Changing career and industry can be a daunting prospect for many people, particularly when you have spent many years gaining experience and putting in blood sweat and tears, getting to a position where you consider yourself successful. Then you give all that up and start again at the “bottom”? Give up your salary and benefits and risk a new career in an industry that you don’t know? Throw away all your accumulated knowledge and step outside your comfort zone in conversations on a daily basis? All of these things could be true, but they don’t have to be. A career change undertaken in the right way can smooth the transition and give you a foot up the ladder in your new profession.
So, based on a Sourced Franchisee experience, here are my thoughts on how to smooth that transition:
1. Understand your skills and how these can be transferred across industries. Subject knowledge is one thing, but many skills that you have obtained in one industry will work for you in another. Leadership, relationship building, managing tasks are only a few that spring to mind, there are many more.
2. Take time to understand your new industry. Read about it, attend training courses, but most importantly spend time speaking to people already working in it. It’s amazing what you can learn from someone for the price of buying them a coffee. Reach out to people; you’ll be pleasantly surprised how many of them will be happy to talk about their industry and help you to get a head start.
3. Be genuine. Don’t go into your new industry thinking you know everything because you have read the latest books from Amazon or spent thousands of pounds on training courses. Admit where you have knowledge gaps, ask questions (and listen to the answers), and take time to really understand how things work.
4. Roll your sleeves up and get on with it. Understanding the theory is always helpful, but there is no substitute for getting out there and doing it for real. Look for opportunities to do this. Do it alongside your current career if you can.
5. Make mistakes, admit them, learn from them and move on.
6. Build your network. This is something that people sometimes mistake for having x amount of followers on LinkedIn. Having a network is about understanding the people you know, investing time and care in those relationships, being prepared to provide support when required, and knowing where to turn when you need support yourself. Too often networking is one-way i.e. people only turn to their network when they want something, do not fall in to this trap.
I’m sure this isn’t ground-breaking, but hopefully useful to people out there that are considering a career change.
Are you ready for a change? Do you have an interest in property? Take action now by downloading our Franchise Prospectus.
