6 Simple Steps to Take Before You Start a Career Transition

While there’s no definitive formula for making a career change, rewriting your resume for multiple audiences and hoping for a response won’t get the job done.

But that’s how many people tackle a career change: pick an industry or job that looks exciting, make some tweaks to your resume, apply, and see what happens.

In a recent session entitled: “No More Pinot-Fueled Resume Writing Sessions”, Career Coach, Jill Ozovek, challenged that career transition methodology.

The first thing that Ozovek reminds us is that there’s no template to transform your career. There are, however, steps you can take: “Learning what your first step is…will make the change a lot easier” says Ozovek.

Here is the 6 step plan that she uses with clients to help them determine what they want, and how to get it:

1. Before you start looking for jobs, updating your LinkedIn, and rewriting your brand or pitch – check back in. What do you want in your career? In life? Determine the lifestyle you want, income you expect, environment to work within, mission behind a company, and how you want to feel about the work you do.

2. Separate yourself from the change that society expects of you. “Part of my upbringing was to get the next job, and climb the corporate ladder,” said Ozovek. Take out the things that are not true to you, and don’t feel restricted by conventional career paths.

3. Create the space. “Look at the next 8-10 months in your life,” said Ozovek, “if the career change (can not be) #1, then it’s going to topple down.” If you have a wedding to plan, a move to make, you probably won’t have the time of day to make a change – and if one of those priorities isn’t a real one – strike it from the list

4. The risky one: dump your job. If you can pick out something from step 1, or if there is something that you feel so passionate about: “what would you do to enable that to happen?” asks Ozovek. This doesn’t necessarily mean quit and devote your time to job searching. Instead, Ozovek suggests using freelancing, internships, or volunteering opportunities as stepping stones to move you strategically closer to your target job.

If you create a plan that works for you and can have your finances in order before you leap, you can spend a few months without a full time paycheck to explore and find something you love.

Warm up your network even if you haven’t figured out what you want to do next. You’re not making a specific ask: you are reconnecting (and casually mentioning that you are about to make a career change). Ozovek suggests making a master list of everyone you know and how you might be able to offer something to them. Reaching out to a network connection and seeing how you can help them is a great way to warm up a connection.

Next, pick 3-5 to connect with every week and see where it takes you! A quick way to build the list involves writing down: alumni association contacts, former professors, colleagues who have recently left jobs, former clients, internship bosses, family friends, professional associations you belong to (or might consider belonging to!).

5. Last but not least, go out and have fun doing it! Career transition is scary, so put a fun lens on the transition. The worst case scenario? If it didn’t pan out, you can always go back and it won’t be the end of the world. We spend more time thinking about failing or what others might think about us that we never allow ourselves to take action.

Last but not least, if your move requires a swift kick in the pants to get things moving, you can learn more about Jill Ozovek’s Boot Camp here