Chris Berry On The Net

Depending on whose statistics you believe, most of us will change careers between 3 and 7 times during our working lives. We’re not talking about moving from one widget company to another, but switching career fields entirely. Many of these changes will be involuntary, resulting from downsizing or obsolescence. Other changes will be based on the desire to do something new and different. In either case, the career changer faces an uphill battle unless they are able to demonstrate that the skills developed in Career A are readily transferable to Career B.

My father was ahead of the curve when it came to changing careers. Even though he is of an age that many of his peers spent their entire working lives with one company, he worked in a wide variety of industries including public accounting, amusement parks, photo-processing, mortgage brokering, non-profits, and computer software. He had one tremendous advantage that enabled him to make these transitions. As a CPA, employers recognized immediately that he possessed a set of skills that could be applied in virtually any business.

While most of us do not have the luxury of a universally recognized credential on our resumes, we can still make the most of our transferable skills. Unfortunately, job seekers and employers alike tend to think more in terms of job titles than on the skills required to perform them. If you are contemplating a career change, make a list of all the job related tasks you’ve performed over the years. Next, make another list of the specific skills you’ve developed to perform those tasks. Finally, think about how those skills can be put to use in a new job. When presenting yourself as a job candidate, focus on those skills, and how they benefit the employer.

The same advice holds true for first time job seekers. What happens if you graduate from college with a degree in Philosophy, only to find out the big philosophy companies aren’t hiring? The study of philosophy is all about critical thinking, and the analysis of complex ideas and concepts. These are highly marketable skills. While his classmates are still out looking for the good philosophy jobs, the successful job seeker will be the one who packages and presents his critical thinking skills in a way that applies directly to the jobs that are available.

Employers frequently shortchange themselves by overlooking career switchers when hiring decision are made. If a specific skill can be mastered in 6 months or a year, does it make sense to demand that an applicant have 5 or 10 years experience? Does performing a task for 10 years make you any better or more valuable than the person who has done it for 2 years? In many cases, the answer is clearly no. It’s quite possible that the more experienced person is less enthusiastic and less attentive to detail than the person who is still relatively new to the job. It’s also possible that lack of initiative is the only reason they’re still doing the same job after 10 years anyway.

If it’s true that we’re all going to be serial career changers, then it would be nice to see some changes in the employment marketplace. Log onto any job search website, and the first thing you are asked to do is pick a specific industry and a specific job title. This approach severely limits the possibilities for job seekers and employers alike. Imagine instead if you were presented with a list of skills. This would provide employers a much larger pool of qualified applicants to chose from, and job seekers would be exposed to career possibilities they might never have considered.