Feeling Confused About Your Career Direction?

If you are, it’s not surprising. With the rapid changes and upheavals in technology, globalization, demographics, health, and the economy, new careers are constantly cropping up, while others are contracting.

This wild west of 21st century careers presents opportunities and challenges to designing and thriving in a career path.This reality applies to you whether you’re in transition, currently employed or own your business or practice. No segment of the workforce is exempt: middle managers, Millennials, job seekers and professionals returning to the job market after an absence are all affected.

This state of affairs is a perfect good news/bad news story.

Not everything is gloom and doom although some fields have shrunk. However, even the new or evolving careers present a challenge because you have to figure out whether you’re ready or able to make a change.

Are you overwhelmed by the opportunities exploding exponentially in growing careers that you could enter?

If you’re a mid-career transitioner, leveraging your skills and experience to move into cybersecurity, advanced manufacturing or evolving business operations (DevOps) might be for you. As a Millennial, you have a wide array of new fields to choose from: robotics and drones, biotech and elearning, big data, and geospatial, to name a few. Job seekers may need to reframe their job targets, branding and campaign to changing job titles and descriptions in every field. Professionals re-entering the workforce may want to look into some of the newer opportunities like digital marketing or new health-related positions.

In addition to being overwhelmed by new possibilities, you may be feeling discouraged by the contraction in your profession or industry.

For example, in the financial sector, recent automation and the application of sophisticated algorithms has created a situation where many higher-paid commercial lenders, traders and branch managers are being downsized. If this is you, it’s necessary to look at your skill set and future training in new ways. While this is less likely to happen to Millennials, even they may face a changed industry when they graduate. Demonstrating related work experiences, internships, or volunteer assignments can improve your credentials and keep you more up-to-date with your prospective field.

You may think you are too risk-averse to explore some of the newer fields that typically provide a less reliable permanent job status and require a more entrepreneurial mind set.

Some of these fields are well suited for most of the job groups- from middle management to Millennials and more. They may encompass some of the new health informatics, energy, patient advocacy, marketing, and mental health. However, in many cases, they provide great upside advantages but also greater downside risk.

If you don’t recognize yourself in any of the preceding categories, you may be feeling like you can stay in your field, but feel you have plateaued and have no opportunities for advancement.

This is more typical for a mid-career transitioner. All it may take to reinvent yourself and skills is a bit more training to become a new-style supply chain manager, transfer into some newer information technology fields, and more.

Over the next year, we will provide tips on how to expand your perspective, improve your flexibility, cultivate lucky breaks and launch a successful job search.

We will also include client success stories from a variety of careers and industries and career stages. Be sure to check back with us to learn more.