Get Career Guidance Early

Don’t leave it too late to get Career Guidance

Many people don’t make a conscious career choice at the start of their working life. Instead, they have ‘drifted’ into their current career or role, or have ‘fallen in to it’ when they just happened to get a chance to do some work in that particular field when they were younger. Then, typically, as they continue on their journey of life, they start to evaluate their work and realise the importance that it has in our lives. Unfortunately, for many people, this evaluation process is something that happens on an ad-hoc basis and tends to be along the lines of not being fulfilled or happy with work, not too sure why and not having a strong enough desire /need/ motivation to make the time to investigate it further at this point.

This desire tends to come to the surface when things have reached a crucial point – such as redundancy or realisation of the detrimental impact that work has had on physical and mental health. At this point, many people think it’s the great time to look at the possibility of a new career. My view is that this is not always an ideal time to start to focus on a new start unless you have a large redundancy pay-out or significant savings to keep the bills paid whilst you go through the process of looking at a new career. Unfortunately for many clients there are no such funds available and there then becomes a stress of deciding what to do next. Options typically include:-

a)   Go back to a similar role in a similar industry 
b)   Strike out and find what it is that you want to do and then go for it (sounds great but difficult when you’ve got money stress to worry about)
c)   Find a job that will keep you ticking over whilst investigate what you want to do for your future career 
d)   Find another way of paying the bills (ie partner go out to work, loan from family etc) whilst you research your future career direction

I have to stress there is nothing wrong with taking the opportunity of a ‘fresh start’ and following the cliché of ‘as one door closes another opens’ and this is exactly what does happen for clients, but it’s probably one of the toughest ways of doing it. With dealing with the emotional stress of finishing your last role, regardless of who instigated it, and then the stress of knowing that you need an income (and in some cases within a few weeks) it’s very hard to make logical decisions and take the time to explore the options fully. This is where a good career coach comes in and frequently, from my experience, provides a reality check for clients. I can then work with the client to start the process of making the changes so that they can achieve their goals in a career that is right for them.

But, it could all have been so much easier. If you are starting to feel disgruntled, frustrated and just not happy about your job then NOW is the time to start reviewing your options. Whilst you have money coming in and some degree of positivity about your current role within you, this is the point to start exploring the right career move for you. It can be a time consuming process and a journey that can take a long time to get through, but if you start now you have time on your side.

My online career centre is an excellent place to start when you are in this place of weighing up what you want to do. It is completed at a time to suit you, from the comfort of your own home and the reports are available to you. You don’t even have to make an appointment to see me if you don’t want to, although I would recommend this (as would all of my clients who have used the centre).

I encourage everyone who reads this to seize the moment and start to explore new potential career options whilst you still have control of your career/work situation because once you lose that control it makes it so much harder (but not impossible) to make any changes.