3 Things That Helped In My Career Transition

A career change and relocation for my husband led to unexpected career changes for me. I transitioned from teaching in a brick-and-mortar building to teaching online. This led to an immediate need to address my skillset as a teacher. As I pursued learning and growth in an effort to add to my skillset, opportunities to help train other teachers to embrace the changes that faced them came my way. These opportunities were exciting, but again led to the need to address my skillset as I faced a transition from working with elementary learners to working with adult learners.

3 Things That Helped Me in My Career Transition

Three things helped me most in my career change and transition. If you are facing a career transition, I suggest taking a closer look at each of these areas:

Personal Learning Network (PLN) - Finding other online teachers helped me learn and grow in the best practices of the industry. Early on, this meant finding teachers via Twitter. I joined several Facebook Groups and communities of teachers in traditional classroom settings and have moved into different parts of education similar to me. Finding these groups of people makes for a robust network when a question arises, or help is needed. As my career has grown and transitioned into the learning and development space within Supply Chain and XR, my PLN has expanded to include thought leaders in these areas.

Mentor - Finding a career mentor was essential for me in facing some of the changes that I never expected. For example, as I faced transitions mid-career with our family’s relocation, I realized that the interview process was going to be something that I would be visiting. I had not faced this process for a decade. My career mentor helped me prepare for an interview with practice questions and scenarios.

Time - This may sound simple, but it was one of the most complicated items I had to embrace in my career transition journey. I had to give myself the time to learn and grow and allow others to accept the changes I was going through. Initially, changing careers seemed only to lead to dead ends. I was told that I did not have enough experience in a setting outside of the classroom. Allowing myself the time to continue pursuing the changes and expanding my skillset was necessary.

While I write this, I am still actively involved in education. I am no longer in the classroom daily but in a different role. If I had not actively pursued learning and growing with my PLN, coaching with a career mentor, and allowing the grace of time, getting to this point would have been nearly impossible and discouraging.

As it is, I’ve grown and learned a lot along the way. For anyone else facing a career change for any number of reasons, I want to encourage you to pick one thing from the list above and begin pursuing the changes associated with it today.

Feel free to join us in the conversations on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn with The Organic Learner and share how your career transition is going.