There’s no time like the present to change careers. The labor market is improving and there are opportunities available in almost every field. This article outlines five steps every career changer must go through to land a new position. I use real life examples of people I have worked with to illustrate my points. These steps are as necessary for people with disabilities as they are for any job seeker. So put yourself in high gear and let’s start up the career change staircase.

Step One: Assess your skills and interests to make sure your career move is aligned with who you are.
Changing careers is not for the faint of heart. On average new careers take longer to find and you often start at a lower salary. Jim, a Human Resources Benefits Specialist in a manufacturing firm, was willing to accept these risks. He was tired of overseeing a series of layoffs at companies as they outsourced their jobs overseas. For the last two years the part of his job, he enjoyed most, was orienting new staff and training managers. “I knew I was a good trainer when I read my workshop evaluations. I had also taught at a local community college and the students appreciated me for how well I presented difficult material.”

Jim discussed these experiences, adding this information to the knowledge he gathered about himself from doing skills analysis and a career interest test. The results confirmed Jim’s original intuition about shifting from HR into corporate training.

Step Two: Assess your Work Personality: Is your new career a good fit for who you are as a person?
Adrienne initially thought she had to change careers when she could no longer stand her accounting job. She had always loved her work until her department was folded into a larger financial unit and she was shuttled off to a windowless, back-office cubical abutting the elevator shaft. Instead of the energizing conversations with her colleagues she now heard only the steady swish of the elevator. Her first reaction was, “If this is how I’m treated, I no longer want to be an accountant.”

Adrienne reconsidered this idea in a career counseling session discussing her “work personality” and her ideal work environment. “I thought I wanted out of accounting but what I really want is a more people-oriented work environment.” She dropped her plan to become a librarian and is now seeking accounting work with an insurance company where team orientation is valued.

Step Three: Research potential employers.
After 15 years as an organic chemist, Brian hit a wall. There were fewer manufacturing firms to use his skills and his current employer announced the whole plant was shifting its operations to Mexico. After talking to several friends who had shifted into the Information Technology field, Brian enrolled in an intense six-month training to become a Network Administrator. He successfully passed the course, but reported, “Nobody would give me a job. They all said, ‘Come back when you’re experienced.’”

To find work Brian began researching hot growth companies and arranging informational interviews. One of his contacts introduced him to the Information Services head at a large state agency. Brian seized this opportunity and convinced the manager to let him work there as an intern. “I bit the bullet on this one. The internship meant no money for six weeks but the experience I got helped me land my job at my current company.”

Step Four: Learn how to market yourself.
Marketing yourself in a job search covers everything from resumes and “infomercials” to networking and excelling at job interviews. Jane thought she was a natural here. She was charismatic, articulate and had been promoted twice in her old job as a sales representative for a trendy clothing chain. She came to me after six months of going nowhere in her quest for work in the red-hot growth field of Events Planning.

It turned out her troubles were more self-sabotage than Brian’s problem of “no experience, no hire.” Jane’s resume and “infomercial” were all about where she had been rather than where she wanted to go. They failed to convince Event Planners that she could solve their problems. “I just didn’t get it at first but then I realized that I wasn’t speaking about how my skills would benefit a new employer. Once I got that down, I landed the interviews that led to my conference planning position.”

Step Five: Stay positive. Be persistent.
Andy spent six months failing to find work in his old career as Purchasing Manager. After giving up on that, he spent another three months looking for work in Facilities Management, something he had experience in from previous jobs. Andy didn’t realize how negative and discouraged he had become until he went to his first networking meeting. One of the members of the group took him aside and said, “Hang in there and keep going. You can do it.” She recognized immediately that he was discouraged.

“The truth is I was hurting from the rejections. My attitude was negative and I was getting depressed. My networking group kept me going through all the hard times. I now tell everyone, ‘If you want to keep going you’ve got to stay connected.’”

People with disabilities often face additional challenges around such issues as a limited work history, mobility or sensory concerns, or psychiatric conditions that may limit how much they want to work. There is also, at times, the lack of knowledge on the part of the employer and the discouragement that can accompany the rejections that are a recurring part of the job search. For these reasons and more it is smart for career changers with disabilities (or as I prefer to say, “people of varying abilities”) to utilize the kind of help they will find in agencies like Resource Partnership, which is committed to helping people with disabilities improve their lives through employment.

Larry Elle
http://www.resourcepartnership.org/