Success is defined by many people in many ways, but one of the main components people look to as a measure is a successful career. Oftentimes, if you have a long, stable job with a track record of growth and potential to look ahead to, someone will describe you as successful.
Tack on a hefty pay check every other week, and by many people’s standards, you’ve “made it.”
It’s ideas like this that make choosing a new career path later on in life feel terrifying. However, if you are wondering how to make a "late in life" career change, it’s more common than you might think.
In fact, while there are no hard and fast statistics how to change careers (it’s difficult to define what constitutes a career change), the average man has 12.5 jobs over his career(s) and the average woman has 12.1 in hers, according to U.S. Labor Bureau statistics. Job tenure averages about four years and an EdX survey found that 29 percent of people had changed careers at least once since leaving college. Add the ever-changing job landscape to these statistics and you can be sure that plenty of workers are wondering how to change careers for all kinds of reasons.
There are many circumstances that can lead to one switching up their career at a later point in life, but regardless, it doesn’t have to be terrifying, and it certainly is not impossible. Just a few guides on how to change careers and life lessons can help you find your greatest success in the latter half of your professional career.
In this blog post, we will cover:
- The difference between changing careers and changing jobs
- How old is too old for a career change?
- Tips and inspiration for a midlife or late in life career change
- Where to start planning your career change
- Best career change jobs
Switching jobs or switching careers: Nail down the difference
While switching out the word job for the word career may seem like innocent use of synonyms, the truth is these two words are very different and mean varying things for your ongoing professional success.
Switching jobs
A job is defined as your occupation, while your career is a broader description of your profession. For example, you may be an elementary school teacher – that is your job. However, your profession is in education.
When you’re wondering how to change careers, it may be for a number of reasons. Actually, statistics tell us that people leave their jobs for one or more of these top seven reasons:
- Lack of Opportunity: Workers feel they have learned everything they can at their job and there is no room for growth.
- Lousy Management: Poor leadership is an easy way to lose great employees; many people who feel mistreated, unrecognized, and underappreciated will switch jobs.
- Toxic Work Environment: A toxic workplace goes beyond a bad manager; when the company culture is generally negative, it can be a nearly impossible place to work.
- Career Advancement: Sometimes, no matter how hard you work or how long you have worked at a company, there is simply nowhere for you to advance professionally; this often happens in smaller companies that have limited leadership roles.
- Too Much/Too Little Work: Someone who has become overqualified for a position can quickly become bored, while someone who is well-trusted may end up with too many responsibilities thrown upon them for no extra compensation.
- Finances: As much as you might not want money to play a role in your dream job, in the end, it always does; you might need to find a new job only because the paycheck isn’t supporting your lifestyle.
- Lack of Benefits/Rewards: Many companies will offer incentives for excellent work along with various bonuses, holiday compensation, and benefits packages. If your job isn’t offering you any of that but still expects top-notch work, you may consider switching jobs.
If one of these reasons is resonating with you, then you may be more in the realm of switching jobs or working for another company than changing careers. Have you thought long and hard about whether or not you should quit your job? As with any important decision, be sure to think it over before taking the plunge.
Let’s look at our teaching example from earlier. You may be an elementary school teacher who loves your job, but perhaps the school you work for can’t afford to pay you what you're worth. With your own family expanding and the cost of living getting more and more expensive, it may be time to start looking at other school districts.
In this instance, you would be switching jobs and not switching careers. However, if you decided that it was time to move on from teaching into a different profession, then you would be talking about changing careers.
How to change careers - why?
As we mentioned earlier, it’s common for people to switch careers during their lifetime. That EdX survey also found that nearly one-third of respondents had seriously considered changing from their current career.
But why do these people want to change the field in which they work?
Well, some of the reasons are similar to why individuals want to switch jobs, but there are a few novel situations that reinforce the idea of a career switch rather than a job change.
- Money: It seems that money is the root of all of our problems. Many workers decide to change careers because they need a higher salary and more benefits than what they can obtain in their current profession. Fewer people cashed in early and want to aim at their dream job instead of the money-maker.
- Stress: Some job roles just become too stressful over time. A construction worker can only exert himself physically for so long, just like a 60-year-old kindergarten teacher may be unable to keep chasing small children around.
- Appreciation: Some professional fields are much more rewarding than others. Anyone who feels under-appreciated or unrecognized in their area may feel dissatisfied in their work and therefore, may turn to another industry that’s more valued in society.
- Flexibility: Flexibility tends to come into play later in life when families start to grow, vacations are planned, and life evolves. As a young professional starting out, 9 to 5 jobs with standard workweeks may be fine and your working life may consume your whole life, but as life changes, the need for a work-life balance may become more significant.
- Opportunities and Advancement: Many professionals end up feeling stuck the longer they are in the workforce. If it seems like your years of experience aren’t translating into opportunity, you may feel the need to move on to something bigger and better.
Any of these can be a legitimate reason for wanting to change careers. You may even feel that more than one applies to your current situation, making you feel even more like getting out of the profession you’ve been in for the last five, 10 or 20-plus years.
Having a midlife crisis is a cliche for a reason. Sometimes, midlife is a time for reassessing priorities. You lie in bed at night wondering how to change careers - many of us have been there. Perhaps, your idea of career success has changed. You may not be having a career crisis, but are simply bored and a midlife career change is one way to spice things up.
How old is too old for a career change?
Taking the benefits of changing careers into account, and your specific circumstances, a career change can seem like a no-brainer, right?
But wait. The age-old question of age has reared its ugly head: Am I too old to be changing careers? No. Absolutely, categorically, no. You are not too old for a career change because no age is too old.
The idea that your career is on a timer and the moment you hit a certain age milestone you forgo the opportunity for changing your mind is silly. It's rooted in the thought that you MUST know what you want to do with the rest of your life when you leave school, that if you make the wrong choice in your youth, it’s tough luck.
This is nonsense. If you want to make a career change, go for it.
The two ages thrown around most often by the “it’s time to stick with the career you chose, I'm afraid” brigade are 30 and 40. You may be facing similar questions in terms of changing your job or career when you’re in an older age bracket. If you’re 50 or 60 and looking for a change, you may be facing similar doubts.
The thinking goes, that by 30 or 40, you’ve invested a lot of time in your current career and leaving means throwing away years of invested energy. This is a perfect example of the sunk cost fallacy, and it can be extremely destructive if followed.
Why would you spend even longer in a career you hate because you’ve spent a lot of years there already?
It’s crazy. So let’s look into some of the tips you can focus on for this transition, and then focus on dispelling a few how to change careers myths.
3 tips for how to change careers after 30 or 40
1. Perform a self-assessment
The key to finding the right career at this stage is learning about yourself. Take a notepad and write down your interests, personality type, ambitions, and work-related values. This will help you narrow down a list of occupations that fit with your various traits.
From there, explore each occupation in depth. Look at duties, training, and salary. Weigh up the pros and cons and decide whether the career is right for your future.
Better yet, find a local career coach and start dusting off that old resume.
You can also use one of these career aptitude tests to determine a potential career that matches your personality and skillset.
2. Tailor resume and cover letter
Employers are looking for candidates who can make an instant impact. They’ll judge whether you’re the person to do this based on your resume.
Look for parallels between your current experience and the skills required for your new job and highlight them in your resume.
For example, if you’re looking to work in business or global development, skills such as communication, negotiation and foreign language might be critical to the role. If you’ve spent the early part of your career in sales, communication and negotiation are transferable skills you’ll have acquired.
And you can show them off by quantifying them:
- Increased company revenues by 44% over a three-year period.
- Led sales team to company high sales figures, securing contracts worth over $4 million in four years.
For each previous job, focus on the skills that employers in your new career want to see.
The same goes for your cover letter. Tailor it to hammer home the skills you’ve highlighted in your resume. Keep it concise, focusing on how what you’ve done links to the role and how your skills make you a good choice.
To help you fine-tune your resume and cover letter, take a look at these posts:
4 tips to improve your work experience in your resume
How to write a great cover letter
3. Brush up on your interview skills
It’s probably been a while since your last interview and what worked in an interview for one industry might not work in a different industry., Brush up on those phone and face-to-face skills.
- Memorize your resume. You’ll be questioned on it and the answers you give need to match.
- Don’t bad mouth your current career. Take the angle that you’ve learned a lot but are ready for a new challenge.
- Research the company and the job role thoroughly online before the interview. Make sure you know everything there is to know.
- Plan questions to ask the interviewer in advance.
- Maintain eye contact, try not to fidget, and smile (even during a phone interview!).
- Follow up via email after the interview thanking them for the opportunity.
Changing careers at 30
66% of adults in their 30s are interested in changing careers.
Let’s say you’re 30 now and you’ll retire at 65. That’s 35 years in a new career. More time than you’ve spent on this planet thus far.
This is hardly considered a late in life career change. Changing careers now doesn’t make you damaged goods to employers, it actually puts you at a strong advantage. You have the perfect combination of experience and youth.
According to NACE’s Job Outlook survey, 91% of employers prefer candidates to have work experience. At 30, with one or more jobs under your belt, you’ve certainly got that. The same survey also shows that 26% of employers prefer work experience of any type and 44% have no preference over how work experience was gained.
If you want proof that changing careers at 30 is a real possibility, at 30 Jeff Bezos was in a lucrative career as a computer scientist on Wall Street. By 31, he’d moved into e-commerce and launched Amazon. Not such a dumb choice was it?
Sara Blakely spent seven years in her 20s selling office supplies door-to-door before quitting in 2000 to pursue a career selling footless pantyhose. Fast-forward to today and her business, Spanx, generates over $250 million in annual revenues.
When Terry Crews quit the NFL in 1997 at 29, he was broke and took a job sweeping floors. Two years later he landed a job on a syndicated TV show. Three years after that, in 2002, he got his big break in the movie “Friday After Next.” Now he’s one of the most recognizable actors in the world. And the face of the Old Spice ads, some of the best commercials of all time!
Changing careers at 40
60% of adults in their 40s are interested in changing careers.
But how possible is it? How much of difference do 10 years make? No difference at all. Just as many people wondering how to change careers. If fact, they might be feeling more confident about it because they have already done it once or twice before.
One of the biggest perceptions of changing careers at this stage of your life is that employers will see you as less productive than younger candidates. This isn’t true!
A study by The Society for Human Resource Management found no link between advancing age and productivity.
Another career change myth is that you’re simply too old to get hired.
First of all, 40 isn’t old. Secondly, there are laws in place that protect against age discrimination. An employer has to hire you based on your character, skill set, and ability to do the job. And the good thing for you is that, at 40, you have experience in abundance. The positive points about changing careers start to stack up.
At the end of the day, employers want good workers with relevant experience. If that’s you, your 40 years of age has little bearing on the hiring process. Making a career change is not easy. If anything making an intentional career change demonstrates to hiring managers that you are a pro-active problem-solver and not the kind of employee just looking for a paycheck.
In a post for Career Intelligence, job coach Bettina Seidman of SEIDBET, listed some of the qualities job-seekers over 40 bring to the table:
- Workers over 40 are highly educated
- They are healthier than ever before
- They are committed to doing quality work
- They bring patience, expertise, maturity, and stability
- They have great experience
- They bring good connections to an employer
- They are great mentors
- Turnover rates are lower among workers over 40
- They’re not gaining experience just to move on to another employer
Taking these into account, you’re looking like a damn fine candidate from where we’re sitting. Time for some more of that real-world proof:
Vera Wang was a figure skater and journalist before she decided to change paths and become a bridal wear designer at aged 40. Today, she is one of the most sought-after designers in the world.
Before becoming a TV host and comedian, Joy Behar worked as a high school English teacher until the age of 40. Why did she give up on that career despite having a master’s degree in English instruction? In her own words, “I just didn’t want to do it anymore.”
Changing careers at 50
Asking yourself if it's OK to start a new career at 50? Whether you like it or not, you likely have more than a decade of your working life to go. That's a long time to put up with a work situation that you're not happy with. It's more than worth taking the time to define what success looks like to you at this season of your life.
While you may have fears of facing ageism, a late in life career change - when well considered and planned - may still be in your best interest. Remember that Ronald Reagan famously announced he was running as governor of California when he was 54. Quite the change from his successful acting career. Plus, Leo Goodwin was 50 when he founded a little insurance company called Geico - so, you're certainly in good company!
Changing careers at 60
You may not be looking at retirement just yet, but you may have fears that your employer is already thinking about this. The good news is that you have had longer to build your professional network, which you can lean into when looking for new opportunities.
You're certainly not alone at looking to switch things up in this decade of your life. Harland Sanders was 62 when he franchised Kentucky Fried Chicken in 1952. Before that he worked as a lawyer, railroad worker, and gas station operator.
When it comes to work, age ain’t nothing but a number!
Where to start a late in life career change
One of the best places to start when considering how to change careers is with yourself. A new career opportunity isn’t likely to just fall into your lap. Many potential career changers don’t know what they want to do next – they just know their working life is unsatisfying.
Start by assessing your own interests, followed by your personal skills. Review these lists and brainstorm what career opportunities they might lead you to. In your current career as a personal assistant, you probably have high levels of transferable skills such as organization, excellent writing skills, and vast amounts of creative problem-solving abilities.
However, your primary area of interest may be reading novels, watching movies, and daydreaming your own life story.
Also consider your career goals. Do you want to make more money? Do something more rewarding? Are you looking for your dream job or just one that offers more flexibility? These questions will help you narrow down a field and may be useful later on when you start job hunting and then when you nab that job interview. Take a look at our favorite career lessons from successful founders and see how you can apply those lessons to your own career goals.
When you pair your interests with these skills, you may find that a career in writing might be the right choice for you. See how that works? If you are still struggling to figure it out, consider consulting a career coach. In the meantime, read our tips on whether or not you should apply for that job here.
Next steps
Once you have a good grasp of who you are, what you like, and some of your wildest dreams about how to change careers, you can start to get into some solid research. The internet will be your best friend during this process. You can get yourself going by merely searching for jobs.
Start your job search with work that requires your skills. For example, “jobs that are good for creative problem-solvers.” You can also search for jobs that are good for your personality type. You may also look into the job market. It’s great to want to become a tightrope walker in mid-career, but what are the chances you will find a job?
Don’t be afraid to get some additional information. Proper research will do a lot in the way of finding potential careers (make a list!), but it’s the people in these roles that will be your best resources.
Talk to professionals
Once you have made a list of three to five potential career paths for you, think through friends, family, and colleagues who may have connections in this industry. Tell them you are considering a career transition and are gathering information. Make some calls and see if you can set up an information interview or a shadowing. You can even ask for a bit of career advice.
You can try to simply meet up with someone in the industry and pick their brains. Offer to take them out to coffee or meet them in their office and have a list of questions prepared for them. These questions can range from general information about what they do to the qualifications a company would require of them.
If you can set up a job shadowing, that might be even better. Contact a family member or a friend in an industry that you’re interested in. Ask them if they’d mind if you shadowed them at work for a day, or even just half of the day.
Shadowing gives you a first-hand look at what a day in the life of this career looks like, and it will help you decide whether it’s something that you’re genuinely interested in or not.
Try it
There are a few different ways that you can get your feet in the door a little bit before diving into applications head-first with an unrelated and unimpressive resume. A great way that you can do this is by volunteering your services, if possible. This also requires little sacrifice except for time. Quitting your current job to switch careers if you are unsure about what you really want could leave you worse off than when you started.
If you think you may enjoy non-profit work or community service coordination, try volunteering at your local shelter, soup kitchen, or after-school community center. You may find that you love helping the homeless and at-risk children, or you could decide that the work isn’t for you. Deciding how to change careers is so much easier when you have had a trial run.
You can also try freelancing your services if possible. That’s another way to keep your day job and still be advancing your career change. If you want to try to give writing a chance, try contacting some of your favorite bloggers and asking if you can write a guest post. You may not get paid for your efforts, but you could have some work published to add to your portfolio.
And what’s more, if someone likes your work, they’re likely to either reach out to you for more or recommend you to another colleague. See what kind of responses you get just by putting yourself out there – you never know! And keep your LinkedIn profile up-to-date with your new skills so prospective contacts and employers know you are on the move. LinkedIn is full of people wondering how to change careers, so be sure to look for inspiration.
Education
In some instances, a midlife or late in life career change may mean furthering your education. Just as changing your career can be scary and intimidating, so can going back to school be a leap for someone later in life. However, there are tons of resources available today that make it easier than ever to develop new skills.
A drastic career change, such as going from being a teacher to being a veterinarian, is going to require a more substantial amount of schooling. But other career changes may require a few simple courses or even the education provided by the company to learn new skills.
If you can find a company that’s willing to send you back to school, you’ll be in good hands.
Start small by taking one short course in the field you are interested in. Your local community college may offer courses in journalism, finance, cooking or whatever interests you. Not only can education be beneficial to your career, but it can also help solidify whether or not you like the option.
If you truly have decided this is how to change careers, find out what kind of educational steps you’re going to have to take. Additionally, see if there are related jobs you can work in while receiving your education. For example, you may be able to work in a vet’s office developing animal-handling know-how while earning your degree in the profession.
Make connections
At this point in your life, you have probably heard it said that it’s not about what you do, it’s about who you know. Lots of people secure new jobs based on their networks. When a friend knows a friend whose company is hiring, it’s an opportunity for that friend.
In fact, some experts would estimate that as many as 85% of open job positions are filled through networking. Luckily, as a person in midlife, you know plenty of people. Mine your contacts!
Use professional online sites to make connections with businesses and attend local networking events. Make yourself a business card that you can hand out to people when you meet them. Even running into a local entrepreneur in your town’s coffee shop can turn into a professional opportunity, so always be ready to talk to people and make an impression.
Don’t forget about your social media contacts either. You never know who knows someone who knows someone.
Best career change jobs
You might think that some jobs are better than others in terms of transitioning into a new career, but it really depends on the transferable skills that you can take with you on the way (and how good you are at them).
For example, organizational skills might not be the top priority for a teacher (although they are undoubtedly important), but if a teacher were an organizational wizard, then a move into a distant career like logistics might not be so far fetched. Juggling priorities, responding to unexpected situations and shouldering considerable responsibilities come with the territory in both cases. You might not think teaching and logistics are natural fits, but it is the blend of skills and how proficient you are at them that makes the difference.
It may also help you make your case if you can show that you have made a successful transition previously. Career changes are normal, but they still entail a reasonable amount of risk, so show that you understand what it takes.
Key takeaways
- A career change when you're unsatisfied regardless of your age is rarely a terrible idea.
- Your experience at 30 doesn't match your experience at 50: approach your career search accordingly depending on your situation.
- Consider your game plan for your midlife or late in life career change step by step.
- Take inspiration from other late in life career changers and enjoy the journey.
Changing careers doesn’t have to be so overwhelming that you force yourself to be happy with where you are now. By following these steps and developing your skills through professional connections, on-the-job training, additional education, and volunteering, you can find your way to a new career in no time.
