Career Success

Maneuvering Your Career Shift—The Ultimate Guide

Is it time for a career shift? It might be! Here's our guide to making the right shift with career development, career advancement, or upskilling your current career. Let's go!

By Career Contessa Team
June 21, 2022

What's the difference between a career shift, career development, and career advancement—and what's the best move for me to make?

Well, it's all a matter of how you're looking at things. When you're feeling stagnant at work, unfulfilled, or simply ready to move on to the next best thing, there are hundreds (if not thousands) of options to explore.

Do you stay with your current company while climbing the managerial ladder? Is it time to pivot into a new industry that nurtures your skill sets a little better? Do you love your industry, but feel stifled in your company culture?

Whatever the reason, making a career shift is an exciting time. However, it can also be incredibly overwhelming. Since we've been writing on this subject for a few years now, we thought we'd make a career shift round-up to help you identify and navigate your new path.

Here are a few options. Jump to the path you'd like to take.

I Want to Expand My Skills + Make a Career Change
I Want to Reevaluate My Current Career
I Love My Job but I Want to Work at a New Company
I'm Ready for a Leadership Role
I'm Completely Burned Out
I Want to Start a Side Hustle

Psst! Before you dive in, we do have one recommendation that covers pretty much all of the above predicaments. Our course, The Career Transition Road Map is your customizable guide to creating the road map for your own success—in your unique career.

Why People Change Their Careers

Sometimes, a career shift is enacted by a layoff. Other times, it's a toxic work environment or a bad boss that lights a new career path.

Here are the most common reasons that career changers leave their jobs. If any of these apply to you, read on for our best advice on enacting a successful career change.

I dislike my coworkers.
I hate my boss.
Long hours no longer fit my personal life.
I want a better work-life balance.
I want a higher salary.
My commute time is too long.
I want to work remotely.
My long-term goals have changed and my current job is no longer a good fit.
There is no room for growth.
My job satisfaction is non-existent.
I like the function of my job, but I dislike my current industry.

I Want to Expand My Skills + Make a Career Change

It's time to make that move, but maybe that move requires new skill sets. No worries! It's basically never been easier to develop your skills—both hard and soft. You can learn pretty much anything (except brain surgery, string theory, or maybe rocket science) online.

How to Make Your Career Change:

Start by assessing your current skill sets. You might be surprised at just how advanced they already are. From there, decide which ones are transferable to a new career, which ones might be irrelevant (for now!), and which ones just need a little refreshing. Here are some great tools to help you get started on expanding your skillset to make the next big career move.

We're excited for you!

Courses to Consider:

Once you've assessed your skills, fill in the gaps with the necessary skills for your next great career move. If you're interested in transitioning into a management role, you'll love The New Manager Manual—and its 90-day approach to building a strong leadership foundation. Here are a few other courses to helo you assess and develop your skills.

I Want to Reevaluate My Current Career

We all come to a career crossroads at some point. Maybe you're feeling under-stimulated by your day-to-day. Maybe your coworkers drive you up the wall. Maybe the company culture doesn't align with your personal values anymore (it happens).

Pro Tip: You can even use AI to help streamline your job search! Learn how to make your job search easier with ChatGPT.

How to Make Your Career Change:

If you're looking to explore what's going on before enacting a job search, good for you! Quitting your job isn't always the answer, and it's worth doing a little self-exploration before writing up a cover letter to make a big career switch.

Figure out what actually fulfills you in your career. Know your core values before making any moves. Talk to your colleagues about their experiences. Finally, if you feel comfortable, speak to your boss about support, growth opportunities, or dissatisfaction you might be experiencing.

Whatever it is, here are some useful tools to help to re-evaluate, re-motivate, or even relocate your current career.

I Love My Job But I Want to Work at a New Company

It sounds like you've outgrown your company and it's time to move on. Maybe you're even moving to a new city and you need to find your next career home. Here are some resources for someone looking to happily move onwards and upwards.

How to Make Your Career Change:

If you love your current role, but you know you want to change companies, make yourself an action plan. Our advice is to lead a company-first job search (a method we explore in our course, The Job Search Academy) so that you don't land at a company like your current one.

If you know us, you know we love making a good pros and cons list.

Create a pros and cons list about your current job and your current company. Know your dealbreakers. Know the values you want to lead with. Now, find the companies that align with your work style, your values, and your skills.

If your "dream company" doesn't have any open roles, get some informational interviews on the books with current employees. Use professional interviews to expand your professional network, express "cold" interest in the company, and to plant a seed for any upcoming openings.

Courses to Consider:

Everybody loves the job search. Not. We don't have any concrete statistics on hand, but we'd be pretty confident in saying that 99.999 percent of people would leave a job they hate—if not for the promise of a grueling job search. We have you covered. Our job search courses are our best-selling courses for a reason. They help create positive career change.

The Job Search Academy
The 24-Hour Resume Makeover
Ace the Interview
The LinkedIn Lab
The Complete Job Search Toolkit (a bundle of the courses listed above with a built-in 20% discount)

I'm Ready for a Leadership Role

Well, this is amazing news! Here at Career Contessa, we love to hear about employees who successfully transition into leadership roles. We love it, even more, when new leaders take their most painful bad boss experiences (sorry!) and make sure to lead in the opposite direction.

How to Make Your Career Change:

Did you know that 60 percent of new leaders fail within their first two years? This is no surprise. Many managers are promoted as a result of their stellar performance. The only problem is that their skills are often not in leadership. Couple this with the fact that most companies offer ZERO leadership training and you have a recipe for failure.

When leaders are expected to learn "on the job," the potential for discord is high.

That's why we dedicated so much time to creating one of our favorite online courses, The New Manager Manual, which takes you through the first 90 days as a new manager.

We also have amazing leaders who contribute their own leadership advice, which is seriously invaluable. Take a peek at some of our favorite advice on management and leadership.

Courses to Consider:

We're so excited for you. We're giving you a virtual hug. When you're ready for a managerial role, we have you covered with these courses on building your management from the ground up, learning how to give (and receive!) feedback, and how to make remote management work.

I'm Completely Burned Out

First of all, burnout is a serious diagnosis recognized by the World Health Organization, so if you're feeling it, make sure to take steps to take care. Burnout is often recognized as being super busy all the time, but it actually takes other forms, too.

Before you chalk burnout up as a "buzzword," read our article, where we break down the three most common types of burnout. A hint: your inescapable boredom at work might actually be burnout in disguise.

How to Make Your Career Change:

Before making the change, can your current job be salvaged? Can your work be delegated to others? Are you a leader guilty of "doing it all" in lieu of trusting others? Okay, just checking.

If burnout is your reason for leaving, you'll need to ensure that you never find yourself in this situation again. Find out why you reached this point. If your job required that you never sign off, that could do it.

Additionally, burnout can be caused by pressure to say yes to everything, guilt over taking your PTO, or a complete breakdown of priorities. In your next job hunt, prioritize and communicate your sacred boundaries.

I Want to Start a Side Hustle

Is it time to finally start that side hustle? Awesome! Here are some resources to help you get started brainstorming, building, and growing your side hustle into your main squeeze.

How to Make Your Career Change:

Start your side hustle. Actually, the articles below detail so many ways you can start a side hustle while you maintain your full-time job. You can even work a few side hustles to see what fits best.

Get it!

Courses to Consider:

You're ready to turn your 5:00 am hustle into a full-time business? That's incredible. These are a few courses perfect for the hard-but-glamorous part of branding yourself and your business.

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Career Contessa Team

Career Contessa is an online job search and career advice resource. Since 2013, Career Contessa staff have been writing career advice articles on a variety of topics from job search to advancing at work with insight from experts, research-backed tips, and personal stories to help you become more fulfilled, healthy, and successful at work. When tackling big pain points like job search, interviewing, and career transitions, we need all hands on deck. The articles attributed to the team feature hard work, research, and real experience.