If you have reached the mid-career phase of your life and have started to experience stagnation and lack of growth, then you would be glad to hear that you are not alone. Whether the mid-career change is voluntary or a result of external factors, switching to a different career altogether is not at all unreasonable as a lot of people feel the same at some point of time in their life. However, you must prepare yourself to combat various challenging situations as needless to say, a career change at any age is not easy.
While you can start from self-assessment to understand what exactly you wCareer Changeish to pursue in the future, a career coach can prove to be extremely beneficial in such situations. As a coach works as your personal trainer who knows how to make the best use of your vast experience and existing skills. Most importantly, he works with you at every step of the way to help you explore those unexplored horizons, which can open doors of opportunities for you and ensure personal growth. Along with this, listed below are numerous other reasons why approaching a career coach can be helpful for you.
- An experienced and trained coach will assist you in mapping out your own plan to move forward while making you see the kind of change you can tackle. However, the first step during the process of coaching is to find out the exact reason behind your decision to change your career, despite working in the same field for decades. This not only brings clarity in your own vision, but also makes it easier for the coach to highlight the types of opportunities that can provide career growth.
- Once the coach recognises your reason to switch careers, he makes sure to eliminate all the confusions and fears as otherwise you will be burdened with self-doubt, which can further act as a mental barrier and prevent you from moving forward. At this stage, a coach even prepares you for any unforeseen obstacles that may come in future.
- After making sure that you no longer have any kind of confusions about the process of transitioning, the coach starts emphasising on the factor of rebranding yourself. To do this, he helps you expand your social network and even asks you to use your current network to make others aware of your decision to embrace change. This expansion of the network allows you to introduce yourself to some of the veterans from the field you wish to pursue.
- A trained coach knows exactly how you can make the step of mid-career change successful simply through the technique of resume building. He assures that your resume defines your strengths and communicates how you can act as a valuable asset for any organisation.
Things you should know before making a midlife career change
- You may be ready to switch to a different career, but you need to first find out whether your current skills will match the new career or you will need a new skill set. If your next job asks you to acquire completely different skills, then you should do some self-introspection to decide whether or not you are willing to put that much energy to make yourself eligible for the field you are about to step in.
- Before deciding the occupation or industry you wish to enter into, thoroughly investigate that field by talking to those who work in it to see if you have a decent chance of getting employed. Also, you must check that the age isn’t a barrier in the field chosen by you as otherwise, you will end up risking everything for receiving nothing in return.
- Another point to keep in mind is that you must know about the number of years it will take to get established in your career. As in your new career, it may take time to advance and reach the level you always wanted to when you made the decision switch the careers.
Conclusion
To sum up, a career coach will make sure that you feel confident and seamlessly move through every step of the mid-career change initiated by you. A trained and skilled coach allows you to make the best use of your years of experience, regardless of the field you used to work in previously. However, you must first engage in self-assessment to see whether or not you are actually ready to take up all the challenges that come with a midlife career change.
