St.Louis Business Journal
HANDS-ON IS BEST WAY TO EXPLORE CAREER CHANGE FOR SOME INDIVIDUALS

By Anna Navarro August 2010  

Examples in this column are fictionalized to protect privacy.



Sometimes people who are unhappy with their work have difficulty changing careers because they literally can’t imagine how they’d feel about an alternative. Their brains just don’t operate that way. They need a method of career change that includes creating hands-on experiments that allow them to discern what working in a field would be like.

Mark was in his mid 50’s and had been an insurance underwriter for many years. He’d succeeded at advancing through several layers of management because he was very self disciplined. But he was reaching the point where he just couldn’t do it anymore.

Our work unearthed a number of clues about new directions. He really enjoyed training new recruits and coaching his staff. Years ago, he’d started coaching Little League because of his son. His son had long since moved on, but he was still doing it because he really enjoyed working with kids.

He and his wife, who was an attorney, lived very modestly. They’d put their son through college and were close to having saved what they needed for retirement. She loved her work and planned to do it for a long time. She supported his making whatever career changes he needed to be happy, even if he earned much less.

Mark was in an enviable position —he had the financial freedom and emotional support to change careers, and he had many clues that obviously pointed to being a teacher, but he wasn’t excited about it and couldn’t bring himself to move in that direction.

I’d encountered situations like Mark’s before and realized he might be one of those people who can’t get excited about anything until he has hands on experience doing it. The usual reading and talking to people in alternative fields is not sufficient.

When I shared that thought with Mark, a light bulb went off for him. His wife and friends often teased him about being a wet blanket when something was in the planning stages, then loving it when it was in progress.

I asked Mark to consider whether he’d be willing to experiment with working as a teacher to test whether he could get excited about it, even though he’d have to take the risk of leaving his current job to do it. He said he’d think about it.

At our next session, he said he’d reluctantly decided to go ahead with the experimental approach, despite the risks, and that his wife was supportive.

Our next challenge was to create the experiment. Mark was Catholic, and I suggested the Catholic school system might offer a good testing ground because private school teachers don’t need formal certification.

It took some effort, but Mark lined up a 4th grade teaching position in a Catholic school, replacing a teacher who had been in an accident and would be out for 3-4 months. He worked without pay, but at my suggestion, negotiated to have a retired teacher as a coach.

Despite the stress of taking over mid-stream and without formal training, he loved the job. He had a natural instinct for the work, and was popular with kids and parents alike.

Mark was lucky. The first experiment he did worked. If it hadn’t, we’d already decided he’d use the same approach to test out other careers. The next one being an assistant athletic director at a school.

In some fields, creating hands-on experiments is easier than in Mark’s situation. Some experiments can be done during vacations and evenings. A paralegal turned personal chef is an example that comes to mind. She was able to conduct her experiment without resigning her current job, which is always preferable.

The approach of designing hands-on experiments to set career direction has several downsides. It’s expensive in terms of time, effort and (sometimes) the risk of resigning a paying job and foregoing income. Because of that, I regard it as a method to be used only as a last resort, when a person feels stuck and unable to make a decision.

To be worth undertaking, this experimental approach needs to be preceded by very careful analysis of what a person is looking for in a work situation, as well as thorough investigation of the logical career options that might fill those needs. It functions best when, as in Mark’s situation, it’s used to fill the “excitement gap” for a person who has no solid objection to a field, but just can’t pull the trigger to move in that direction.

Anna Navarro is the founder of Work Transitions, a nationwide career consulting firm that works with clients on an individual basis to help them find more satisfaction and fulfillment in their work-lives. She can be reached by phone at (314) 367-0008 and her e-mail address is email@worktransitions.com. For more information visit the worktransitions.com website.

This column was originally published by the St. Louis Business Journal. The actual title of the column and date in which it appeared in the Business Journal may be slightly different from what appears on WorkTransitions.com.