This is a guest post by Frank Sylvester, a recruiter with over 20 years of recruiting experience. If you’d like to be a guest writer here on Jobtrakr, we would love to have you. Just follow these guest writer guidelines.
Are You Ready For A Career Change?
Do you randomly wonder about making a change in your career all together? The catch is you have no experience or relevant education to make the transition and possibly will not be able to maintain your current lifestyle.
In the same moment of realizing where you are in the path of a potential career change you are trumped with the reality stick of your current responsibilities, the awareness of not financially being in a place that you can return to school, and the reluctant feeling takes over of ‘what are you thinking?’
Change is possible if you embrace time, transportation cost, and patience. If financing a career change by returning to school is not in your current equation. Consider the suggestions below.
LinkedIn is your ally. With a free LinkedIn account you can join up to 50 groups for free. Join groups for the industry you want to be a part of. Connect and learn from current industry professionals.
Attend the webinars, read the activity feeds, read the suggested articles. Observe and start using industry language. Knowledge is power and it’s yours for the taking.
Volunteer. Identify and join a local civic/non-profit organization that has an industry focus of for what you are seeking to gain exposure in. Most organizations welcome volunteers and new comers with a purpose of learning more about their cause and how they can help promote their focus.
Most organizations meet once a month or bi-monthly and have monthly, bi-monthly or even quarterly activities that you can attend. Your investment of time and transportation expenses can result in gained industry knowledge, enhancing the community service segment of your resume, and ding-ding-ding potential quality industry contacts that you can network with.
Network to Connect. Meetup.com is a good place to start to research potential professional networking opportunities. Local staffing agencies tweet and list on their websites various industry events that they are hosting at their offices or they themselves are going to.
Local periodicals also share free professional networking events that take place on a monthly basis. Some professional networking events may require a schedule change that may require an earlier start to your day, longer lunch or leaving the office on time to make an afterhours networking event.
Got news? Frequent the websites of USA Today, CNN, The NY Times, or The Washington Post just to a name a few; to keep current with what’s going on in the industry of your choice. Staying current with what is going on in the news will help you be prepared for the right moment of being ready to make your career change.
You are worth the investment of time, transportation cost, and patience that can lead you to the career change of choice that you will be able to make when the time is right.
About the Author
Frank Sylvester is a recruiter that assists local companies in the Information Technology, Electronics, Criminal Justice, Healthcare, and Drafting and Design industries identify qualified candidates.
February 22, 2012 at 1:26 PM
What a timely article for me. I am in this exact mode right now as we speak. At 43 and having been in the same industry for over 25 years it is a major focus for me right now.
I have followed all of the routines you suggest and while it has not yielded any success, I am more determined than ever to make a major change. The rubber is meeting the road !!!