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    HBR Guide to Changing Your Career
    HBR Guide to Changing Your Career
    HBR Guide to Changing Your Career
    Ebook184 pages2 hours

    HBR Guide to Changing Your Career

    By Harvard Business Review

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    About this ebook

    Your next act starts now.

    You're ready for something new, but it's hard to start over. Just the idea of trading the security you have now for the unknown or throwing away the education and time you've invested in your current career can plunge you into a swirl of indecision and anxiety. But mixing things up every few years is an increasingly normal and cyclical part of a healthy work life--a way to gain new skills and stretch your existing ones by applying them to different contexts.

    Whether you know what you want to do next or you're still evaluating options, the HBR Guide to Changing Your Career will help you:

    • Imagine other professional selves
    • Identify the skills you need--and those you already possess that will transfer to another industry
    • Assess the financial implications of the change you're considering
    • Try out new roles without endangering your current job
    • Explain a seemingly winding career path
    • Pitch yourself into a new role
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarvard Business Review Press
    Release dateJul 17, 2018
    ISBN9781633693111
    HBR Guide to Changing Your Career
    Author

    Harvard Business Review

    Harvard Business Review es sin lugar a dudas la referencia más influyente en el sector editorial en temas de gestión y desarrollo de personas y de organizaciones. En sus publicaciones participan investigadores de reconocimiento y prestigio internacional, lo que hace que su catálogo incluya una gran cantidad de obras que se han convertido en best-sellers traducidos a múltiples idiomas.

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      Book preview

      HBR Guide to Changing Your Career - Harvard Business Review

      HBR Guide to

      Changing Your Career

      Harvard Business Review Guides

      Arm yourself with the advice you need to succeed on the job, from the most trusted brand in business. Packed with how-to essentials from leading experts, the HBR Guides provide smart answers to your most pressing work challenges.

      The titles include:

      HBR Guide to Being More Productive

      HBR Guide to Better Business Writing

      HBR Guide to Building Your Business Case

      HBR Guide to Buying a Small Business

      HBR Guide to Coaching Employees

      HBR Guide to Data Analytics Basics for Managers

      HBR Guide to Delivering Effective Feedback

      HBR Guide to Emotional Intelligence

      HBR Guide to Finance Basics for Managers

      HBR Guide to Getting the Right Work Done

      HBR Guide to Leading Teams

      HBR Guide to Making Every Meeting Matter

      HBR Guide to Managing Stress at Work

      HBR Guide to Managing Up and Across

      HBR Guide to Negotiating

      HBR Guide to Office Politics

      HBR Guide to Performance Management

      HBR Guide to Persuasive Presentations

      HBR Guide to Project Management

      HBR Guide to

      Changing Your Career

      HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW PRESS

      Boston, Massachusetts

      HBR Press Quantity Sales Discounts

      Harvard Business Review Press titles are available at significant quantity discounts when purchased in bulk for client gifts, sales promotions, and premiums. Special editions, including books with corporate logos, customized covers, and letters from the company or CEO printed in the front matter, as well as excerpts of existing books, can also be created in large quantities for special needs.

      For details and discount information for both print and ebook formats, contact booksales@harvardbusiness.org, tel. 800-988-0886, or www.hbr.org/bulksales.

      Copyright 2018 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation

      All rights reserved

      Printed in the United States of America

      10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

      No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Requests for permission should be directed to permissions@hbsp.harvard.edu, or mailed to Permissions, Harvard Business School Publishing, 60 Harvard Way, Boston, Massachusetts 02163.

      The web addresses referenced in this book were live and correct at the time of the book’s publication but may be subject to change.

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Title: HBR guide to changing your career.

      Other titles: Harvard Business Review guide to changing your career | Changing your career | Harvard business review guides.

      Description: Boston, Massachusetts : Harvard Business Review Press, [2018] | Series: Harvard business review guides | Includes index.

      Identifiers: LCCN 2018002104 | ISBN 9781633693104 (pbk. : alk. paper)

      Subjects: LCSH: Career changes. | Mid-career.

      Classification: LCC HF5384 .H39 2018 | DDC 650.14--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018002104

      ISBN: 9781633693104

      eISBN: 9781633693111

      The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Publications and Documents in Libraries and Archives Z39.48-1992

      What You’ll Learn

      You’re well into your career, and yet you’re not where you want to be. Perhaps you’ve done everything you need to do to be named a partner, but your firm has encountered a crisis that’s put all promotions on hold. Maybe a hobby or side gig has helped unearth a new passion you’d love to pursue full time. Perhaps you’ve come to realize that your current role is no longer meaningful. Or maybe you’ve exceeded all of the goals you set for your current career and you’re ready for a new challenge. How do you envision possible new professional selves, explore your options, and embark on a dramatic career makeover when you have a mortgage to pay, kids to support, college and retirement funds to feed—and a full life and full-time job? Can you really set aside the years you’ve invested in your education and current industry? How can you make a radical change when there are so many demands on you?

      Whether you know what you want your second act to be or you have no clue—only that what you’re doing isn’t a match—this guide will help you chart a course and make the switch. You’ll discover how to:

      Break free of what your career is now to consider what it could be

      Get an accurate picture of the skills and abilities you bring to the table

      Create experiments that won’t sabotage your current job

      Assess the financial implications of making a change

      Develop a compelling way to tell your story—tying even seemingly unrelated jobs into a cohesive narrative

      Build expertise in a new field

      Land a new role

      Contents

      Introduction

      SECTION ONE. Understand What’s Going On

      1. Reawakening Your Passion for Work

      Five practical strategies to guide you.

      BY RICHARD BOYATZIS, ANNIE McKEE, AND DANIEL GOLEMAN

      2. Why So Many of Us Experience a Midlife Crisis

      Blame biology, not your job.

      BY HANNES SCHWANDT

      SECTION TWO. What Do You Think You Want to Do?

      3. Developing a Strategy for a Life of Meaningful Labor

      It’s never too late (or too early).

      BY BRIAN FETHERSTONHAUGH

      4. Turn the Job You Have into the Job You Want

      Use job crafting to reimagine your work life.

      BY AMY WRZESNIEWSKI, JUSTIN M. BERG, AND JANE E. DUTTON

      5. Two Ways to Clarify Your Professional Passions

      Build your self-awareness.

      BY ROBERT STEVEN KAPLAN

      6. For Career Direction, Use Your Imagination

      Visualize the job of your dreams—and of your nightmares.

      BY BILL BARNETT

      SECTION THREE. Is Career Change Right for You?

      7. Not Taking Risks Is the Riskiest Career Move of All

      Don’t get too comfortable.

      BY ANNE KREAMER

      8. Can You Actually Afford to Change Your Career?

      Assess the financial impact of a move.

      BY RUSSELL CLAYTON

      9. How to Stay Stuck in the Wrong Career

      Stop thinking; start doing.

      BY HERMINIA IBARRA

      SECTION FOUR. Get Going

      10. Test-Drive Your Path

      Try out your new career before you make the switch.

      BY DORIE CLARK

      11. Research Your Destination with Informational Interviews

      Explore your options and make connections.

      BY DORIE CLARK

      12. Change Your Career Without Having to Start All Over Again

      Capitalize on your past experience.

      BY DORIE CLARK

      13. Turning Your Complex Career Path into a Coherent Story

      Connect the dots for hiring managers.

      BY ANNA RANIERI

      14. Use Your LinkedIn Profile to Power a Career Transition

      Show up in the right search results.

      BY JANE HEIFETZ

      15. A Scorecard to Help You Compare Two Jobs

      Measure the intangibles, too.

      BY ALLISON RIMM

      16. How to Build Expertise in a New Field

      Accelerate the process.

      BY DOROTHY LEONARD

      SECTION FIVE. Get Inspired

      17. Why You Should Have (at Least) Two Careers at the Same Time

      Multiple jobs may be the secret to fulfillment.

      BY KABIR SEHGAL

      18. Advice from a Serial Life Reinventor: An Interview with Nilofer Merchant

      It is possible to follow even your craziest dream.

      BY SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL

      19. From Accountant to Yogi: Making a Radical Career Change

      Quit being the person you think you’re supposed to be.

      BY VIJAY GOVINDARAJAN AND HYLKE FABER

      Index

      Introduction

      Transformation. Second act. Stuck. Reinvention. Crossroads. Pivot. Do-over. Considering a career change can be a gnarly swirl of exhilaration and trepidation. Whether you’re coming from a place of restless stagnation born of security or one of desperation—you cannot take another day of doing what you’re doing—you want a change.

      Career change could be something you’ve daydreamed about for a while, or maybe it’s a boiling point that you’ve just hit, but it probably feels a bit out of reach. You’ve invested a lot of education, time, and energy in your current job. You’re the go-to person for people at work, a topic or process expert. You’re not a failure by any stretch of the imagination; you’re just longing for something different.

      The conventional wisdom for changing careers is to follow a measured and thoughtful path. Assess your strengths, imagine possible selves, craft small (and safe!) experiments, evaluate the outcome of those exercises, and chart a new course taking into account all of that information and experience. But this approach can lead to analysis paralysis. How can you stop reflecting and start doing? This guide will help you do just that.

      Who This Book Is For

      This is not a book for first-time job seekers or recent grads. Rather, it’s for you if you’ve been out in the workforce for at least a few years. It’s for you if your first real job didn’t turn out the way you’d hoped. It’s for you if you’re well into your career (or even into your second career). This collection is for people with a complicated context: You have an advanced degree, and the student loans to prove it. You have a family that anticipates an annual holiday to relax and reconnect. You have a network that enjoys trading favors and tapping your expertise. And you have direct reports who are counting on you to help shepherd them up the ladder at work.

      But a complicated context doesn’t mean you’re trapped. There are benefits to having held at least one career. You have experience. You have a network. You’ve faced a crisis or two and survived—even learned something. You know what you like and what you don’t like. You know how you prefer to work and something about which type of culture or work environment you do best in. You understand the distinction between being good at something and enjoying what you’re doing.

      If you know exactly what you want your next career to be—you just haven’t figured out how to cross over—this book is for you. Maybe you don’t know what you want to do next—just that the current situation isn’t the right fit. The content in this volume will help you see how even sifting through the long list of things you don’t enjoy and wouldn’t want to pursue can help you narrow the field to find something that would interest you.

      You can take that knowledge and close the gap between dreaming of something else and actually doing something else. Change, especially for something as deeply held as your work identity, can feel scary. But it’s an enormous opportunity for discovery and growth. We all have numerous possible selves. What would our lives look like if we took a different path? What’s a safe way to test a new direction? This guide will give you questions to reflect on what you want, stories to inspire you, and tools to help you take action.

      How to Use This Book

      Just as there’s no one track for any of us to follow in our careers, there’s no one way to read this book. Some of you will want to read it cover to cover, craft a detailed transition plan, set milestones, and start ticking through items. Others will dive into the section that speaks to them. If you feel despair because it seems like a significant change can never happen, the success stories in the Get Inspired section will motivate you to work through the challenging, more self-reflective sections of the book. Some of you may dip your toes in by trying some of the experiments in the Get Going section. Others may read the chapter on job crafting and discover a way to keep treading water until they’re on the other side of this lull.

      We’ve selected the most practical and thoughtful pieces we’ve published on career change to help you consider what move you might make, assess whether you’re ready to take the leap, and then figure out how to ease into a transition. There’s no prescription or formula. Every one’s situation is unique, so we’ve carefully curated this guide to share the research, insights, and advice from a host of experts to give you the best foundation for navigating your own way.

      Career change is a normal part of a long and rich working life. Set aside any nagging self-doubt, and begin the work to turn wishful thinking into a concrete, actionable plan. You can get out

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