Switching to your dream job need not be a nightmare

The notion that your job is for life went out of fashion a long time ago. Today, not only is it increasingly common for employees to hop from company to company every few years, but a growing proportion of people are going one step further and changing career – sometimes more than once.

This week, a survey by YouGov revealed that more than a quarter of lawyers are unhappy in their jobs and are thinking about changing careers, while a recent government study claimed that one in five office-based men wanted to change professions.

But turning your back on years of training, experience and often a good wage, can be daunting – especially if setting yourself up in your dream job will require extensive retraining or a serious cut in salary. For those with big mortgages and families to support, the dream often appears out of reach. Richard Alderson, the founder of careershifters.org, a website that helps people through all aspects of making a career change, says people are afraid of change, but this is often misplaced.

"Fear will be your biggest obstacle – fear of losing the position that you've built up – and it often stops people making the change," he says. "But you don't necessarily have to start at the bottom in a new career. There's also a misconception that earning good money and doing your dream job cannot go hand in hand. That's not necessarily the case."

Alderson quit his job as a management and technology consultant in 2003, to move into social entrepreneurship. It eventually led him to set up careershifters, which includes pages of free resources for people considering a change in career, and also runs low-cost seminars with careers advisers for those who want some more focused advice.

He believes people considering a change in career need to take five steps. "The first step is really about looking inside before you look outside," he explains. "It's very tempting to start by looking at your CV, looking at your qualifications and by looking at what transferable skills you have. But our suggestion is not to do that initially. Instead, you should look inside yourself and see what makes you tick. That may not relate to your background or what you've done so far, but it should give you a better understanding of the kind of job you would be suited to."

Secondly, he says it's important to understand that the journey will be difficult, and to be certain that you want to make the change. And if you're ready to continue, then the next step is to build a good support network around you.

Dr Harry Freedman, the founder of Career Energy, agrees: "Changing career is a very difficult thing to do on your own – as it's very difficult to be objective about yourself." Career Energy offers four-month counselling packages for people considering changing career, providing specialist advice to help them make the right decisions and to make the change as smooth as possible.

"It's all about looking at how you get from where you are into your new career," he says. "Sometimes it's about training, or sometimes it's about taking a few small steps at a time – about forging a strategy."

Alderson says this is the crucial fourth step – taking a staged approach. "Rather than saying, I need to do this all at once, there are very natural ways of staging a career change," he continues. "Reducing the hours in your current job, to give you time to invest in a new career may be one option; or going freelance, keeping yourself in the same line of work initially, but giving you the flexibility to move towards another path. Taking a sabbatical is another possibility for some people."

Alderson says his final piece of advice is to start doing something immediately, rather than always talking about "one day". "If you're thinking about being a teacher, why not go and shadow a teacher for a few days, to get a feel for what the job would be like. Or if you want to be a stand-up comedian, go and try it at an open-mike night."

Taking a step by step approach to changing career also gives you the chance to plan financially. If your new chosen profession requires a costly training course, start making some savings – but also explore the possibility of getting a grant.

The fear of taking a cut in salary is another major worry – and if you've got a mortgage or a family to support, you may need to make some more solid financial plans before you can take the plunge. However, if you've been a homeowner for much of the past decade, your property is likely to have significantly increased in value – so you may be able to remortgage to cover some of these costs. If you're not going to be earning a steady income for a few years, it's even more important to make sure you have emergency savings to cover your outgoings.

If you don't have any dependants or major financial commitments, the main worry is often sacrificing a comfortable lifestyle. However, Alderson says the thought of this is often much worse than the reality. If you find a job you love you may no longer need to spend so much money on luxuries to make life bearable.

If you do take a cut in salary, try not to rack up too much debt. Although student loans, at favourable interest rates, may be a good way to help yourself through retraining, unsecured bank loans and overdrafts are well worth avoiding.

For more advice and information on making a career change, visit www.careershifters.org or www.careerenergy.co.uk

'I decided to be a doctor at 27'

Dawn Sellars decided to pack in her career as a science researcher five years ago at the age of 27, to set about training to become a doctor.

Having studied law and natural sciences at university, she had always been interested in medicine, but did not realise until several years of working in the ranks of NHS administration, and subsequently as a researcher for a cancer charity, that her ideal job was working at the coalface of the health service, rather than round the edges of the medical arena.

"When I first realised, I thought it was too late," she says. "But then they introduced the graduate entry system, which allows you to qualify in four years, rather than the five or six it would normally take.

"Also, around that time, I met someone who had gone into medicine at the age of 29 – when he already had a wife, two children, a dog – and he had still managed it. I had no dependents, no commitments, so decided to go ahead with it."

Although the cost of training was a worry, Dawn discovered that she qualified for means-tested bursaries to help her through her last three years.

She also started up her own business, helping mature medical students get started on the road to their new career, going on to publish a book How to Get into Graduate Entry Medicine.

Dawn qualified last year, and says she has no regrets about changing her career. "Sometimes the hours are long and my superiors are often younger than me, but I've still got no doubt that I made the right decision."

'I wanted a regular income'

Siobhan McBride turned her back on a career in psychotherapy last year, after discovering that she disliked the instability of not having a regular monthly wage. Although Siobhan was also working part-time as a PA in the City, a job she was eventually hoping to let go of, she found the income from her therapy clients was too erratic.

"I thought I'd thrive on the concept of self-employment," she says. "But actually I hated it. I hated not knowing what was coming in next month money-wise."

Siobhan decided to retrain as a probation officer, and embarked on a two-year trainee programme last October. Although she is now earning much less than before, she discovered that, as a keyworker, she qualified for help with her rent from the Government.

"I can't go out for dinner as often as I did, but for two years that doesn't really matter. I'm so much happier than I was before.

"It's been a lot easier than I thought. Your objectives and priorities shift. I only go clothes shopping when there's a sale on now. But it's no big deal."

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