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Sometimes you just know it is time for a change. Time to reimagine your professional self and to reinvent – or reboot – your career. You might feel overwhelmed by your current role or underwhelmed by it. Perhaps you want more financial gain; your career stretches in front of you like a tunnel; or you’re searching for something that feels more “you”, more fulfilling or more exciting. If this is you, you’re not alone.
In 2022, a report from management consulting firm McKinsey & Company found that 40% of workers surveyed were considering quitting their current jobs in the next three to six months. Another global survey by Deloitte showed that 56% of Gen Z workers in Ireland and 40% of millennials said they plan to leave their current roles within two years. Alongside this, an abundance of research shows job satisfaction takes the form of a gently curving U, beginning high in youth and bottoming out in our mid-forties, resulting in many re-evaluating their careers as they reach their late thirties.
The reasons for dissatisfaction are varied. For some, their perspective on what their “dream job” is has changed, especially since the pandemic. Others are not happy with how they’re being treated or are not willing to accept a diminishing work-life balance. Nearly half of the Gen Z workers surveyed by Deloitte said they feel stressed “all or most of the time”, while one in three from the Gen Z cohort and one in two millennials said that a better work-life balance is the “main consideration” for a potential career shift.
As a coach, I witness the desire for an increased sense of fulfilment and balance with my clients, many of whom are navigating a career transition in their thirties, forties and fifties. The traditional idea that work-life balance was about splitting your time 50/50 between the two has been rejected. Instead, people are seeking to feel fulfilled in both areas, recognising they are intrinsically connected when it comes to experiencing an overall sense of wellbeing.
“The traditional idea that work-life balance was about splitting your time 50/50 between the two has been rejected. Instead, people are seeking to feel fulfilled in both of these areas.”
Making a shift in your career – whether it is seeking a big step up or completely reinventing your professional self to rediscover a sense of purpose – is not easy. It requires a shift in your identity, and it means leaving familiar territory. Given that humans have a strong need for acceptance – it is what ensured our survival in the past – the challenge of this shift should not be underestimated. If it is not underpinned by a strong motivation, it can often stall and lead to further feelings of disillusionment. Here are some tried and tested strategies to get you started…
Before you can take steps to make any change, it is important to develop a firm understanding of who you are, where you are right now and what you might want to bring to a new chapter. In coaching, we speak about the “towards” and “away” motivation for change. If you are being honest with yourself, is a reinvention the result of moving away from something that is not fulfilling for you or is it moving towards something that excites you? Both can play a part, but research shows having a higher ratio of “towards” vs “away” leads to a higher success rate.
Sinéad Brady, career psychologist and founder of career consultancy A Career to Love, encourages physically picking up a pen and notebook. “The act of writing is very powerful,” explains Brady. “It activates pressure points in the index finger and thumb, which have been shown to light up both hemispheres of the brain… This can help to rationalise thoughts and helps us better understand them.”
“If you are being honest with yourself, is a reinvention the result of moving away from something that is not fulfilling for you, or is it moving towards something that excites you?”
Taking time for self-reflection, before making any bold moves, can allow space to identify your personal motivating factors. Ask yourself what you currently do, in work or elsewhere, that energises or inspires you? What tasks do you look forward to or complete with a buzzy “Go me!” feeling? What inspires you into action on the wettest, coldest morning? Similarly, what do you do that zaps your energy? What do you find boring or even irritating? For all of these questions, if you are in a present employment, ask yourself is it the job itself that leads to energising or energy-sapping feelings or is it the environment? This last reflection can be an important indicator of moving “away” from, for example, a toxic work culture as opposed to a work function.
My clients often struggle with regular journalling (as I do myself ), so I plan to adopt Sinéad’s soft but effective approach. “Sixty seconds,” she states. “Start there. Set a timer for 60 seconds and start to write. It is not about writing pages and pages.”
When it comes to journalling for career shifts, Sinéad also recommends drawing a career timeline and listing all the jobs you have had since your first paid job. Next, list the skills you developed in those roles. She emphasises a job title might not accurately reflect the skills it required. Then, take note of stand-out achievements to date – educational achievements, awards, promotions, etc, as well as the key personal moments that map onto that timeline. What choices did you make in your professional life that impacted your personal, and vice versa? Why was that important to you at the time?
From here, you can identify the skills you have gathered through life, including periods of unpaid work. As Sinéad emphasises, it is important to own the “gaps” in your CV – though you may not have been in paid employment, you were building skills, including family/people management, financial planning or logistics if travelling.
A clear understanding of your current skills can help you to decide if you need to invest resources, including time, to learn new skills required for your reinvention. It is also a good place to start to separate your financial worth to an employer from your self-worth. Ashley Paré, chief executive of Own Your Worth, encourages us to consciously separate these two things. In her programmes, she reminds women that as a person, “you are priceless”. There is no financial figure that can be put on your head. It is your skills and experience that are worth a financial figure to an employer. This is a powerful distinction that can rewrite the story you have in your own head that “I am not worth 50/100/150k to a company”, replacing it with a belief that your skills are, indeed, worth that figure. Ashley also encourages women to decide on the figure they need to be paid in order to feel valued by their employer.
If money is a driving factor to your decision for change, popular wisdom suggests not changing companies for less than a 20-30% increase. In addition, factor in the benefits you have in your current company. When considering today’s pay, also consider tomorrow’s income growth – ask potential employers about signing bonuses, pay progression and what you can expect in terms of regular pay increases.
For many, work is a fundamental way to find meaning. It is a way to express their talents and contribute to communities. No job or career is perfect – there will be things you love about it and things that aren’t ideal, but evidence points to higher levels of fulfilment when you can align, as much as possible, what you love to do with what you have to do. When clients tell me they feel “out of kilter” or lacking in energy in their lives, we often look at their work because if a job doesn’t play to your passions or strengths, you’re likely to leave the office drained. Our energy is finite and regularly feeling depleted, due to a mismatch between your skills or values and your work, takes its toll. Though you might leave your work with enough time to spend with family and friends, if you’re exhausted from work, you won’t have the cognitive energy to dedicate yourself fully to them or your interests. This impacts the ability to replenish, which leads to a feeling of compromising personal life for work life and, ultimately, being unfulfilled, and unbalanced.
For Brian Crooke, founder of Workplace Wellbeing Ireland, a key element to finding balance is finding purpose in your work. The New York Times bestselling author Daniel Pink identifies three motivators, Brian explains: “They are purpose, autonomy and mastery. If any of these three are missing, then you will see people reconsidering their career.” Brian believes it is purpose that will drive you on when things aren’t working out as you expected. “It is this purpose that will motivate you to get out of bed every morning,” he says. If you are feeling underwhelmed by your current role, Brian advises asking yourself: Do you know what you want to do or the area you’d like to work in? Is there a real purpose that draws you to this work? “Find your purpose, and the career will follow,” he says.
“You’re not alone – 40% of workers are considering quitting their current job in the next three to six months.”
If your career pivot is less about change and more about growth, consider if there are opportunities with your current employer. Women “are inclined not to ask for things and we tend to make assumptions that we are not sufficiently well qualified,” explains Marie Moynihan, senior vice-president, Global Human Resources at Dell Technologies. “But remember, without asking, you will never know if your assumptions match reality.”
When it comes to seeking a new opportunity with an employer, she says, “By not asking, you are guaranteeing yourself the outcome… that you will never get there! By asking, you are opening the door, exploring if this might be something that could work.”
When you decide to change direction, anything can happen, including the unthinkable. Unlimited possibilities may feel overwhelming, but they can feel less intimidating when you explicitly consider the unimaginable outcomes. This is another time to put pen to paper or explore this with a supportive friend. Reflect on the best-case and worst-case scenarios if you make a significant change. How do they make you feel? Can you problem-solve or troubleshoot for these scenarios? For example, if you decide to retrain, you will not be able to earn during the taught and study hours. Can you pause your mortgage repayments to ease the pressure? Are there grants available? As you reflect on these scenarios, notice what feelings come up for you and explore what’s behind them. Often, it is a time that fear arises, but what specifically are you feeling fear about? If excitement is the dominant feeling, what specifically is sparking that feeling? Identifying what’s behind these feelings can help you to use them to fully inform a decision.
One thing that can hold people back from a fulfilling reinvention is our childhood training to seek permission. So, give yourself permission to write the next chapter of your career. It is your story. Enjoy writing it.
This article originally appeared in the Spring 2023 issue of IMAGE Magazine.