Bringing career change to life - sharing one of my career move stories

To help rocket fuel your 2018, over the last couple of weeks I've shared how to generate ideas and start taking action on your next career move.

To bring that to life, I said I'd share part of my story and a career change that often interests people - how I moved from corporate banking front office (a Relationship Director managing a portfolio of £25m+ turnover businesses) to head office leadership (across customer experience, Risk and change programme roles).

This switch between two totally different parts of an organisation is similar to quitting and starting a different role - the culture, role requirements and skill sets are different.

So, to start with, this is how I was feeling:
- frustrated that I had more potential than was currently being utilised
- angry that clients could shout at me and I still needed to keep a smile on my face
- now that I've hit Director, what next? Where's my next career move?
- trapped, with clients controlling my diary and priorities - limited ability to plan and review
- ungrateful. I had brilliant colleagues and great relationships with lots of clients - so what was my problem?

Do you identify with any of these?

The first step to career change is identifying that you no longer want to feel this way and that it's ok to want 'more'. To want to grow into your potential. There is always a push or pull factor. Mine was a push (e.g. I want to do something different because this role is no longer for me) vs. a pull factor (I've spotted my dream job and want to go for that).

I hired a life coach to help me work out what I wanted (another story for another time) and we determined it was1) a leadership role (more that 4+ direct reports),  2) an interesting problem that needed solving (something brain hurty), 3) in London.

The next thing I did was tell everyone. It amazes me how secretive people are about changing roles. Clearly you don't want a boss to think you're demotivated, but if they don't know what you're thinking they can't help you!

I told anyone who would sit still my 2 job criteria. I used my whole network and bought and consumed a lot of tea (Costa did well out of me that month).

The reason why you WAIT until you've decided on your job criteria before using your network is because otherwise you confuse your network. You get annoying suggestions from people to work in roles identical to the one you already have (people do pigeon-hole you - watch out) but in Timbuktu...

Being clear with your criteria is crucial.

Sure enough, someone in my network saw a job I might like the look of. I did. I met the future boss, went through an interview process (this part is another story for another time) and got the job.

The point I want to share is that I would NEVER have spotted this job on my own, trawling through job descriptions. You never know what role title to search for do you? It's MUCH easier to tell everyone what you're looking for and then they'll think of you when something relevant comes up. You also don't always have to leave your current organisation to find your ideal next role.

I hope that brings it to life for you - in short, get clear on your criteria for your next job, do a good job ofexplaining this to people and get ready for their suggestions to roll in!

Wishing you all the best

Kat

Kat Hutchings
Career Coach, Kat the Coach Ltd
kat@katthecoach.co.uk 


P.S. For the short version, if you want a new job use my last couple of e-mails to work out what you want and then tell everyone so they help you!
I have a place available to start working with me in January - if you've been on the fence this is a great opportunity to apply for a complimentary call to see if coaching is for you.