Tips on Reinventing Your Career - Part 1
Posted on May 14, 2022 by Rajan Chopra, One of Thousands of Executive Coaches on Noomii.
This article - first of a series - helps people who are stuck in their jobs to reinvent their careers and enjoy a happier life.
At a time when tech innovations and exogenous events like the COVID pandemic are disrupting businesses and jobs, and the very nature of how work is done, many previously valuable work-related skills are rapidly becoming obsolete. Old ways of doing things are giving way to new. And it’s difficult to overstate the magnitude of job displacement worldwide, where COVID has accelerated the pace of creative disruption.
Are you one of those who has been impacted by these disruptive forces and are now contemplating a career change? You are not alone. Many people, especially those in midlife, are struggling to imagine how to remake their future. Career reinvention isn’t just a nice-sounding idea, it’s paramount to millions of people.
Why is career reinvention so difficult? Remaking a career can seem to be overwhelmingly difficult and scary. But it doesn’t have to be that way. The simple truth is that it is only perceived to be difficult because most people do not know how to go about changing careers. It is the do-not-know-how syndrome that deters people. Overcoming that is the most challenging part. People are conditioned to operate within their skill sets and training, at jobs within an industry where they feel comfortable. They feel secure in their comfort zone, and stepping outside that area is, well, uncomfortable. Hence, change is deemed hard.Many also shy away from reinvention because they are afraid to fail. But this is a misplaced fear. Is anything worthwhile ever accomplished without taking risk? Doing nothing, in the face of stagnation or obsolescence, is insanity.
Reinvention is challenging to undertake when we are comfortable with a job and paycheck. We are lulled into a false sense of income security and may become lazy and procrastinate in dealing with the inevitable. It is only when we lose our jobs and get the proverbial kick-in-the-butt that we spring into action.
Rather than being reactive, become proactive in making the change.
If your career is in a rut or your skills are at risk of becoming irrelevant, it’s time to make a career change.
To be sure, reinvention requires hard work, but the process becomes less onerous when it’s broken down into logical steps, akin to solving any other problem. In subsequent articles, I will show you the step-by-step process of how to go about reinventing careers successfully.
Stay tuned.
