ISSUE 27 DIGITAL EDITION NOVEMBER 2011
Nisa Chitakasem believes that you should plan ahead for the job of finding a new career...
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Advice
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‘Fail to plan and plan to fail’ is an old adage that’s particularly true of career change. Giving up your current job for a new career is a major life transition and, like all such transitions, needs to be planned well. A career change plan will help you to be efficient in how you focus your energy and divide up your time. ‘Looking for a full-time job is a full-time job’ is another well-worn but true saying. You plan how you’re going to spend each day at your current work – hopefully so why not plan ahead for the job of finding a new career, one of the most important jobs of your life? Don’t know where to start? These career change planning tips will give you an idea of what needs to be done. 1.) Set a deadline It’s all too easy to spend all your time planning instead of doing, especially when the task ahead is something as overwhelming as a career change. Set a deadline for when your plan needs to be finished by and this will help focus your mind on getting it done. 2.) Create a timeline Just because you have a deadline doesn’t mean you can just whip up a ‘plan’ the night before the deadline. This is a career change we’re
Three Top Tips for your CV PAGES 28-29
Career Change Planning Tips
talking about here, not a school test you can cram for. To complete a good quality, effective plan on time, it’s necessary to plot a timeline detailing the different stages of the plan’s creation.
document, just having something you can physically read through can be a great career change motivator.
4.) Create short, medium and longterm goals 3.) Write it down What should you actually Even if you have the best include in your plan? memory in the world, There are many different you’ll need to write down stages of a career change your plan to make it and each stage will concrete and something require you to do many you’re likely to stick to. It different types of task. doesn’t matter if you write Some of these tasks will it by hand in a notebook need to be repeated every or create it as a Word day, some will take a
week to do and some may have to be spread out over the course of a fortnight or a month. Writing down all the things you need to do and then sorting them into short, medium and long-term categories will give you clarity on what needs to be done on a day-to-day basis and what needs to be done over a longer period of time. 5) Plan to do the right things There’s no point creating a plan, if you don’t plan
to do the kind of things you need to do in order to successfully change careers. Allocate time and resources to researching potential new careers and the type of employers you might want to apply to. Plan how much time you’re going to spend on career change tasks and when and where you’re going to do them. Don’t forget that tasks relating to your career change can include networking and volunteering as well as skills training and applying for jobs.
Contents News Advice
About the author Nisa Chitakasem is co-founder of Position Ignition, the UK’s leading career consulting company. She is also coauthor of How to Get the Job You Want which can be found on the www. positionignition.com website.
Learn Skills for the Social Network PAGES 30-33
Getting Your Next Career Step PAGES 8-11
Career Change Planning Tips PAGES 16-17
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