Changing Careers Without Starting Over

If you're not starting out but starting over, the same method applies — with one extra idea that makes the leap far less daunting.

A career has two variables

The field you work in (the subject) and the role you play in it (the job). A career change means changing one or both. The trick is to understand that changing both at once is hard; changing one at a time is not.

Move one variable, then the other

Say you're an accountant in a hospital who wants to become a marketing director at a software company — that's changing both the role and the field at once, a long jump employers find hard to underwrite. Break it into two steps. Keep your role and change your field first (an accountant at a software company), then change your role from inside. Or keep your field and change your role first (move into marketing within the hospital you already know). Each single step is a credible, hireable move. Two steps, and you've crossed a gap that looked impossible in one.

It is genuinely not too late

People reinvent their working lives in their forties, fifties, sixties and beyond — often into the most satisfying work of their lives, because by then they finally know their own shape. Age brings a deep stock of skills, knowledge, and relationships a younger person simply hasn't accumulated yet. The method doesn't change with age; the self-inventory may even be easier, because you have more life to mine.

Mind the money

Most people can't simply pivot — they need a runway. A career change usually has a cost, and you have to fund the gap before you leap. That's its own piece: see The Money Bridge.