Image Credit: Beverly Yuen Thompson
Congratulations, you have a job. However, is this really the job that you want? Do you spend your days dreaming of doing something else? If you ever decided to do that something else, would it require you to make a career change? This is no small change – this can be a very big deal for most managers. If your heart really lies somewhere else, then perhaps the current world that Covid-19 and the associated pandemic have turned upside down might be just the place where you use your manager skills and technology to make your dreams come true.
Using A Pandemic To Find A Job
If the arrival of the Covid pandemic has thrown your job, company or career for a loop, this may be the moment to think about not just a next move, but a larger career change for you. Of course, such a move is impossible – or at least pretty close to it – for many managers who don’t have the contacts or resources to make it happen. But for those lucky enough to take advantage of it, technology can help address some of the obstacles to making a midcareer shift – especially right now, when so much of the professional world has moved entirely online out of necessity.
By putting a range of professional conversations and communities at your fingertips, that internet thing makes it much easier to figure out which fields are the best fit for your interests and talents. And through low-risk, low-cost options for trying out new professional contexts – such as taking online courses for manager training or doing remote work for free – you can assess a new career direction before you take a big leap. This kind of thinking is all fine and good, but just exactly how is a manager supposed to go about making this kind of change?
Using Technology To Make A Career Change
The first thing that you are going to want to do is to assess all of your options Before you start to make a move, try to get a feel for your options by eavesdropping on other fields and getting familiar with the cultures and opportunities they offer, as well as the kinds of people and tasks that are involved. An easy place to start this process is by joining professional groups on LinkedIn, so you can watch (or join in) the online conversation; many groups will welcome anyone who asks to come on board. Following a LinkedIn group for health care workers, for instance, might confirm your hopes that this is a field you would like to leap into – or it might reveal squabbles you’d find intolerable. Likewise, if you have friends or colleagues in the field that you are interested in, pay closer attention to them online and see what they both share and respond to.
Next, you are going to want to assess yourself. This means that you need to figure out if your potential new field or career is actually the right fit for your unique skills and talents. There are many tech tools and strategies that can help you get a better perspective on your strengths and weaknesses. It can be useful to do an online self-assessment. You can look at analytics that examine your social-media presence. This kind of close examination will show you the kinds of blog posts, Facebook posts, photos, and tweets that draw the biggest response, which can provide an important clue about where you add the greatest value. However, be sure to look not only at your most shared or liked content, but also at the stuff that didn’t perform well.
Finally, you are going to need to test out the job. Let’s say you’ve found a field or profession that appeals to you and for which you seem to be a great fit. Now consider a virtual test drive. There is a simple way to go about doing this: set up a blog or social-networking profile focused on an area you’re thinking about moving into, and start posting. It is best to put up material regularly (at least once a week, or two to three times a week if you’re just posting short updates) for at least two or three months to see if you maintain your interest or this is more of a brief flirtation. It is one thing to post the occasional set of house photos or neighborhood profiles to a real-estate blog; it is another to endure the day-in, day-out grind of adding a few house profiles every week.
What All Of This Means For You
There are times when a manager is working at job that may be a fine job, but our thoughts start to drift to how much we might enjoy working at a different job even if that job was in a completely different career field. If those types of thoughts have been running through your head, then perhaps because the pandemic has changed everything, now is the time to do some investigating and find out if a career change would be the right move for you.
Generally speaking, making a career change can be a difficult thing to do. However, with the arrival of the pandemic and so much work transitioning to online, now may offer you a unique opportunity. Going online means that you can make the connections, take courses, and assess any changes that you might be considering before you make the changes. When considering something like this, you’ll want to start out by considering all of your options. Next, you’ll need to take the time to assess yourself. Finally, you will want to test out the new job that you are considering.
We are defiantly living in strange pandemic times. However, as upsetting as all of this may be, perhaps there is a silver lining in it for you. This might be a great time for you explore a brand new career that you had not been able to take a look at in the past. Now could be your big chance. Make sure that you understand how you can use the technology that is at your fingers to get the information that you will need to make a decision as to if making a leap is the right thing for you to do. Now is the time to consider making big changes!
– Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World IT Management Skills™
Question For You: How can you get in touch with people who are doing what you think that you might like to do?
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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time
Let’s face it, most of us don’t really relish the idea of having to go out and do networking. However, in the past we’ve been willing to do it because we knew that it was an important way to help our career move along. Then came the Covid-19 pandemic. All of sudden we can’t get together and make small talk with people that we hardly know. The importance of doing this has not diminished, just how we have to go about doing it has changed. How is a manager supposed to network in the era of a pandemic?