The beauty of switching careers

These days, it's not uncommon to find someone who worked in marketing move into a sales job, or someone from real estate move into teaching. People in industries that have undergone major downward shifts such as the auto industry have been looking for anything they can do with their manufacturing or engineering skills. Many people who have been laid off, demoted or need to find supplementary income are trying to squeeze their experience and skills into something that will pay the bills. Even those people with glowing references and accomplishment-packed resumes have come up short, despite their best efforts.

However, if you look at this concept of "looking outside the box" for a new job positively, it can be exciting. At one point in my career before we had kids, I was working for a high-flying business magazine. We had rooftop parties every Friday in San Francisco. Anyone who worked in the dotcom industry during the boom will remember this publication. Those were thrilling, albeit stressful times. I was paid well, but worked way too hard and suffered some serious repetitive stress injuries as a result. In the end, my husband's career took us away from San Francisco to Boulder. I was relieved in one sense to get out of that pressure-cooker environment but also worried about my career: what would I do now?

I decided to take a couple of months off, do some freelance writing and reconsider my options. Feeling a bit burned out on the writing career I signed up for a personal training certification program; I loved studying again after years beating my brains out working for magazines, and the change in topic from high-tech to fitness and anatomy was totally refreshing. I got my certification and began working at the local YMCA as a trainer and group exercise instructor. It was a blast. I was paid a little more than minimum wage, but I didn't care. On the side I continued to do some writing work and fortunately, my husband's job was covering most of our bills at the time.

As it happened, within a couple of months into my new career I got pregnant and my experiment as a personal trainer was short-lived. (I did teach exercise classes through my eighth month, which was quite a sight, I'm sure). I'm so glad I took the plunge into a new career path, even though I'm not following it now. I still think about going into a fitness or health-related career because I love helping and motivating others and I love being around exercise freaks.

The experience of switching gears completely to a different career has helped me make other shifts over the years. After we had our first baby, I got back into freelance writing for a while but then got an opportunity to work as an in-house editor within a Microsoft marketing department. I wasn't sure how I would like working in marketing for a gargantuan company, but the content strategy role that I was lucky enough to land was incredibly cerebral. I had enormous latitude to do what I wanted, which made suffering through spreadsheets and presentations in our regular sales and marketing meetings much less painful.

I surprised myself again recently by realizing that after a year of doing public relations consulting in addition to my freelance corporate writing gigs, I'm enjoying that too. I get to work with ideas, smart entrepreneurs, and help reporters. Who knows what's next? I'm open to the possibilities.

I still believe that desire and persistence can carry you far, even if your road to the goal is circuitous and unprofitable at first. Our financial planner told us the story about how he got started in his career. He was fresh out of college, with no job experience, yet somehow convinced a reputable financial services company to take him on for no pay so that he could list a position with that company on his resume while he sought a paying job. Within a few months, his manager left the company and he was offered her job. It wasn't without long hours and dedication on his part, but the unexpected occurred. He was well on his way to his new career, paycheck and all!

Granted, it's not easy switching careers at the moment, given this brutal job market where narrowly-targeted experience is just the first hurdle you must overcome to get an interview. How can you sell yourself into an industry and position for which you don't have direct experience? That’s the $6 million question--yet it's worth pursuing, even now.