People change jobs all the time. According to theBureau of Labor Statisticsthe oldest people in the workforce are likely to have held more than a dozen jobs over the course of their lives. These are not only new titles within a company, but also likely involve larger career shifts.
Due to globalization and changes in technology, the need to change career paths can occur for people even in the last ten years of their working lives. I personally recently transitioned to the private sector after more than thirty years as a university faculty member. If you are making a significant career change, what can you do to ease the adjustment to the new role and contribute quickly?
Don’t be afraid of what you don’t know
By the time you’re deep into your career, you’ll have learned a lot about the working world. That expertise has helped you navigate many situations and has often given you insight or wisdom that people newer to the workplace did not have. As a result, it can be difficult to find yourself in a situation where you are no longer the trusted expert.
Let that go.
Your value at work and your identity don’t have to be tied to knowing everything. You bring a lot of wisdom to the table (we’ll talk about that in a moment), but it’s okay to have a lot of things that are new to you. You may think that your colleagues will respect you more if you claim how much you know. In reality, they will appreciate the clarity you can give them about what you don’t know.
Plus, it’s actually fun (and healthy) to learn new things. Being exposed to new ways of working, new approaches to interacting with the world and new knowledge is stimulating. As a bonus, if your brain can’t predict everything that’s going to happen, you’ll record a lot of new memories, making time seem like it’s moving more slowly. At an age when you feel like your life is passing you by, that’s valuable.
Listen more than you play
My general advice for starting a new job comes from jazz. If you play jazz, you will probably encounter new musicians. Despite the temptation to play a lot of notes quickly to see what you can do, the standard advice is to listen more than you play. That way you can match what you play to the style of what everyone around you is doing.
Likewise, when you make a career pivot, people will bring perspectives to their work that differ from what you’ve encountered in the past. Even if you’ve been hired to bring some aspect of your expertise to the workplace, you still need to make sure you play it in the style of the people around you. And you can’t do that until you hear from them.
When you start a new job in that career pivot, let everyone else talk first. Resist the urge to voice your opinion early and often. Even if you hear people say things you completely disagree with, let the conversation continue. Organizations often do things a certain way because of some element of their history. Understanding what people do and why can help you see wisdom in their work that may not be obvious. And if you feel like you want to suggest a change, listening can help you connect your suggestions to their reasons for doing what they do.
Use your sustainable skills
As you make a career pivot, you’ll find that there are some things you’ve learned well that don’t translate from one industry to another. Most of these skills that have suddenly become useless involve specific tasks that were integral to your old career and not useful in the new one. As a college instructor, I was very comfortable with the learning management system that students use to access course materials and submit assignments. I don’t need those skills in my new role.
Instead, the things that translate from one career path to another are more sustainable skills in problem solving, critical thinking, interpersonal interactions, and cultural awareness. For example, I recently found myself in a meeting where I was asked to comment on a new process that would be used to manage a project. Before attempting to evaluate the process, I asked many questions about the problem the process was intended to solve. Later I realized that I brought a broader set of problem-solving strategies to the conversation. So even as I got to know the company, I was still able to contribute to the evaluation using skills I had already honed.
More generally, if you’re changing careers, think about the skills that will help you apply your experience in new situations. Your success on this new path will depend on maximizing the value of those sustainable skills in the new environment.
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