Career transition is an act that can open the door for new opportunities. Opportunities for you to grow and move into a more rewarding and meaningful career. We all deserve to have a career that lights us up, which is why we chose to manage ourselves through the change process.
And you can learn and support yourself with what you need to succeed through every step in your career transition. The tools, skills, motivation, and strategies to get you through to your desired career move.
We all strive for and seek positive career changes that follow our aspirations.
The reason behind this is the need for constant advancement and growth. As in my professional career, I did not meet many professionals for whom the personal and professional development throughout their career was not necessary.
Sometimes we ‘fall’ into our job that defines our career path and fuels our career development. Before you know it, years are passing by, and we never consider if that is where we are meant to be. It is easy in a way to stick to what is familiar.
But we grow as a person and professional, and our life evolves, so does our drivers, our wants, and our development needs. We want to pursue more satisfaction, more impact and contribution, and more fulfillment.
It takes a lot of courage and dedication to step outside your comfort zone and intentionally decide for a change, where you can reach that ‘more.’ But now is the time to think about yourself first and set your desires and your career goals.
But sometimes it happens that in today’s economy of technological disruptions and reorganizations, the need for a career change is not self-imposed.
What if the reason for the transition is not your decision to move towards greater empowerment, mastery, fulfillment, or meaning in your career? But it is a job loss, so the need for change is imposed from outside. And first, you need to bounce back from this devastating loss?
The main point I am trying to make here is that these are entirely different reasons and situations why you found yourself in the process of a career change.
But to make it a successful one, no matter what prompts your professional transition, you need to approach it from the perspective of what you can salvage from previous and now. And plan to make your transition a meaningful one that excites you every day.
So it leads to positive change and future career design towards success and fulfillment.
And there is a way to do it by taking your time to take stock, hold on and let go. As only from this, you can envision the future career design, acknowledge the possible, and set your road map towards your clear goal. And move forward with conviction.
Career transition is ever an opportunity to reconnect with your self, and your next career move fully. And make the change that leads to building a meaningful and successful career.
Steps for a successful career transition.
Career transition is innately stressful, and it may be one of the most challenging things any of us go through.
You should have the motivation, energy and tools to keep your focus, build your confidence, and resiliency.
But most of all, you must have your clarity and your strong why behind your career goal. To build a roadmap to execute, follow-up and review, and re-gig (if necessary). To keep you moving forward.
#Step1 Have clarity and direct your focus
OK, you want to make a career transition and change your current situation. Do you know what you really want?
Gaining your clarity on your future career goals – short term and long term is the foundation. From here on, your design on how to best get there can begin.
After you have the answer to the question of what do you want from your career and what is important to you, only then you will be able to focus on your actions forward.
Take the time and get to know yourself, your full potential, and to understand where you can use it at its maximum. Where you can find meaning in your work, where you want to make your impact and become recognized and valued.
This will enable you to recognize and align fully with your best version and your real drivers.
Because first, you need to market yourself to yourself with confidence and knowing your why. After that, you will be able to market effectively to your target audience, coming from your clear goal.
#Step2 Empower yourself
Career transition by itself is a challenging and often stressful process. To help you deal effectively with this stress, fears that will be jumping to your mind, and inherent volatility if career change, develop your practices, strategies, and techniques.
You need to ever focus on your uniqueness, strengths, and achievements you bring to this world. Build your winners card that will always remind and refocus you on this. We hear a lot of times the phrase, what you focus on grows.
Take time for yourself. Find your happy spot during the day to regroup when needed. And remember, with real clarity of who you are and what you want, the only way moving is forward.
We recommend trying some of these strategies that can help you empower yourself and manage your mind thoughts and waves of emotions in the career transition times:
Develop a positive way of thinking and communicating with yourself, practicing gratitude minutes is one of the great ways to reach that.
Start journaling – to ponder on the challenges and questions you are faced with every day.
Celebrate your little wins and surround yourself with people who are supportive and positive about your career transition.
Also, many people have more significant and faster results finding help to guide them through their career transition. Consider finding the best advice and support that can help you succeed faster and smoothly.
#Step3 Develop your brand
You, as a professional and as a unique individual, are now a brand. And developing your brand equity with every interaction during your career transition process is crucial. Incorporate your clarity into your marketing messages effectively by defining your key statements and materials.
Effective personal branding and later, communication is when you are using the language and style that catches the attention of your audience. You need to develop rapport and trust.
Career transition is sometimes hard to explain to others. But one thing is for sure. They will have a lot of questions. Why would you want to do that? Isn’t that a little risky? Are you really qualified?
The essential step in getting others on board with your career transition is crafting a compelling narrative – your positioning and exit statements. It’s a tool often overlooked. But this can be a critical factor of success in getting others’ support for your professional goals and vision for the future career.
Perfect your resume. There are a lot of tips and resources on this topic. But the most important question I believe you should always have in mind is, “What’s the best way to get your resume noticed?” By your target audience, of course.
All of you have heard of the power of LinkedIn for job hunting and networking. But how do you use it and take advantage of it already? And more importantly, how will you use it effectively as a tool that can help you succeed in your transition. To make sure you’re found by the right recruiters, hiring managers, colleagues. And not only the ones from our past, but from your future career you want to pursue?
Make sure that the LinkedIn profile reflects your brand.
You need to learn how to make the right impression through every cycle of career transition. Because you need to adjust the way that you will position yourself to your audience.
#Step4 Build a search implementation plan
The proactive and reliable approach is to decide on your transition strategy.
You need to create a road map – a campaign that will get you to execute your actions for a successful career transition.
Let’s be clear here. Transitioning into a new desired job is something completely different from the transition to becoming an entrepreneur, or anything else. But no matter what your next move you have decided for, you need a plan.
In this article, I will focus more on the job search road map in the transition and search implementation activities to land a new desired career goal successfully. Coming from your clarity of what is the job you want next.
Different search methods and steps can and must be a part of your search implementation plan. When creating your search road map and planned activities, these are the questions for you to keep in mind and ask.
What are your best marketing channels and search methods to use? Which is your target market – the companies you would like to join? What are the most effective ways to get your message out and heard? How to deal with recruiters, online job applications?
But most of all, how to build your powerful networking strategy?
As honestly, your networking activities are one of the most critical activities that can lead you to reach your transition goal.
Many people hate even hearing about the word ‘networking.’ I must admit, I for long was not a big fan of it also. With me (and I believe it is also with most of the rest people), the main reason for that was that I was thinking about it entirely in the wrong way.
I saw it as an activity in which I should go from one person (that I even do not know) to the next one. With a goal to either pitch them on a business idea or proposal I have or to get them to help me achieve my ambitions or solve my problem. In the case of a job search, to connect you to the jobs in the hidden market. And all I was left with was the feeling of being uncomfortable and not myself.
When I realized that networking is about building relationships, about being interested in getting to know a person genuinely, and about how I might help someone else as well (and not just reach my goal), I started to enjoy it. And from this perspective, I can be successful at it.
#Step5 Harvest and make a transition
Your search implementation actions finally pays off. You are getting invited to the interviews, which will result in getting hired. And not just that. You want to land that job that is aligned with everything you set as your next career goal in your clarity process.
But first thing first. You need to win the interview. You need to negotiate the offer and close the deal. And finally, transition successfully.
Prepare for the interview even more thoroughly than you think is necessary. Develop a real script, and say out your words loudly, build up your statements. It’s not good enough to think about how you’ll roughly answer. And remember, prepare yourself also for the questions you would rather avoid in an interview.
But if I needed to give you one short advice (because this is not an article dedicated to interviewing only), make sure you are really listening. These will enable you to be genuine with your answers that you previously prepared.
Career transition is for lots of our clients, one of the scariest and challenging process. But yet, also one of the biggest opportunities for personal and professional growth. For some, even the beginning of completely redesigning their careers. And finally move into a career where they can be valued, recognized, and appreciated again. And where they can start fulfilling their potential.