Career Change? The Important First Question

When we first start thinking in earnest about changing job or making a more significant career change, we often default to asking questions along the lines of what can I do?

And while it’s important to explore and then document all the things that you can do - skills, signature strengths and achievements - as part of the career change process - it’s not the ideal starting point.

The exercise of remembering, collating and organising your acquired skills and experience into a coherent and compelling offer is key to making successful applications and excelling at interview - but these processes happen at the end of the change process - not the start.

The important first question is what do I want?

The answer to this will guide and inform the work that you do later in the process in which you put together your offer (or offers) and focus on where and to whom you will make those offers. But without first knowing what you actually want - all that work will lack strategic direction and risks wasting your time and energy on jobs or career directions that you don’t really want.

So, how to work through the first question - what do I want?

Firstly, there isn’t a single answer and you need to ask yourself that question about a lot of separate things, the answers to which will eventually bring you closer to a single consolidated picture of what you want.

Take something as simple as terms and conditions.

What do I want to earn?

That suggests a host of sub-questions.

More, less or the same as now? Lower salary/ higher performance bonus?

All salary/no bonus? Pension scheme/benefits v salary?

More time off for lower salary?

What am I prepared to forego for a higher salary - commuting time/location/flexibility?

What about work patterns?

Employed or self-employed contractor or consultant?

Permanent job or project work?

Full time/part time/term time?

Am I moving toward retirement or a bigger change?

Could the next job be a staging point on the way there?

What else do I want to spend my life doing? What’s the right work/life balance for me?

Getting clarity about non-work wants and needs can be essential in reaching the correct formulation of what you want from the next phase of your career.

If I were to have more time, what do I want to use it for?

Children, study, travel, voluntary work, getting a business started or just to have more time to live?

If I were to have less time, what resources will I need to compensate?

What will I have to let go of? What do I want to keep?

Where do I want to work?

The same type of organisation?

Smaller, larger, newer, older, growing, stable, private, public, not for profit?

When working, what type of activities do I want to spend my day doing?

Do I want to lead a team or have no direct reports?

Do I want to work on my own or as part of a team?

Do I want more/less contact with people - clients/the public?

Do I want a purely technical role or something with management or leadership responsibilities?

Do I want to specialise or broaden out my experience?

What would my ideal day look like?

Am I writing/ speaking/ in meetings/ managing people/ meeting new people/ on my own/ with clients/ travelling?

Then finally, ask, what do I want to achieve in my next job or career phase?

This is useful in getting a sense of how much of a change you want to make and when you want to make the change.

It may be that the ideal next job is a consolidation, the next step in career advancement or it could be the start of a significant and longer-term career change process.

Whichever career stage you are at, it is always worthwhile asking yourself lots of questions about what you want and waiting until you give yourself those answers!