How To Find Time To Help With Your Career Change

Let’s be real. Changing careers is a lot of work. And it can feel a bit intimidating. 

You need to decide what field or industry you want to enter. You need to educate yourself, expand your skills and experience, and refine your transferable skills. 

You may need to move from being an expert in your current field to being a novice in your new one.

How can you do that while still working a full-time job, not leaving yourself open to financial risk, and living the normal, busy life that quite frankly, gets away from us? 

Here is a quick checkpoint for how to start your career-changing process when you’re short on time. 

⏰ 15 Minutes: Narrow Down Your Choices

Sometimes having so many choices for our future ends up scaring us into decision paralysis. Narrow down your choices in a quick, 15-minute brainstorming session. Go off your gut to narrow it down to what you really want, instead of overthinking every option.

• 🙇 Brainstorm and write down careers that you’d love to have. It doesn’t matter how far-fetched they seem. Write them down! 
• 🔎 Look at the Careers webpage for a company you’d like to work for and see if there are any positions you’re interested in. Don’t overthink it or spend hours on research. Just print or write down the positions that look cool to you 

⏰ 30 Minutes a Day: Play Fast Catch Up

You may not have the time to invest long hours into research and job market analysis. But there are ways to catch up quickly. 

• ✉ Email or friend or work acquaintance in your desired field and ask for some of the most important things you should know.
• 💻 Email someone whose career you admire and ask for an informational interview. 
• 📖 Read five articles from the field you’re interested in. 
• 🎧 Spend your daily commute listening to a podcast on professional development or regarding your desired field. 
• 🧐 Review your resume or LinkedIn profile and highlight the parts that need to be updated.

⏰ 1 Hour: Update Your LinkedIn and Resume

This is the longest step by far, but it’s really important so don’t skip it, but you don’t have to overthink it either. Just block out an hour or two, sit down, and DO IT! 

• 📃 Update your LinkedIn profile’s headline.
• ✍🏼 Go back to the first bullet point in this section. Rewrite a section of your resume to reflect the type of position you’d like. 
• 📝 Rewrite your LinkedIn Summary section.
• 📱 Attend a virtual workshop over your lunch break or in the evening.

If you’re really short on time (or this step just intimidates you), I’m always happy to do it for you! 

⏰ 2 Hours: For the Bold! 

These are some great options if you have a free couple of hours or a weekend to invest even more in your future. They take some guts (but are worth it!)

• 📩 Email an organization in your target field and offer to give a presentation on a topic on which you want to establish yourself as an expert. 
• 👨🏾‍💻 Prepare and give a presentation that will expand your professional brand and highlight your expertise. 

• Look for small chunks of time in your schedule to fit in career transition activities, like reading an article over your lunch break or listening to a podcast on your commute. 
• Small consistent actions lead to BIG changes.
• Prioritize what needs to be done and consistently chip away at it.  

• If you don’t make the time to work on your career transition, no one else will. 

P.S. If you’d like help on how to take the first step in your career transition, I can help! Get your free Tyche Career Change Roadmap here.