Reprinted with permission
Be what you want to be
Author: Juan-Carlo Tomas Publication: Sydney Morning Herald
The point: You're fed up and are not going to take it any more. So what do you do when you want to leap into a different field?
One of the latest phrases doing the rounds of the workplaces isn't synergy (that was hip two years ago), but the quantum leap.
And we're not talking about Scott Bakula or anything even mildly paranormal here. The quantum leap refers to changing the nature of your job, drastically.
In some cases that could be making the move from blue-collar work to a white-collar role, or vice versa, but in many cases if you've got itchy feet it's because you're feeling trapped.
"It's common for people to want to make drastic career changes, but out of every 10 clients we work with we probably get three who are really passionate about wanting to do something different, and one who actually makes the move," says Greg Smith , a consultant with the New York-based career management firm Lee Hecht Harrison.
"When you change your career path you often have to take a step backwards in the new career path. Earning less money and not being at the same level in the pecking order that you may be used to means that it's sometimes too hard a move for the average person."
Smith says that people's identities are often tied up with their jobs, and if they're in a job they don't like they have to realise how this can affect them. In some cases, this realisation can provide the motivation needed to get moving.
"The greatest difficulty is trying to build effective relationships with new people in your industry of preference, then selling yourself in such a way so you have confidence in your ability," he says.
Smith says most people make their quantum leaps when their regular employment changes or stops, say, due to retrenchment.
"It's unusual to find someone who will make this kind of change by deciding one day that they're really frustrated and want to move into a new career," he says.
"Because they're in a situation where they have to look for another job, they're more likely to go after something they're passionate about, rather than just going back onto the old treadmill."
But making quantum leaps is possible if you've got the willpower. Scott Campbell, 33, changed direction when he lost his job as a baker after the bakery was damaged in the 1989 Newcastle earthquake.
"There were these ads on TV about becoming a prison officer at Long Bay and I thought it was a good idea," he said.
"If you can work in an environment like that you can work anywhere."
But while that change was a quantum leap at the time, it wasn't his dream vocation. He gave up the job four years later, after a colleague was jabbed with a needle at work.
"The experience was good in that I learnt a lot about people management, anger management and communication skills," he says. "But [the jab] was scary."
He moved on to sing in an indie band, did a Wesley Mission course in sound engineering, developed a taste for managing events, and has recently formed his own marketing and event management company, called The Event Doctor. And he's becoming a father later this year.
Smith says examples like Campbell are rare, but illustrate the type of strategies quantum leapers use when they're seeking to move on.
"These people go out, research, build connections and gather data through interviews," he reveals.
"They understand what they need to do to make the move into their new industry and get a feel for what their marketability is before they jump ship and work on it.
"You don't make the jump unless you know what you're jumping into."
Which means the main barrier preventing people from moving from one career to another is motivation. If you're locked into a job you don't enjoy, but don't know where to go, you need to do your homework. Research career options, talk to friends and family about areas of your life where you show talent or can manage things easily. Then plan your move and chip away at it in stages.
"A lot of people don't have confidence in themselves and they listen to too much negativity," Campbell says.
Winds of change
Why bother?
- Higher job satisfaction
- Greater personal satisfaction and fulfilment.
Essential ingredients:
- Be willing to start all over again
- Recognise the need to build relationships in the industry you're targeting.
Prepare by:
- Researching organisations and people within your preferred industry
- Make contacts and find out how you compare with the people they're seeking
- Mix with people with common, sustaining interests.
The last word:
- Be prepared to eat a little humble pie.
Confidence in yourself
Kevin Brumpton, 41. Comedy writer.
Kevin Brumpton likes to laugh - only he wasn't sure he could make a living from it. He was a major in the Australian Army working in transport and logistic management when he decided to make a change.
"The Army was a fabulous first career with a variety of different jobs," he says. "I was always interested in comedy and satirical writing and I tinkered with it for a long time, writing manuscripts and submitting stuff to publishers. I knew it was time for a change [from the army], so I worked towards setting myself up for it and looked for an opportunity to leap towards that change."
He started a satirical newspaper and gradually his confidence picked up.
"There was a transitional stage where I developed skills in my own time," he says. "That newspaper was the catalyst for moving on to other things, because people got to see what I could do. I guess you could say that as my interest grew I had more success."
One of his papers ended up in front of radio personality John Laws, and he was hired as a writer in 1995 and later became a producer on the show.
From there he moved on to Doug Mulray's radio shows on 2SM and 2WS and then to TV shows Backberner and Good News Week.
Now, he is staff writer at Backberner, and also writes for other radio and TV shows such as SBS's Life Support. He runs his own business, Silent Partner Writing Services, for corporate writing work.
His advice to others? "Decide what you want to do and pursue it," he says.
Paying her way
Anna-Marie Barbara, 26. Graphic design student.
Former florist Anna-Marie Barbara was in year 10 when she realised she wanted to be a graphic designer, but the courses were too expensive.
"When I left school, I couldn't afford it," Barbara says. "My parents couldn't pay for it, and at the time my brother was a commercial florist with his own shop. I
fell into it."
A trip to Europe in 1997 provided the motivation she needed to make her move. Having given floristry a chance - and found it wasn't for her - she wanted to do something different.
"As a teenager I was always into art and drawing, and wanted to do something artistic," she says. "I suppose I've always liked art, and always had that natural talent."
Thinking she'd need a transition period when moving from one career to another, Barbara took on a series of office jobs to save money for her course and became a full-time graphic design student at Billy Blue School of Graphic Arts in January.
"My first year cost $11,900 and second year cost $12,500," she says. "I had to work to get the money to pay for it. You have to take responsibility for yourself."
Reprinted by kind permission of The Sydney Morning Herald
Mention the war - it's half the battle
By Eric Wilson
If you haven't recognised your own informal training and qualifications, you can't expect anyone else to. In the job
interview, formal qualifications are starting to take a back seat to demonstrable skills through personal war stories.
In the bad old days, sometimes the reason for training was to get a piece of paper. Now training companies are pushing certification more as a motivational tool than a meal ticket. Why the change?
Interviewers are starting to rely more on "behaviour and interview" techniques than your pieces of paper. How you've performed in the past is now regarded as the best guide to how you will go. Jill Noble, of Directions Career Guidance (an Ajilon group company), says that explaining how you have applied your training is often more important than whether your IT skills were acquired formally or informally. And in the recruiter's mind "soft skills" - the way we relate to people - is becoming a key to avoiding hiring failure.
"If you have persuaded people in the past, this is how you will perform in the future," she says. "So can you give me an example of persuading someone around to your way of thinking? You have to explain the situation, what you did and the outcome. That way the interviewer will know if you can cut the mustard. By asking questions this way, they can increase their performance prediction from 25 per cent off (asking about) your curriculum vitae (alone) to 65 per cent."
Of course to win the job, your part in the war story must demonstrate industry best practice.
"There is obviously the very formal training with certificates and diplomas," Noble says. "Then there are the ad-hoc roles you have been in. There's an argument that professional development is bigger than formal training."
The new emphasis in the job interview on applied training means, in the first instance, one should simply train to be the best one can be. In other words, short, highly focused courses are now in season.
One of many providers is Monash IT, a subsidiary of the university in Melbourne with 60 lecturers and instructors, 70 per cent of whom work part-time in industry.
"We allow a mixture of conceptual teaching and practical," says John Dowell, the outfit's managing director. "It's a bit more challenging and rewarding. We are not commodity educators. We teach problem-solving. Companies are not so interested in degrees and postgraduates but a practical skill to do a project."
Does this mean vendor certifications are becoming less important? According to Noble, that depends on who you are pitching to.
"CCIEs are like gold dust," she says, "but with an MCSE or even a Java certification, you might ask if they really differentiate. Perhaps serving the Java user group may put you in better stead. Certification is important in some roles - large corporations expect certification while smaller companies might not be that fussed, wanting to see a portfolio of your work to see if you can do the job."
What if you have a certification but still can't get a job? The typical response is to consider retraining in another area. But you might have missed a step.
"Most people who come to me for career guidance are either looking for work or the `new avenue'," Noble says. "A lot of mature-age IT workers contemplating reskilling or up-skilling think that's the only option . . . A lot of people should top up their tech skills rather than starting over."
Training to be an expert in what you already do, either formally or informally, could be better than trying to reinvent yourself. But how do you get the job interviews that are never advertised?
"Network and talk to people - really put yourself on the line," Noble says. "Small to medium-sized enterprises recruit by asking around - `Do you know anyone who knows?' You should be asking people the same thing. Look at the event diary in the paper. Attend a few events. Position yourself to be known when someone asks."
Learning is a state of mind, not a course. So after brainstorming, Noble says, people are often surprised to learn how much they already know. Then it's only a matter of presenting your informal training at the interview in a relevant way.
"A lot of people in IT devour manuals and textbooks, but you would never know unless you ask them," she says. "People hide subscribing to magazines because they don't want to be seen as a nerd. But it shows passion, which some employers want to see."
So by all means be a jack-of-all-trades and a master of one. Yet the so-called soft skills are not to be ignored. This is because interviewers are themselves measured by how many of their hirings work out and how many fail. And people-skill or culture-related issues happen to be the greatest factor in IT hiring failures.
Therefore, by emphasising your success in dealing with people, you're selling yourself to the interviewer as a better bet for his or her own performance review.
Noble gives this insight: "Persuading, leading, writing, negotiating - everything with an 'ing' at the end of it is a transferable skill. Problem-solving, organising, planning . . . Acquiring skills on the job is the best way of acquiring them. That's the principle of `behaviour and interviewing' or `competency-based' interviewing."
Of course you have to have the soft skills in the first place in order to have a cache of war stories with which to demonstrate them. Noble says you can get the basics via e-learning but the usual rules of usefulness apply the same as they do to technical training.
"You really don't learn until you practise in the workforce or even use it to negotiate the price of your MCSE," she says.