Changing Your Career Later In Life

Changing Your Career Later In Life
Changing a career can be a complex and intimidating affair but can also entail great rewards. People, especially those who started working in the era when lifetime employment with planned retirement was the norm, tend to have a natural aversion to changing careers brought on by fears of the hassles associated with obtaining new skills, possibly attending school to develop those skills and the loss of seniority and authority that can be a part of starting a new career path.

In most cases, individuals feel more flexible about their career when they're in their 20's, when they're developing a set of skills but haven't specialized enough to be firmly set upon one path. Generally, younger individuals are still near the bottom as far as salary is concerned as well, and changing their field doesn't entail as much economic shock as it sometimes does later in life. Add to this that those who choose to raise families may not start doing so until their late 20's and early 30's and there is a major reason why changing careers when one is younger is much easier.

The technological revolution, for all the benefits it has brought to people's lives, has also forced individuals who were already set on one career path to consider a change in career plans, oftentimes later in life than they would have preferred. The adjustments can be very difficult. Oftentimes, at those later stages of one's working life, it entails a cut in wages, a loss of titles that were earned over years of service and the rather unpleasant feeling of starting all over again when one had expected that part of their life to be over. The benefits, however, can be substantial.

Changing a career is a great reason to go back to school to develop new skills. Seeking formal training can oftentimes allow an individual to start their new career from a better position than would be possible if they were to go in with no training at all. Training also allows an individual to command higher wages from the start, lessening the sometimes significant economic difficulties involved. It can be discouraging to start over from scratch, as it were, but many will find that the skills they developed in their old career translate into the new. The experience gained by having responsibilities and by having authority in a field can never be taken away, even if one's skills need updating.

Changing a career can also be a source of great opportunities financially, even if they take a bit of time to manifest. Improved and broadened knowledge of technology is always useful and can be applied across a wide variety of fields, generally, so going back for extra training has potential benefits that may be wider-ranging than first thought.

Individuals tend to think of themselves as unable to adapt to changing workplace situations a bit too hastily. If one's job as become drudgery, the excitement of changing career can often offset the difficulties.


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