Daily Career Connection

Finding career change ideas can be difficult in tough economic times and particularly so if you are over 40. You need to consider all aspects of career change, from decision making to interview preparation and of course, you have to think about you current lifestyle and commitments.

Your present responsibilities, for example looking after children or elderly parents, or paying a mortgage or other long time financial commitments may limit some of your career choices, making your preferred career change ideas difficult or impossible to implement. They may restrict you to a specific location or mean that you need to earn a certain amount of money, making retraining difficult.

So begin by calculating the minimum amount of money you need to earn in order to survive. If you have no dependents or major bills, you can afford to live on less. This doesn’t have to be for ever, but may be necessary if your new career requires training.

Now you need to look for specific career change ideas. Start by looking at your career history to date. What have you enjoyed and what have you hated? Make a list of all the qualifications you have, right back to school days. Next, list the skills you have developed in your previous jobs and in non-work related settings. You might be surprised at how many skills you have picked up in your role as a parent, member of a committee, team or any other organization. Sports and hobbies will also have increased your skills and knowledge.

It is also useful to make a note of all the things you enjoy doing in your spare time – there are so many unusual jobs springing up that you might find something relating to your interests, but which you had never thought of before.

We aren’t conditioned to think in terms of our own strengths. So ask friends to tell you what they think you are good at.

You should also consider any career ideas you had when you were younger. Although it can be difficult to get into some careers in midlife, training opportunities are much more flexible than they used to be. So you might find that a job which was impossible in your twenties because you couldn’t afford training, is now a career option because you can study online or train part time.

The next step is to gather together all of your lists and notes and to look for common threads or ways of linking skills. For example, you may have had to teach juniors at work and developed strong teaching skills which you could transfer to another area such as IT or teaching a sport or hobby.

Spend some time looking at ways in which you could combine skills, knowledge and experience, both from work and other areas of you life and create a list of potential careers. These do not necessarily have to be jobs which already exist, but could also be opportunities for setting up a small business.

Once you have found several options, it’s time to start doing some online research to find out how realistic your career change ideas are. If they are not achievable, you will be able to come up with alternatives if you extend your search. So make good use of the internet and don’t forget to talk to people working in areas which interest you.