I am sometimes asked how long it takes my clients to change career and the answer is that it varies. I have clients I worked with four years ago that have not yet made the transition and other clients that I finished up with six months ago who are already in their new career.
Everybody has their own unique background and set of circumstances. How quickly they make the shift often depends on the career they’re starting with, whether they’re already in the workforce, whether they want to do something that requires further study, how old their children are and the amount of work they need to do on their confidence and mindset. The list goes on.
The clients I work with are mums. They have obligations, bills to pay and children to be available for. They are not usually in a position where they can throw themselves completely into their career change endeavours and plans. Often it must fit around the edges of their life. This means that for a lot of my clients they are happy to finish up with some clarity, a plan and the self-belief that they can carry on the rest of their career change journey without me.
To illustrate the point, I thought I would take you through my own career change timeline.
Read on to see how long it took me to change career, what I did and what you can learn from it. Or download my 12-week career change plan here which takes you through the exact things you should do to get off to a flying start with your career change.
2002 – 2014 (age 22 to 34) – the misery years
These were the years when I mostly hated my job. I moved from PR to public affairs to professional services marketing and progressively became more and more miserable along the way. There were some good points – I made some fabulous friends who are still friends now, earned good money and built skills that I use in my current career all the time. But mainly I spent 12 years living for the weekend.
At work I felt like I was playing a part. I had little interest in the industry I was in, didn’t feel aligned to the long-hours culture of my work and every Monday morning was a struggle. I was very down on myself about it. I would call myself stupid and lazy.
Every now and then I would do career quizzes to try and figure out what I should be doing instead. I even quit my job a couple of times without having another one to go to but without a plan, I would go back to the familiar safety and salary of my professional services marketing career.
Key lessons learned:
- Don’t quit your job without a plan
- Live your life, not someone else’s
2015 to 2017 (age 35 to 37) – becoming mum and enough is enough
When I had my first child, I was super excited about my maternity leave. But motherhood hit me like a ton of bricks. First of all, my planned for natural birth and seamless breastfeeding experience didn’t go to plan. My baby was nothing like what Gina Ford had led me to believe and NEVER slept during the day unless I was walking him in the pram. And that first year went by in a bit of blur.
When I returned to work a year later, I was a little relieved. Pleased to be back in corporate clothing and having a hot drink at my desk, I decided I was going to throw myself back into work. But a month later I was miserable again. Only now I had a very compelling reason to be at home instead of work.
I decided that if I was going to be away from my precious baby it needed to be for a good reason. So I got serious about changing career.
Because I had always enjoyed helping and talking to people my first thought was psychology, so I looked up the study requirements and found, to my surprise, I was not completely put off by it. I spoke to a couple of psychologists though and had some misgivings. This was usually the point at which I would give up but instead I remember meeting a friend for lunch and she told me about a consultant she had seen that had been helping her with her career. And that her husband had done a similar thing. Such a thing had never occurred to me. I was intrigued.
So I started looking up career coaches online. Began following some and, in the end, reached out to the lady who helped me change my life, Naomi Arnold. I signed up for a six-session coaching series with Naomi.
During our time together she encouraged me to work out my strengths, develop a vision for my life and career, speak to people doing work that interested me and develop a plan to help me reach my career vision. We also worked on my self-care, an area that had been severely lacking since having a child.
I identified that psychology was not for me but that I wanted to help mums have happier lives and improve their self-care. At the time career was a small part of that but after taking a coaching certification and working pro bono with mums, I began to see that helping mums in their career was an area that I was very passionate about and that my marketing skills were a big asset to me here.
And the rest is history ….
Ha! Did I really just say that? No way is that the end of the story, it’s not even the beginning of the end (whatever that means).
While all of this was going on I was still working part-time in my marketing job. I also had my second child and second stint of maternity leave. There was never a spare hour in the day. I was either working, with my kids or doing stuff around the home or I was studying and building my new business on the side. And I have to say, life is still like that.
I only began to make serious momentum with my career change when my husband’s change in job meant we could leave Sydney and move to the Illawarra, just outside Wollongong. Leaving Sydney meant we could seriously cut some costs and no longer needed my corporate salary. This meant I could work in my business full time (in reality the two days I had my kids in childcare). Sometimes I shudder when I think about what might have happened if we’d have stayed in Sydney.
Key lessons learned:
- Talk to others
- Careers don’t exist in a vacuum – you may need to make other life changes to make your career change happen
- Be prepared to work hard – it’s worth it!
2018 to 2021 (aged 38 to 41) – building a new career
I officially launched my business and had my first paying client in 2018 – three years after coaching with Naomi and two years after completing my coaching certification. So definitely not an overnight career change success!
Of course, launching a business means nothing, you need to have regular paying clients for it to be successful. This is when I began the activity that consumes most of my working hours in my business, marketing. Luckily I knew a lot about marketing from my old career. But now I was using it in a way that was interesting and fulfilling.
I realised that the fluctuations in income were disconcerting to me and as my eldest child started school, and I increased my youngest child’s days at daycare to a whopping three days, I decided I wanted a job, preferably in the careers space. I identified that I wanted to work in the careers department of the University down the road from me and utilised my networks to help me get a meeting with a couple of people that worked there. The wonderful ladies I spoke with recommended that I did the Graduate Certificate in Careers Education and Development. So I started studying online through RMIT. This took two years part-time.
Of course, a month after I started studying a casual job came up at the Uni. So now I was studying, working, running a business (with a steadily increasing client list) and parenting.
There were ups and downs during this time. Managing my time was difficult, especially when my hours at Uni increased. I had some great successes with clients in my businesses but, I have to be honest, some clients that were more of a struggle. This led to some massive lows in my confidence and times that I felt like I was a terrible career coach and should give up. Then of course COVID hit and I pretty much had to give up my business whilst I was home schooling my eldest son.
Key lessons
- Be consistent, be patient
- Try things out and be flexible
- Skills are transferable
- Utilise your network and if you don’t have one, start building one
2022 – plain sailing from here?
My youngest child started school this year and that has made a MASSIVE difference. I am now able to work more consistently in my business, invest in my personal development (I went to a 3-day conference) and look after myself a bit more.
I was also offered a permanent job at the University which I absolutely love. The work is really aligned with my business and my interests in life. I always thought I would go full time in my business one day but now I see that my work at the Uni fulfils another part of me (plus the Super is awesome) so I can see myself continuing this portfolio career. I’m even interested in doing academic research and writing a book in future. So I guess you could say my career is still changing and growing – I hope that is always the case.
Joining a professional association for people working in career development has helped too. I now have a strong network of other people working in the careers space and I can see the contribution that I make.
Perhaps I have been suffering from imposter syndrome (let’s face it, most women do) but I feel like I am finally at the stage, seven years from getting started, that I can call myself a careers’ professional and some days I even confer myself expert status.
Key lessons
- Don’t give up
- Even career changes can change
This post ended up being a bit longer than originally planned but I hope it has helped you to see the twists and turns that a career change entails, plus the skills, patience and a little bit of luck that play a part.
I developed my 12-week career change planner to get you focused on the activities that will make the biggest difference to your career change. Click here to download it.
If there’s anything you want to ask me about my career change or how I can help you with yours then make sure to book in with me for a FREE Working Mum SOS. 30 minutes to strategise around your biggest career change issues and what you can do about them.