Avoid These Common Career Change Mistakes
Today we’re discussing 6 common career change mistakes to avoid so you can get better career options faster and <gasp> enjoy the process of getting there.
Yes, creating a meaningful, fulfilling, prosperous career will take time, energy, and commitment. But let’s not make career change harder than it needs to be.
6 Common Career Change Mistakes
Even when you’re pretty sure you need to go, it can be hard to figure out what, where, when, and how.
As a result, I've seen way too many people subconsciously sabotage their career aspirations.
If you’re committed to making a career move, avoid these 6 career change mistakes that keep you stuck.
Mistake #1 - You Don’t Make Time
This is one of most common career change mistakes I see.
When you prioritize your current job over your future career goals, you’re saying where you are is more important than where you want to be.
If you want to be somewhere else, why are you choosing to give 50+ hours a week to a job that doesn’t get you there? Consider reallocating a few of those hours to activities that do.
Think about your proudest achievements. How many were the result of half-hearted, sporadic effort?
Imagine how far you could go in 3, 6, 12 months with just a few hours a week of intentional, strategic action focused on your most important career goal.
Your current job (or situation) is NOT your most important goal. It’s just the thing you’re doing temporarily until you get to the thing you want to do.
Your real job is to create a career that fulfills and energizes you. That’s your #1 priority. Everything else is just a distraction.
To create and sustain an amazing career, invest the time and energy it deserves.
Mistake #2 - You Stay To Please Others
Loyalty is a noble virtue, but staying in a job out of obligation to others is a lose-lose proposition that paves the way to resentment and missed expectations.
Consistently putting other’s needs ahead of your own is exhausting and ultimately does a disservice to everyone.
How might you show your loyalty and gratitude without subverting your own career needs?
No, you don’t have to stay another year after receiving a promotion. You earned it.
No, you don’t have to stay for your team. Leaving creates opportunities for them to step up and bring new energy.
No, you don’t have to stay to please your family, friends, or significant other. This topic deserves an entire blog post, but the bottom line is: your health and happiness are more important than anything you could get from a job you dislike.
Great bosses recognize when it’s time for you to move on, encourage you to do so, and understand that professional relationships transcend time and place.
It’s not selfish to put yourself first when your career isn’t working for you. In fact, it’s an act of generosity to get to a place where you can better help others.
Remember: others are following your lead. What do you want them to learn from you?
Set a target date, transition well, then get the heck out of Dodge. Trust others to build the rest. They will.
Mistake #3 - You Settle For Less
You fear a career change means taking a step back in your career, so you settle for stagnation instead.
But every day you choose a job that doesn’t serve you moves your further from a job that does.
And there are real costs to this.
As a risk-averse person myself, I understand that the risk of changing, even for the better, often seems too great.
But there are so many ways to manage that risk rather than avoiding it entirely.
Real progress—and confidence—comes from the terrifying awesomeness of taking steps towards what you want, whether they become lessons learned or wild successes.
It starts with choosing not to settle.
Mistake #4 - You Wait For Permission
This common career change mistake—waiting for permission—is a doozy.
I have asked for permission way too many times in my career. One such time came near the beginning of my first (and only) semester in Design School.
I took the critiques exceptionally personally, and wildly extrapolated that I’d never have a successful design career.
You know folks are struggling to keep the criticism constructive when you get comments that strictly adhere to the facts. “I noticed that your book cover has words and pictures,” and, “Your book cover is evocative of a covering used to protect books,” and, “I really like teal.”
One day after class, I pulled my instructor aside and meekly asked if I had what it took to be a designer.
She mumbled a few uninspiring words about a different student, as we both struggled beneath the weight of my desperate need for reassurance. It didn’t come, and I left the conversation feeling simultaneously deflated and defensive.
I gave away my power and belief in what I knew was possible.
Why would I put my future in the hands of someone with whom I had zero professional relationship or personal affinity? Yet, at the time, I accepted her denial as if her opinion was the only one that mattered.
Here's what's really scary: I didn’t want to be a graphic designer. I wanted to be an interior designer but had settled for the graphic design program because I thought it would be easier to find a job. A job in a field that I didn’t love or care about.
What if that instructor had given me “permission,” pointing out my strengths and encouraging me to keep working at it? I might have become a graphic designer! Out there in the world, designing teal book covers with words and pictures that evoke coverings for books.
This is what happens when you settle and then look to others to justify it.
No one is coming to save you. Certainty will not come knocking at your door.
The only permission you need is your own. Grant it generously and often.
Mistake #5 - You Try To Think Your Way Into a Solution
There are way too many career changers out there suffering in silence, waiting to “figure it out” before they talk to people.
Please don’t make this mistake.
I know you’re smart and capable. I’ll bet your self-sufficiency and creative thinking is how you got this far in your career.
But staying in your bubble is going to limit your options and make the career change journey a whole lot more painful.
Leveraging your existing relationships and building new ones makes it so. much. easier.
Why would you pass up the opportunity for support?
Especially from people who’ve gone before you, who are already doing the thing you want to do, who made the mistakes so that you don’t have to, who have the power to give you exactly what you want (and maybe some career opportunities you haven’t even considered).
Talking with people and doing your research is the only way to see if your fears and assumptions are actually true…and help you avoid the risk everyone’s so afraid of: making a change that leaves you worse off.
I love that moment when a career changer says, “Wow, I never realized how willing people are to help.”
Don’t wait to reap the benefits.
Mistake #6 - You Treat It Like a Job Search
It’s a common mistake to approach career change like a job search:
Focusing on your resumé
Looking at job posting boards and scouring open positions
Reaching out to recruiters
Networking only as a means to get a leg up over other candidates
Making a meaningful career change presents the opportunity to zoom out, take stock, shape your career choices around what’s most important.
It’s so much more than finding just another job.
And you’re unlikely to find career opportunities with the purpose, flexibility, impact, and pay you want using traditional job search tactics.
I know, I know, you want to get to the destination.
But approaching career change like a job search leads so many people to jump into something new only to realize it’s still not making them happy, fulfilled, confident, or free.
The most powerful career change starts with going inward: understanding who you are at your best and what you truly want. Then finding the career options that align with that.
Successful career changers know they need a strategy to challenge their deeply-held limiting beliefs, explore what’s truly possible, and get out of their own darn way.
Grab my free 4-step career roadmap if this is you.
The Biggest Career Change Mistake Of All
These are just six of the most common ways people sabotage their career change.
There are SO MANY OTHERS.
I get that it's hard to decide how, when, and where to jump. I have jumped into bad situations. I have jumped into great situations. I have jumped with thoughtful planning and out of fear.
I have also refrained from jumping many, many times.
I have really strong calves.
You must choose.
You know what’s best for your career.
Indecision is the biggest career change mistake of them all. Once you decide to make a change, commit to it fully, and move into the future you know is possible.
Which of these common career change mistakes resonate with you? Comment below.
Now that we’ve discussed what NOT to do, check out what to do instead to get clarity, build confidence, and get on the path to a fulfilling and prosperous career.
Get your free roadmap now: 4 Steps To Take Back Your Life and Design a Career With Purpose.
Author Bio:
Before becoming a coach, Caroline worked in management consulting and financial services. She's made it her mission to help people grow, contribute, and get wherever they want to go.
She’s also a tennis fanatic, aspiring Minimalist, FIRE (Financial Independence and Retire Early) enthusiast, and Aloha Spirit seeker 🤙. She loves to share stories from her unconventional life and career focused on freedom, creativity, fun, health, family, and community. If she can do it, you can, too.
The life and career you want is possible once you have the roadmap. Take the first step and download your free guide: 4 Steps To Take Back Your Life and Design a Career With Purpose.
