ve solved those 3 blocks, the only thing that will slow you down (or stop you completely) is your own confidence.

If you’d like to learn how to build your confidence to career change to Change and lead change successfully, come along to my free Live Workshop + Q&A on Tues 21 March 8pm New York | Wed 22 March 11am Sydney. 

It’s part of my free Change Tools Masterclass and we’ll be going deeper AND answering all your questions on the live session held via Zoom.

CLICK HERE to join the Live Workshop + Q&A of my free Change Tools Masterclass

Lata xx