Career change at midlife: A 5-step approach to finding meaningful work
It’s time.
You’re ready to make a change.
You’ve been feeling unhappy about your career for long enough.
You’re smart, capable, and you’ve worked hard for years BUT something is missing.
You’ve hit a slump.
You want to do something that helps others, plays to your strengths, AND gives you a good quality of life.
You want work-life balance to be a reality rather than a vague idea.
The BIG question is: where to start?
A career change at midlife can seem impossible: a big leap into the unknown.
That was my experience for more than 10 years. In 2003 I started teaching psychology in a small, vibrant college in the Dublin suburbs. My colleagues and students were great but the workload was unsustainable.
I spent 18 hours per week lecturing and many more hours preparing. The Christmas and Easter holidays were generous but I used them to catch up on correcting. I worked most weekends and the weekdays were full with teaching and related duties.
There was less and less time for research and other creative projects. I needed more from my career. I worked with a career coach and read every self-help book I could get my hands on but I’d no idea what else to do.
I struggled to translate the information I was gathering into a clear sense of direction.
This is the blog post I wish I’d had access to all those years ago. It's based on my own experience and everything I've learned working with clients who are making a career change in their 30s, 40s and beyond. It describes a doable, step-by-step approach to finding meaningful work.
Step 1: Set your aim
It’s easy to focus on escape when you're feeling unhappy at work. Your to-do list is buzzing around in your head and you're fed up with office politics. You're feeling unappreciated and challenged for all the wrong reasons.
Here's the problem. How can you create something new when you're only thinking about what you don't want? You need to start thinking about what you're running towards!
Plus, if you’re going to invest time and effort into a career change at midlife, you want to be as clear as possible about why. This will help you spot opportunities, make decisions, and communicate more clearly.
Take a moment to think about what you’re aiming for. Write it down in a notebook!
Let me give you an example. My aim was to find meaningful work that would:
Support my well-being.
Align with my values.
Play to my strengths.
Meet my financial goals.
But what do these things mean? You need to spend some time defining what it is you're aiming for. Otherwise, you won't know when you've achieved your goal. For me, that meant asking questions like:
What does meaningful work look like?
What type of work would support my well-being?
What are my values?
What are my strengths?
What are my financial goals?
Revisit your aim. Break it down. Ask questions to gain clarity. One tip would be to pick a question and think about it during the day or when you go for a walk. Talk it over with a partner or friend. This is worth spending some time on!
Step 2: List the possibilities
Starting a career ideas bank is one of the first steps that my Choose a New Career Path clients take. Most people have one or two ideas in the beginning but the goal is to have at least 10 career possibilities.
In her book Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career, Professor Herminia Ibarra suggests coming up with a list of "possible selves". Who else could you be? What are the possibilities?
At this stage park the practicalities. You’re setting the stage for exploration rather than making a firm commitment.
There are many ways of generating ideas! During coaching, thoughts, ideas, and dreams for a future career or business naturally come up as we explore who the client is and what makes them tick. As a Licensed Firework Career Coach, I’ve also got access to some great “get unstuck” coaching tools and exercises that help expand their list.
You can jump-start your career ideas bank by downloading my FREE 5 Google Search Suggestions to Find Career Ideas and Inspiration mini guide.
Click on the image to get the mini guide
Step 3: Take action
We’ve reached the point where you’ve mined all the information you already have. You’ve defined what matters to you and generated a list of career possibilities.
Warning: you might be tempted to give up at this point. Sometimes when we get closer to what we want and change seems imminent, we pull back. That’s normal. There can be comfort in what’s familiar, even if it’s making us miserable!
At this stage you don't know which career you want to pursue. The time will come to test your assumptions about making a career change at midlife. For now though, that's all those worries are: assumptions.
Whatever your fears - try to put them to one side for now.
Explore your options while keeping an eye on what you already know about who you are and what you want. Go to your list of career possibilities and choose the one that’s most appealing. How can you find out more about this possibility?
There are at least three options: doing an internet search, talking to people, and conducting a career experiment.
Do an internet search
Google is the easiest way to start but beware! It’s also the easiest way to get discouraged and distracted.
Here’s some tips to avoid the overwhelm:
Be crystal clear what you’re looking for so that you know when you’ve found an answer.
Not finding anything? Try several variations of your search terms.
Set a timer so that you don’t lose track of time.
Bookmark key resources and save them in a dedicated folder.
Use a notebook to record any observations.
When you’re done searching write down your next “need-to-know” question.
Have a conversation
Talking to people has a dual purpose: you’re gathering information AND building your network.
Don't underestimate how powerful this can be. This isn't about hunting for a job. It's about building relationships: an ever-widening circle of support that will inspire, inform, and help you out in surprising ways.
If you can find someone who’s made a career change later in life and can relate to your situation that’s great but it’s not always possible. Start with family, friends and trusted colleagues. Consider your wider network: extended family, friends of friends, former colleagues, people you’ve met through work, school and college alumni.
Beyond this, LinkedIn is THE platform for connecting with others (and for facilitating a career change.) Take a look at this article I wrote about how and why to get started with LinkedIn. It's on a website about leaving teaching but it applies to every profession.
Go into your conversation prepared. Here’s some questions you might want to ask:
How did you get to where you are today?
What skills are necessary to do your job well?
What do you like/dislike about your job?
What qualifications would I need to do what you do?
Looking back, what do you wish you’d known when starting out?
What assumptions do people make about this job that aren’t true?
If you could change one thing about your job, what would it be?
Are there any resources you’d recommend to familiarise myself with this industry?
Is there anyone else you’d suggest talking to about this?
You might also want to include some questions that are directly related to the criteria you identified at the beginning. For example, if work-life balance is particularly important to you, then ask about working hours.
If you’re an introvert like me, pace yourself and spread out the number of conversations you have per week. If you're nervous, start with people you know and build your confidence.
Bear in mind that this is only one person and they may not be representative of what it would be like for YOU to work in this role. Be mindful of who you ask for advice or information. Determining whether or not a career is really for you may require a career experiment.
Conduct a career experiment
What type of career experiment you do depends on how far along you are in the career change process. In the early stages, you may simply want to establish whether you’re really interested in a topic. Reading a book or doing a workshop might be appropriate because it’s less of a commitment.
As you get closer to what you want to do, your level of commitment can increase.
Here are some other ideas for career experiments:
Expand your existing role. How could you use your strengths in a different way? Perhaps there's a project you could start or help with within your existing role.
Share your expertise with a wider audience. Choose a medium that plays to your strengths. Let's say you enjoy writing - you could create a blog post, a LinkedIn article, or a series of posts on social media.
Organise a meet-up or event using Meetup or Eventbrite.
Flex your entrepreneurial muscles by doing a small-scale version of your business idea. If this is you, check out John Williams’s The Ideas Lab and do one of his 5-day challenges.
Volunteer on a short- or long-term basis. You could even try microvolunteering! Check out your national volunteering organisation. Volunteer Ireland, for example, administer an online, searchable database of volunteering opportunities (I-VOL).
Step 4: Ask this question
A successful career change requires thinking AND doing. Taking action can impede your progress if you never stop to reflect on what you've learned.
Always stop and test your experiments against your original aim. Does your aim need to change based on what you've learned? Do you need to do another experiment on the same career idea? Or do you need to go back to your list of career possibilities and start again?
Don't forget that ruling out a career idea can be as valuable as finding something that works!
One of my career experiments was doing an evening course in computer graphic design. While I thoroughly enjoyed the course and gained skills that I still use, I realised I didn’t want to spend that much time at a computer creating work for other people’s projects.
There are criteria that I use to help clients to test their career experiments. You can use your energy levels as a metric, for example. Did they go up or down when you were doing your career experiment?
Step 5: Don't wait. Begin today
Have you ever waited to start a task at the weekend or over the holidays when you’ll have more time? Yet when the weekend comes the sun is shining and you’re out the door so as not to waste the day! The task never gets started.
Career change takes time. Depending on how major the change, it could take more than a year. The secret is to get started before feeling ready. Chip away at it on a regular basis, reflecting on what you’re learning as you go. Have a notebook, record your observations, and schedule regular time in your calendar to work on your career change. I encourage my clients to meet me every fortnight so that we don't lose momentum and stay on track.
Doing it yourself not working? Enlist the help of an accountability partner like a close friend, trusted colleague or career professional.
“Don’t wait for a cataclysmic moment when the truth is revealed. Use everyday occurrences to find meaning in the changes you are going through. Practise telling and retelling your story. Over time, it will clarify.”
Herminia Ibarra, Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career
The most important thing is to stay with it until you can choose a new career path with a clear sense of direction and the confidence that comes with knowing who you are and what you want. You’ve got this!