MINI GUIDES TO FINDING A CAREER YOU LOVE

Part Eighteen: Conclusions


This is the eighteenth and final part of a series of mini guides which aims to help you find a career you love. They include tips from me but also practical advice from some of the hundreds of individuals who I have coached over the last 10 years, the sort of things they may have shared with friends or family going through a career move.

The vast majority of people I work with look back on their enforced job change in a good way as it led them to better things. As these guides are about advice from people who have been through, I thought it would be good to end with some of their concluding thoughts.

“The other thing I've reflected on is the company did me a favour although I didn't think so at the time and it's easy for me to say that now 3 years on.  Without the push, I'd have remained in the same role which wasn't as enjoyable as in the previous years.  I would have continued to drift into retirement or been made redundant some time later.”  

“I have known dozens of close friends and colleagues who have gone through this scary change and years later all look back on it as an extremely positive move.  I am sure there are exceptions but I have never met them.” 

“Moving on was the best thing that could have happened!   I now have a great range of activity, work-life balance (or rather life-work balance!) and flexibility which was never possible in the relentless grind of my previous 55+ hour working week.”  

“My final learning was that there is a life and career post redundancy – it is not an endpoint, merely a new starting point.”

I would encourage you to seek help from wherever you find it, but don’t take my word for it, this is what others advise:

“If you get the opportunity of outplacement support, definitely USE it.”

“After a few initial meets what really floored me in the process was someone opposite me questioning a particular direction I was thinking of taking. Is this really what you want? Is this really where you feel most comfortable? You work well with people, why do you want to go it alone? You have great transferable skills but will you really use them in this role? This was a real first, someone actually recognising in me my real core skills set, and also what makes me tick, inspires me, makes me get out of bed.”

“My difficulty was establishing what the next chapter was going to be. I was very fortunate to be able to avail of coaching support from Tracy, as well as advice from career mentors I had built around me over the years.” 

“Counselling is great. I have been lucky enough to have been given this twice. Both times I was slightly cynical at first – not that it wouldn’t help, but that it wouldn’t help very much. After all, how can someone who has known you for 1 or 2 hours be able to sort out the mess of ideas in your head that has been building a lifetime! But on both occasions, this is exactly what did happen. On a basic level it is 1 hour a week that someone listens to you- being out of work makes you feel very unimportant suddenly, invisible even. But it is the targeted questions and support helps you see the wood for the trees and both times has put me on the right path. It is good to have more than one idea of what path your career can take next, but then it is hard to reject a long-established passion or interest and the counseling support helps you to do this and feel good about it.”

“I would also recommend taking all the help offered in particular if you have not changed roles for many years and you are offered outplacement support. I found this support invaluable both in terms of understanding the process but also to get impartial objective guidance and moral support.”

“Speaking to my coach and discussing options helped me in several ways: (1) there was a discussion about what I had done during my working life, which made me realise that, professionally, I had achieved something in my field. This was good for my confidence and lessened the ignominy of my departure; (2) the coach pointed out knowledge and abilities which could be used in another field; (3) the practical advice I received in setting up my new portfolio career.”

“If you can, use an exec coach to bounce ideas off, explore stress points and challenges, etc. or an experienced person who is also a good friend and mentor if you have one.”

Best of luck.

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