A blueprint for career change when you don't know what you want to do

Physician Executive, Nov-Dec, 2004 by Anna Navarro

When we completed this analysis, we boiled it down to a wish list of 15 items. This wish list served as a template for what each of them was seeking and guided our efforts in the next steps of the process.

Step 2: Translating what you want into a practical goal

Once you have that template in hand, you are ready to start brainstorming and researching alternative career solutions. This stage of the process requires both patience and persistence, because it is often necessary to explore as many as eight or 10 different career paths before finding a solution that works. Ed is a good case in point.

By the time we finished step 1, we had a pretty good idea that he wanted to be in the world of finance. But we still didn't know exactly what he wanted to do or how to get there. To figure that out, we began brainstorming possibilities and systematically investigating them.

We started with a list of nine ideas:

* Venture capitalist

* Finance manager

* Technology specialist

* Industry economist

* Finance professor

* Derivative analyst

* Investor relations manager

* Corporate finance consultant

* Stockbroker

Interestingly, the list didn't include investment banking, the field he eventually pursued.

From these we picked the three that were most intuitively interesting and launched a plan to investigate them in some detail. This involved doing library and Internet research as well as talking to people in the field.

I guided Ed to find names of people to interview through newspaper archives, Internet research, professional associations and his personal network of family and friends. I coached him about how to approach strangers, how to persuade them to talk to him and what to say during his meetings.

This research process was rocky for Ed, as it is for many people. Several of the ideas he was initially attracted to dropped out because they required too much people management. Others didn't pay well enough or required too much retraining. But as ideas dropped out, new ones emerged. That's typical.

The template of what he wanted in an ideal work situation drove his research. I had cautioned him not to expect to get 100 percent of it, but to persevere until he found a set of tradeoffs that worked for him. In practice, I have found that most career changes can bring about 80 percent of what the job seeker desires.

Ed investigated being a venture capitalist and discarded it because it seemed too risky for him. But the idea of investment banking emerged during his meetings with venture capitalists. And as he investigated it he concluded that it was a good fit for most of his criteria.

Step 3: Obtaining your goal

Once you identify your goal, the next step is to make it happen. If you have enough transferable skills to persuade employers you can do a job for them, you may be able to go directly to job hunting. Other implementation strategies include education, starting a business or modifying your existing work situation to meet more of your needs or to serve as a stepping stone to where you want to be.