Career change

Decision making

How can you decide on a new career?

It is such a big question, it is easier to break it down into several stages:

• Reflecting on what matters to you
• Discovering and exploring career options
• Connecting and reconnecting with contacts who can help - networking and information interviewing
• Moving forward by applying, using a variety of strategies (responding to vacancies, speculative applications, recruitment agencies)

Remember that one of the job change pitfalls is to keep on reflecting and researching beyond the point at which it is useful. There comes a stage where you need to act on what you know now through networking and applying.

One of the resources applicable to the first two stages is the planning resource on Prospects because it allows you to take account of what you want and don’t want in a graduate job and it is a good job ideas generator.

A final check

You will get a better sense of whether you want to work for an organisation by doing initial research on them – as part of your preparation to apply. But a final check is at interview. You will get a better sense of them then, especially when you hear the panel’s answers to the questions you have for them at the end of the interview.

The interview should be a two-way process:

• Do you as a candidate really want to work for them?
• Is their organisation the right next stage for your career?

Geographical mobility and virtual/hybrid working

Many candidates have limits as to how far they are prepared to move for their next job.

There has actually been a tendency for graduates to take up graduate employment either near where their university was located or where they originated from prior to going to university. Graduates like to take up jobs in locations already familiar to them.

You may need to spend some time rethinking any geographical restrictions you have imposed up to now on how far you are willing to travel. They may already be very realistic for personal reasons. For some career changers though, maybe they could be pushed out a bit so that new locations and possibilities can be included in your career search area.

It is possible to get a virtual graduate internship or a virtual graduate job and hardly ever, or never, physically visit the actual location(s) the employer has premises in. This opens up many new possibilities for job seekers/career changers who have legitimate geographical boundaries placed around their job search. It could, for instance, bring London into the equation. But it could also bring international opportunities in as well.