Reviewing Your Career

There could be many reasons why you wish to review your career, such as:

• You don't enjoy your current job, finding it stressful, frustrating or even boring.
• You think that you are in the wrong kind of job altogether and need a more radical change.
• You want to develop your career to increase your employability.
• You feel that there is no room for career development, either because your employer does not recognise your potential, or there just may not be an obvious step up the ladder.
• You need to find a better fit between home life and work life - less travelling, more flexible or shorter hours.
• You need a way back into paid work, after redundancy, an educational course, or a career break.
• You have a longing to move into other forms of work, such as self-employment, voluntary work or part-time work.

Starting Your Review

When you start to review your career, you need to ask yourself the following three questions:

1. What do I want from work?
   This will highlight your work values .
2. What am I good at?
   This will highlight your transferable skills .
3. What kind of job would I enjoy?
   This will highlight your work interests .

Looking At Your Options

It's a good idea to thoroughly explore your career options, and consider any possible job that you would be interested in doing - no matter how outrageous or off the wall it may seem. Just write down any ideas that come to mind. Visualise your perfect job. What would an ideal working day consist of? What would you be doing, and in what surroundings? Find inspiration by talking to family, friends and colleagues, or by looking at job adverts in newspapers and journals.

If you are already in employment, take a fresh look at your current position, and reflect on whether it would meet your needs if you could change it in some way. Think also about other jobs elsewhere in your company - jobs in other departments, locations, and in other areas or occupations.

Refining Your Search

Once you have generated a list of possible career options, you need to think about the implications of each one, such as working hours, salary, location or the need to study.

In looking at each career option, it is important to be honest with yourself about its likely advantages and disadvantages and refine your list of options accordingly.

• How closely does it match the values, interests, and skills that you identified earlier?
• Are there trade-offs between certain aspects of the work, for example the salary and the hours you'll need to devote to it?
• How attracted are you by the work itself?
• How will any of the pros and cons of the job affect your family, partner or social life?
• What do you think the workplace culture will be like?
• What kinds of people might you be working with?

The Next Step

Once you have refined your list of career options, you will need to identify what steps to take to secure that job.

For instance, you might need to:

• Change the content of your c...

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