Branding 4 Career Change

Thinking of changing your career, but don't know where to start, then read on? In this post I will lay out my top tricks and hacks for career change, using personal-branding.

The days of "a job for life", even a career for life, are thankfully behind us. We live longer, we work longer, we embrace change as part of the human experience, and with that comes career change. It's perfectly normal to feel that stirring in your soul for pastures new. Some things run their course, people suffer burnout, maybe you've decided it's finally time to live your life more on purpose - the reasons are varied and all are valid when it comes to career change. 

But with it comes understandable anxiety - how exactly do I approach this? Follow my steps below and you will be on the right track. With a little creativity, the right guidance and a strong mindset, this is totally doable.

1: BEGIN WITH THE END IN MIND:

Let me start by addressing the most common mistake people make. Instead of having at least a rough idea of what career they desire to enter, clients often approach me asking me to look at their work history and from that, determine what the next step should be. However, to do this successfully, you need to identify what it is you would like to do. Maybe it's something you've always wanted to try, maybe you know deep down that you would enjoy it, maybe it just sounds fun, but you need to have an end goal in mind before you start. Do your research, have some industries / roles in mind, and from there it's a much easier and more rewarding journey. I highly recommend taking a personality test such as the MBTI online for free, if you are stuck for ideas.

2: ASSESS YOUR SKILLS:

Now that you have an end-goal / target job, it's time to give yourself a thorough skills analysis. Yes a career coach can help with this, but you can also do it yourself. Save some job adverts from your desired job, take note of the skills they require, especially the ones you see highlighted and / or repeated often, and note them down. Now, consider all of your past work experience, and your soft skills, and see how many skills you have, and how many you lack. If you lack a lot, do you need to do a short course, or maybe do some volunteer work in your current role, to gain experience? But be really creative here, people often fail to appreciate just how skilled they are. Dig deep & don't sell yourself short, skills can be found in places we didn’t realise we had them.

3: BRAND YOURSELF:

The next step is to re-vamp your CV and LinkedIn profile. Again, using the job adverts like in the previous step, consider how you can best present yourself as the right person for the role. You will really need to focus on transferrable skills and examples where you demonstrated the correct attributes for the new role. Remember, from the hiring perspective, what matters most is personality and aptitude - do you have the right skills and outlook, even if not the direct experience? If this is something you need help with you can request my free personal branding guide here

4: BECOME THE CHARACTER:

Think like an actress preparing to audition for her role of a lifetime. She will do whatever she has to, to be the perfect candidate at that audition. She will work on her accent, learn a language if she has to, research the role thoroughly, learn her lines over and over, and so on. You can do the same thing, if you want the role badly enough, you will do everything you can to embody the ideal candidate. This is a hack I teach for nailing interviews in my Powerful Personal Branding Course, but it works at all stages of branding, especially for career change.

5: WORK ON MINDSET:

The final but arguably most important step is to work on your mindset. Whenever your ego tells you you can't, that it's too hard, you are silly for having this dream - you need to push back and flood your mind with positive thoughts. Remember that the ego is just trying to keep us safe, but it operates in an outdated and ineffective way. It fears change, so it will do it's best to convince you it's too hard, but that is not true. What is true is that life is too short for regrets and we need to challenge ourselves and leave our comfort zones. So tell yourself often that you are strong, capable, and deserve the best in life. You've got this, and remember - "you only regret the things you don't do"