Analysts predict that by 2025, 85 million positions will disappear from the labor market and 97 million new ones will appear. Linear careers are a thing of the past: You have to learn new skills or change careers to stay in demand. Here’s how to rethink your career path.
Why We Are Looking for Ourselves
The familiar pattern of “school – university – one job for life” is becoming a thing of the past, and even a diploma from a world-famous university doesn’t guarantee that you will be in demand on the labor market, making the process of searching for jobs as unpredictable as playing at the casino in NZ. The generation of thirty-year-olds will have time to master not one or two, but seven or eight professions. There are several reasons for this. First, the pandemic has changed working conditions. Remotely, many have wondered, “Is this what I really want to do?” Second, artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies are experiencing explosive growth.
Today it’s no longer enough to choose one path. It’s more important to master the skill of managing career scenarios. After all, there is no ready-made answer as to how and where to move forward.
Conduct a Skills Audit
The good news is that you don’t need to forget everything you knew before. Your experience, skills, and knowledge can be useful to a volatile market in the most unexpected combinations.
Ten years ago, it was hard to imagine that universities would need a separate person to talk about the achievements of scientists – they call him or her a science communicator. Today, however, universities are not only teaching but also doing great science. Promoting the achievements of the university is both a public report and an opportunity to claim additional funding in the future. The high-tech business also needs such specialists.
The flip side of the coin of new career paths is the fear of making a mistake and leaving a stable place in unpredictable times. Another reason to leave things as they are is age. But now we live longer than ever before and can afford to start from scratch at 30, 40, or 50.
Admit That You Truly Love
By 30, you already have work and life experience under your belt. You understand aspects of your profession better than yesterday’s students, you analyze victories and failures, you know your abilities and interests. And if before you took any job offered, now it’s time to listen to yourself, your desires and needs. To begin with, you need to think about them.
What to do?
- Write out your three core values. No one will see your answers, so be as honest as possible. What will they be? Family? Freedom? Self-development? Or helping loved ones?
- List the most important criteria in your job. Do you enjoy working with data or people? Is the routine easy for you? Are you comfortable with strict deadlines? What helps you work with pleasure, and what hinders you? Draw on these criteria as you choose a new path.
Give Yourself Time to Explore the Possibilities
Memes, advertisements, rumors, conversations with friends, and your interests all influence perceptions of possible career scenarios. But in reality, there are many more options. To figure out what you can and want to be, give yourself time to explore your options. Even in older careers, you may have a skewed view.Even if you’ve dreamed of pursuing health care since childhood but didn’t go to medical school, you have the opportunity to find a new vocation in an interdisciplinary field, of which there are more and more.
What to do?
- Write down the areas in which you would like to develop. Don’t stop yourself and don’t make up reasons why you might not succeed. Just write.
- Set aside a couple of weeks and explore opportunities in your chosen fields (and not just them). Read the media, especially niche media, google reports and forecasts from universities and consulting agencies.
- Study the websites of universities – imagine that you are choosing a profession for the first time.
Immerse Yourself in the Environment
Images of an unfamiliar profession can be very appealing. But how well suited is it to you? Even the most interesting job has its nuances, routine and pitfalls. Before you run to the personnel department with a statement of resignation, try to immerse yourself in a professional environment. This could be internships, participation in a project, new tasks at your current location, or networking. Unfamiliar speed of decision-making, specific professional jargon, opinion leaders – getting acquainted with a new field in a sandbox mode is useful, especially if you are contacting it for the first time.
What to do?
- Read professional literature. This can be telegram feeds, books, opinion leaders’ social networks or lectures.
- Talk to people who are already working in the field. You can always find professionals on LinkedIn and write to them. Also, ask around among people you know or in professional communities. Before the conversation, articulate what you want to know.
- Hard level: the reality test. Get an internship or take a short course – this is the most effective way to find out whether you will really be interested in working in this field.
- If you have already decided that the field is interesting to you, take a long training, for example, in the master’s program. Many programs can be combined with work.
Generate Scenarios
Summarize a lot of work.
- What is your goal? How can you achieve it?
- By what criteria will you make your choice of a new profession?
- What are your strengths and weaknesses? What are your skills that will be in demand?
- What roles will help you achieve your goals? How do you arrive at them?
Giving up conventional notions of the trajectory of success isn’t easy. But the more you are open to experimentation, the more interesting the result will be.
