How To successfully change career

Be certain

1 “People will be suspicious that it is someone having a mid-life crisis ... who in two years' time will want to do something else,” Nick Parfitt, of Cubiks, an HR consultancy, says. Being able to show that you are changing career in a considered way - for example, by getting experience part-time before a permanent move - will help. So will a genuine, realistic and well-researched certainty that the move is right for you.

“Positive enthusiasm and passion will attract many buyers in interview,” Matthew Chester, a director at Digby Morgan, an HR consultancy, says.

Do the sums


2 “Start by looking at the very basic details of your financial situation,” Mr Parfitt says. Assess how much money you have, how long it will last and whether it can finance retraining. “If you are going to change career, you will have to accept that you are going to go down in salary,” Mike Warren, the director of Proteus, a career management consultancy, says.

Audit your skills

3 Make an exhaustive list of all that you are good at, look at new ways to use these skills and position yourself accordingly, Chris Griffin, chief executive of One Life Partnership, a coaching company, says. “The easiest changes are those where your strengths, values and passion line up.” Emphasise your experience and soft skills, such as commercial acumen and political nous. This will help you to compete with those who have more technical proficiency but less work experience.

Location, location, location

4 Identify the right environment. Consider responsibility levels, the degree of change and the speed at which the sector operates. Mr Warren says: “Many people do not take into account the working environment and whether their behavioural style will feel right.”

Talk to people

5 “Talk to a wide range of people, including people who do not know you,” Kate Donaghy, of Manchester Square Partners, which offers career advice to executives, says. People who know you will think of you in that context; a newcomer offers fresh eyes and a more creative approach. Professional advisers can help. Friends may be of little help. Mr Warren said: “They will always view the problem through their own personality spectacles.”

Get qualified

6 Murray Steele, a senior lecturer at the Cranfield School of Management, argues that younger managers can find a full-time MBA an efficient way to change careers while gaining new professional skills, but that most older executives will find them less useful. “There is still an age bias about hiring people,” Mr Steele says. Most recruiters focus on MBA graduates aged 35 and under. Very experienced managers in their fifties can find executive MBAs a useful way to kick-off a portfolio career incorporating a range of non-executive directorships and interim or consulting positions, according to Mr Steele.

Start your own business

7 Start your own business. This will allow greater control over what you do and how you do it, but it does also carry all the usual risks of entrepreneurship.

Be patient

8 It may take three years - and several steps - to make a big change. Ms Donaghy says: “Change isn't linear. There is a great deal more randomness in it than you would like. And you will seldom make change in one leap. You generally have to take small bites at different aspects of change.” Explore a range of alternatives, take what you like from each and merge those things to get a final complete picture. Be prepared for the result to be quite different from what you may expect and be realistic about the time it will take to climb a newly chosen ladder.

Wait for the good times

9 Wait for the economy to pick up. For long time, candidates have held the upper hand in the job market and employers have been relatively open to hiring career-changers, as long as they had reasonably transferable skills. “However, the current situation will flip that on its head,” Mr Parfitt says. “Employers usually only get deluged with CVs from graduates, but if this wave of redundancies continues there could be 25 applicants for the job of financial director, whereas before there could have been three or four.”

Think again

10 Often, people who think that they want to change profession are simply fed up with their jobs, Mr Warren says. Mr Steele says that changing employer can make a big difference, or moving to another area or abroad can also provide the buzz of newness.

Before they were famous

- Many celebrities began their careers as teachers, including Sting (better known then as Mr Sumner) and the Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown.

- The legal profession is also a popular first career: the political leaders Barack Obama and Tony Blair started in the law. Jennifer Lopez, actress and singer, also started life working in a law firm.

- And several famous people started out as doctors, including the comedian Harry Hill and Michael Crichton, the Jurassic Park screenwriter and producer