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Things to Keep in Mind Before Deciding to Change Careers

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Change is not always easy, especially when it comes to changing careers.

There are questions asked. There is a sense of having had enough of the present career, and at the same time there is a lingering self-doubt. Whether it’s you yourself contemplating over these questions, or someone else questioning your decision, it is not uncommon to find yourself wondering:

  • Will I be able to do it?
  • Do I have what it takes to start over?
  • Is it wise to make this leap?
  • Am I making the right decision?

You may or may not be able to answer these questions with conviction, because after all, sometimes you don’t know until you try.

But there are some things you can keep in mind before you actually take the plunge and decide to change careers.

 

Think Why:

Why do you want to change careers? Is it because you want to take a leap of faith, or is it because you want to run away from your current job? Is it because your job has been wearing you down?

As we mentioned briefly in one of our previous posts about strategic quitting, it is necessary to think if it is the job or career itself that is the problem, or any particular assignment.

  • Would things get better when that particular assignment is over?
  • Would the storm-clouds clear once that difficult discussion is over?
  • Is it just a phase that you are dreading, and how long would it take for it to pass?
  • Are you threatening something long-term by getting bogged down by a short-term problem?
  • Is quitting the assignment an option? Can you delegate it?
  • Do you want to switch companies?

 

Making this distinction between a need to change workplace and a need to change career is necessary.

 

 

Think What:

Often, we think about changing careers, and stop there. As a result, we might end up in the wrong job. Again.

To get a clearer understanding of your decision, and avoid making the mistake of choosing a wrong job, it is a good idea to think about what you want from your career change.

Think along questions like:

  • What skills do I want to use or want to develop?
  • What type of challenges do I want to face at work?
  • What can I see myself doing long-term?
  • What am I missing in my present line of work?

 

But thinking about the skills you want to use should go along with thorough research. Read on the next bit.

 

Steer Clear From Generalised Rose-tinted Research:

Do you want a career change, or do you want to use a particular skill, which can be used in other ways without switching careers?

Researching thoroughly about the potential new career is important. Each career comes with its challenges and unlikable aspects; are you prepared, or willing to learn to handle those?

For example, you may think teaching is the career you want to get into from your managerial one. You have a passion to impart knowledge to young minds. But apart from imparting knowledge, teaching can also include managing unruly pupils, correcting piles of exam papers, repetitively teaching the same material for years etc,.

Taking off the rose-tinted glasses while researching about a new career will give a realistic picture of the scenario.

 

Prepare a Plan:

If you do decide to change careers, it is necessary to do some planning.

This includes preparing a financial plan.

Changing careers is not the same as switching companies. Sometimes, people might not be willing to wait till they get a job and then handing the notice in the present one. Switching careers can have phases of staying at home.

One might get a new job in the new career line in days, weeks or even months. It is necessary that there is some financial plan to pass those days of transition, where there will be an absence of steady income.

It is also necessary to make a psychological plan to endure those days of transition. Psychological planning can include anything from:

  • Setting up a strict routine, where you divide time between job hunting and leisure time
  • Learning new skills, required for the career change or anyway for hobby.

Psychological planning is necessary to stay sane when faced with the unstructured routine and uncertainty that comes with transitions.

Before you do decide to take the leap, it is necessary to try to make things right in your present arena. One final thing to wonder is if it a career change you want or you want to better the circumstances of your current one.

Changing careers can be tricky, but it’s not impossible. Setting priorities right, researching and planning are the first few steps towards making that necessary change in your professional life!

 

 

The ‘Fun’ Twist: Tackling Some ‘Interesting’ Questions

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In many of our previous posts, we have talked about answering those commonly asked questions well. Questions like “can you walk me through your CV?”, “can you tell me about yourself?”, among others. Answering these generic, formal questions is relatively easy because these are the questions we expect.

But what if we are suddenly asked a question and the answer is expected to be…fun?

In other words, how should questions like the following should be answered?

  • Can you tell me a fun/interesting fact about yourself?
  • What are your other interests?
  • What do you like to do in your spare time?

 

Why Such Questions:

The logic is similar to the one behind “can you tell me about a weakness?”. That is, the interviewers want to take a look beyond the candidate’s interview persona. Such questions give them a sense of what they are like outside the office.

Everyone is formal and serious during the interview, but the world beyond the interview involves undertaking tasks, managing teams, coordinating with colleagues, talking to clients and associates, maintaining interpersonal rapport. A well-rounded  persona, with proportionate amount of seriousness and fun won’t harm, right?

Such questions are thus beneficial for the interviewer to know more about a candidate, and for the interviewee to show a different side of their personality.

 

What Can Such Questions Do:

Such questions asking about interesting aspects of one’s personality give the person getting interviewed opportunities to:

  • Shift the interview from a formal question-and-answer session to a more conversational interaction. We talk about this more later on.
  • Talk about their hobbies (if any, given that these days people don’t have hobbies) and interests
  • Give a sense of what they would be like during out of the office formal events like conferences, dinners, etc,.
  • Talk about themselves as a worker by drawing analogies

 

The Shift:

This is one of the strongest reason to cash in on such questions, when asked.

Answering (and listening to the answers of) generic questions can get boring. It’s not going to be interesting beyond a point. Think of the interview in terms of rhythm. Changing rhythms keep us engaged. Questions which take a look about the beyond the professional life  can change the rhythm of the interview.

There are times of a calm, almost quiet rhythm, when one talks about the more formal issues, like their skills, their work experience, their strengths and weaknesses; there is a little rise in the tempo perhaps when one begins to talk about how one handled a difficult situation. The rhythm will get peppier as one starts talking about the “fun” things. It will keep the interview interesting.

 

 

How Exactly Is One Supposed to Talk about this?:

You have been asked something about yourself. Generic is the last thing you want your answer to be. Relevancy and specificity are some qualities to keep in mind. And the answer should connect to some aspect of your professional life in some way, be it how the interest helped you develop certain soft-skills, or how you got better at a hard-skill.

An example will make it clearer.

A: “I like art.”

B: “I like art. I am not a pro, but I like drawing illustrations based on the everyday things I see around. The last illustration was about the quiet that I noticed in my building when the electricity went off, and how the people came out to talk to each other. It initially started as idle doodling but now I think I have developed an eye for minute details and for making ordinary tasks interesting.”

A is too general. What does it tell about the interviewee besides the fact that they pursue art in their spare time? Not much. On the other hand, B gives a sense of what the interviewee pursues, what their view of the world is like, and what other skills they have developed in the process. Fun fact indeed!

 

Talking about a fun or interesting fact about yourself in a balanced way can give the interviewer a sense of what kind of a worker and a person you are. It can give a glimpse of your soft-skills, good qualities and how you act when faced with challenges.

 

Bringing Happiness to Workplace

Happiness and work should be two terms which go well together, but as we all know, the contemporary trends in work culture often leave them on two different poles. Dr. Yogesh Pahuja’s efforts to bridge this gap between happiness and work is what has brought him recognition.

In the recently held World HRD Conference in Mumbai, themed ‘Building Happiness in Workplace’ , Dr. Yogesh Pahuja was conferred the award of the Global Happiness Leader. He was part of the 51 Most Fabulous Happiness Leaders, selected by a distinguished jury.

The World HRD Conference is composed of around a hundred nations from US, UK, Asia, Africa, GCC and Europe.

In addition to being a corporate happiness expert, Dr. Yogesh Pahuja is the founder of Happiness Studio and dons multiple roles: he is  an author, OD facilitator,  trainer, faculty, operations head, with an expertise in content design and taking workshops. With an experience of more than two decades, he blends the academic and the research oriented with the hands on experience of industry. The award is indeed a fitting tribute.

 

Below are some memorable moments from the event:

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Giving Back to the Community, One Smile At A Time…

What better way to celebrate your birthday than by putting smiles on the faces of little angels? CEO Dr. O.P Pahuja had one such birthday this year.

A happy coincidence saw the birthday and an important event fall on the same day. What was the important event? Reading Aloud Day, organised by Kadam Education Initiative (KEI), which reaches out to underprivileged kids in Ahmedabad through the help of civil society groups, government authorities and corporate groups.

Through Kadam Education initiative (KEI), smiles were brought on the faces of some underprivileged kids this Reading Aloud Day. Stories are a fun and engaging way to imbibe good values in children, and to provide them with a sense of hope and belief  in ‘happy ending’. In an event organised by KEI at the Human Resource and Development Centre at St. Xavier’s College campus, educators and volunteers, called the Bal Dost provided and read out loud hundreds of such stories to the children.

What are the two things kids absolutely see as favourites? Stories and birthdays. So, naturally, an event which saw both- Dr. Pahuja’s birthday and Read Aloud Day stories- is bound to be fun. The day saw the kids singing the birthday song and a prayer, followed by storytelling sessions. Kids are the future, and educating them is the best way one can give back to the society.

In another act of giving back to the society, we also distributed computers through Rotary Club Ahmedabad(North) to Ashram Vinay Mandir Girls School, a public school in the city.

The Ashram Vinay Mandir Girls School, located across Gandhi Ashram is a schooling and hostel facility for underprivileged girls from in and around the district. Contributing to the school was a step towards making technology a little bit more ubiquitously available tool in the country to boost skills, knowledge and information accessibility.

 

Below are some memorable moments from the two events:

At the KEI event.
At the KEI event.

 

 

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At the Ashram Vinay Mandir Girls School/Rotary Club Event

 

 

All about the tech.
All about the tech.

 

 

Work-Life Balance or Work-Life Harmony?

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Everyone talks about maintaining a work-life balance.

But is it really a balance that we want? Is “balance” the right word?

Think about it. Balancing means equalising. It implies trading off one thing for another. When we balance, we compensate. We let go of something in favour of something else, and vice versa.

 

The Balancing Act:

Maybe an example will give a little more clarity. You get off your work a little early so that you can attend a sports event your niece is participating in. The work may or may not have been done the way you would like but you trade it off a bit to balance this personal commitment. That’s work-life balance.

Trying to achieve work-life balance is not wrong in itself, but it can be inconvenient and overwhelming at times. What if we tried to achieve work-life harmony?

 

In musical parlance, harmonizing a song implies making a brilliant piece of music out of seemingly incompatible tunes. In isolation, the song would sound incomplete, and the tunes random. But together, in harmony, it becomes music.

 

What the Big Shots Have to Say:

In an interview cited in this article, Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft talks about work-life harmony. He says, “I used to always think that you need to find that balance between what’s considered relaxing versus what is working…What I’m trying to do is harmonize what I deeply care about, my deep interests, with my work.”

In another interview cited in the same article, Jeff Bezos, says in a similar vein, reflecting on the “circle” we talked about earlier, “If I am happy at work, I am better at home — a better husband and better father. And if I am happy at home, I come into work more energized — a better employee and a better colleague.”

 

 

So, What Exactly is Work-Life Harmony All About?  :

Finding work-life harmony is more about attitude. An attitude to work which doesn’t see it as “work” but rather as an activity which you deeply care about and something that helps you nurture your interests. In other words, an attitude which sees “work” as an energy giving activity, rather than a draining one. An attitude which doesn’t see personal life as a set of “commitments” but rather something that nurtures your emotional and psychological well-being.

To re-frame it, we can stop looking for “quality” time to spend with the family to “balance” work commitments. Instead, we “harmonise” the two. For example, you might think you need to take a vacation to give time to your child, to balance the time you lose out with them when you are working. And later, you work overtime to balance out that long vacation. To harmonise, you can actually talk to and listen to what your kid is saying on your way to dropping them to school in morning instead of considering the commute as a chore. After all, any time could be a quality time. The interaction leads to a good mood, leading to a good day at work, where you see your work as something that allows you to learn and grow,  and you go home with a smile, leading to a happy evening. Kids are much happier at an emotionally nurturing home than an emotionally stormy vacation.

Of course, there are some personal and professional events which are unavoidable. You have to “balance” at times, with no option to harmonise. But that doesn’t mean you have to discard the idea of harmony altogether. We can still develop an attitude, and when we have the attitude, we can find a way. We can try.

An attitude about “balancing” work and life might lead to positive experiences in one area and negative experiences in another. An attitude about establishing harmony is about happiness and fulfillment in one area leading to happiness and fulfillment in the other, in a cycle. The circle goes on. It’s like setting your life to music.