Switching careers is overwhelming and often scary.
You might say:
- I’m too old to learn something new
- This is all I’ve ever known
- My passion is A, but I’ve never made a living doing A before.
Switching careers is overwhelming and often scary.
There’s a pretty good chance you already know the basics. In fact, you may be more advanced than you give yourself credit for.
For instance, I have been doing some significant soul searching. Writing has been my passion since I was a little girl, but when I was in school, there wasn’t an option for making a living doing that. I have recently discovered there is a HUGE market for writers. This is such great news! Except…I don’t have paid experience. What next?
I had some professionals take a look at my experience and background, read a bunch of articles, and came to an awesome conclusion: I’ve got lots of experience. I’ve been using my passion and skills as a writer in each of my major careers to improve efficiency and experience.
- As an Account Executive for an Apple Specialist, I utilized my skills to improve patient product education to provide pertinent information for their shopping experience. I also improved web experience by completely re-hauling the website. I even implemented email marketing to reach out to our customer base and keep them informed of new products and pricing.
- As a nurse for a Sports Medicine clinic, I have created education for new procedures we are doing. These step-by-step instruction guides provide the necessary steps to go from scheduling to the procedure and to documentation after procedure. I also work as a medical scribe for my physician, so my skills are used to improve upon his patient care documentation. This has vastly improved our clinic efficiency and patient communication.
Two completely different careers with extensive use of my writing skills. I’m no novice after all. This revelation was exciting.
Look into your own experience. I’ll bet if you’ve got a passion and desire to switch careers, you’ve got a ton of experience you may not have been aware of.
Never sell yourself short. Just because your paycheck wasn’t specifically for that skill doesn’t mean you weren’t utilizing and improving upon that skill.