Page 80 - Marky Stein - Fearless Career Change_ The Fast Track to Success in a New Field (2004)

Fearless Career Change

Did you ever design a room in your home, draw a map, or
compose photographs? Your spatial, coordination, and design
skills might be used in scores of different contexts.
Even if the career of your dreams seems to have nothing to do
with your last job, transferable skills from your social life, a hobby,
schooling, intellectual, or artistic or spiritual pursuits may catapult
you into something new and different in your work life.
Some talent that was buried may surface and translate or trans-
fer to a real job in the real world. Sometimes just one skill is needed
to bridge the gap to your new pursuit.
Take a moment and think creatively about how one or more of
the six preferred skills in the last chapter may be the ones you can
rely on or expand upon in a new vocation. If none of the six you
picked seem applicable, find one to three others on the list that are
applicable and do the following brief exercise.

Skills I can do and that I like, which could be used in my next
career are:

1. ___________________________________________________
2. ___________________________________________________
3. ___________________________________________________

Strategy 2. Strategic Education
Strategic education means enrolling in one or more courses in a cer-
tificate or degree program and beginning a new job before com-
pleting the program or simply not completing the degree at all.
For example, Nancy used a wide range of strategies to break into
the publishing field. One of those was what I call “strategic educa-
tion.” She enrolled in a copyediting course at a local community col-
lege to pick up some new knowledge required in her new field, and
before she finished it, a book publishing company hired her.
Community (two-year) colleges do not have complex registra-
tion and application procedures. It’s just about as convenient for
someone who already has another advanced degree to pick up a
couple of classes for general interest as it is for someone just get-
ting out of high school to register and declare a major in order to
complete an associate’s degree.

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