Sticking with one career for the rest of your life can sound like a drag or limit your opportunities on a financial level. For those who feel stuck in their current industry, uninspired, or struggle to find meaningful and gainful employment in their field, it may be time to change career paths even if you like what you do currently. A career change is not something you should take lightly but it is something that you can do if you feel called in another direction or find a job that seems like your ideal fit even if it’s outside of your previous experience or educational background.
For some folks, it may be much easier to change career if the career path you’re choosing as your second calling is adjacent to your previous line of work. For example, if you’ve worked as a case manager in local nonprofits, it probably won’t be too challenging to get a position as a therapist if you get the right continuing educational credits and experience. If you’re looking to go from one unrelated field to another, it may be a difficult or time-consuming transition but it won’t be impossible if you have the grit and enthusiasm to sustain you. Many people go from white-collar jobs in offices to blue-collar trades or helping professions to creative professions all the time so you’re not alone if you decide to pick a new career out of left field.
Work in Security
If you love keeping people and computers safe, you could transition to a career in cybersecurity. For those who prefer to protect people in physical locations, you could try your hand at working in security for events or specific locations. Some security jobs may require you to stay at the same place every day while others may ask you to travel to different places to be a part of their security staff for the day.
Depending on your previous experience, you may find it easier or more challenging to change career paths to a security one. Those who have worked in law enforcement or related fields might welcome the lower stakes that security jobs offer. If you’ve never worked in fields that require you to protect people or items, you may find that security is an exciting new industry that varies wildly from your previous roles. Even if it feels intimidating to start your first day as security, it’ll be worth it when you go home knowing that you protected people or merchandise to the best of your ability.
Become a Divorce Attorney
Some folks may want to change career trajectories because they recently went through a major life event like a divorce. Once you’ve been through this difficult process, you may want to help other people navigate divorce and related issues. To do this, you could work alongside divorce lawyers as an attorney in this field yourself or start out as a paralegal or administrative professional in a divorce law firm.
Before you begin working in this field, you should make sure that you’ve done the work to heal financially, emotionally, and physically from the divorce if that’s what’s inspiring you to get into this industry. As most divorce lawyers will tell you, this field isn’t for the faint of heart and it can be exhausting to work long hours advocating for your clients’ best interests. Some divorce attorneys who have been divorced may also find it emotionally difficult to work with cases that resemble your own if you’ve had a heated or difficult divorce, so you should take as long as you need to get into this field if you’ve been burnt before in these circumstances.
Try Criminal Law
When you want to change career paths to something exciting and rewarding, you may draw inspiration from true crime shows that you watch in the evenings after coming home from your current job. For those who want to help people who have gotten involved with the criminal justice system as a defendant, becoming a criminal attorney can seem like a natural fit.
Although it can be difficult to work as a criminal lawyer, it can also be meaningful to watch people who were charged with crimes they didn’t commit regain their innocence and freedom because of your hard work. It can also be rewarding to get plea deals or favorable outcomes for folks who have had a life of committing crimes if those measures get those people the help they need.
If you’re not ready to work as a criminal attorney, you can get involved in the criminal justice system in other ways. You could become a correctional officer with some training that may be provided on the job. You could also take an unconventional path in this field and write articles or record videos about popular criminal cases.
Become an Accident Attorney
If you’ve seen billboards for a personal accident lawyer in your area, you may be tempted to take this career path yourself. While it takes time for people to work as injury lawyers, it’s not impossible. With the right education and experience, you could change career to working in accident law.
Become a Landlord
If you don’t want to change career paths entirely, you may want to think about financial opportunities that you could do on the side or as a supplement to your current income. For example, it’s relatively easy to work in property management and manage some rental properties without giving up your other career goals. Many people who choose to become landlords started by working in this field part-time and then transitioned to working in it full-time once that became feasible for them based on the number of properties they managed or the amount of money they made every month from those properties.
Try Business Law
Change career paths from business or law by combining a love of commerce with a love of legal studies. While it can take years to become a business law attorney, it’ll be worth it if these are your two greatest passions in your career. Some folks come into this field with a background in general legal studies while others may already have experience in commercial enterprises and bring that experience into the legal field. No matter what your journey is to become a business attorney, you’ll want to make sure that you have the proper qualifications, background, and experience before you try to apply to open positions in commercial law.
If you don’t have the time or resources to go to law school, you may want to see if it would be possible to work as an office administrator or paralegal in a business law office. After all, many lawyers in all concentrations need people who provide customer service, complete clerical duties, and take on research obligations so they have the time to do what only attorneys can do. If you’re not sure if you want to become a business lawyer, it can also be helpful to get your feet wet in this field and test the waters before you commit to taking on tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt to pursue a career that you may not even like at the end of the day once you land the job you thought was your dream job.
Run a Doggy Hotel
For animal lovers everywhere, running a canine hotel or pet hotel, in general, can be a great way to combine previous hospitality experience with a current love of animals. In this field, you could either opt to own a dog boarding business or work in someone else’s kennel to get a feel for how well your interests and skills would be a fit for this line of work. Some people may be inclined to go from zero to one hundred and start their own business while others may be more hesitant to commit to such a large undertaking before they’ve had an opportunity to see what this industry is like.
Although you might think that running a dog hotel is all fun and games, it’s a lot of hard work. While you’ll be able to spend some of your time in this industry petting dogs, playing with them, and putting them in cute outfits if their owners request it, you’ll also have to get used to doing the hard work of keeping kennels clean and doing other unpleasant dog care tasks. If you have a fear of certain types of dogs like large ones, you can either operate a doggy hotel that specializes in small breeds or overcome this phobia before you become the owner of a dog hotel.
For those who don’t want to own a boarding facility for dogs, there are plenty of other business ideas that would be a great idea for you to change career paths in a dog-driven direction. You could own a doggy daycare or learn how to groom dogs and become a dog groomer. You could also start a company that manufactures items for dog owners like treats, bowls, accessories, outfits, and even dog-themed stationary. The sky is the limit for what you could create if you get creative and think about how you can leverage previous experience to become a successful dog business owner.
Try Family Law
If you love helping families, you may want to become a family law attorney. These lawyers handle cases related to custody, adoption, and more. Although it doesn’t happen overnight, you can become a family lawyer with time and education.
Become a Photographer
If snapping photos has always been a passion of yours, it may be time to switch careers to become a family photographer. You could also work as a pet photographer or handle subjects that resonate with you. Many photographers start out as hobbyists or part-time photographers, so don’t feel discouraged if it takes time to reach your dreams in this field as a full-time photographer.
Some photographers also find that they don’t want to work in this industry full-time. It can be tough to hold yourself accountable to find clients and book enough work to support yourself as a photographer. Some people also find that working in a creative field can stifle their passion since this line of work requires you to pay the bills with what you love. When you’re trying to pay rent as a photographer, it can force you to take on jobs that don’t align with your artistic vision or passion, and that can take a toll on a creative professional.
One of the biggest reasons why some people may be hesitant to change career is that they may feel like no one will support them in their new journey or they may feel like there’s no way for them to financially swing going back to school and starting out in a new field with entry-level pay. While it’s reasonable to worry about what family or friends will think about your new career path or how you’ll afford to change your career, loved ones may be more supportive than you think they would be from an emotional perspective and a financial one. The only way to know whether you’ll have support in all of the ways you’d like to have it is by taking the leap and asking your support system what they would do to support you if you decided to change your job or line of work.
Once you have an idea of how you’ll afford expenses like housing, groceries, toiletries, and utilities during a career transition and what your loved ones will do to support you, you can start looking into practical ways to make this shift happen. There may be multiple paths to a career, so you shouldn’t assume that you’ll need to go back to school and start from scratch to get into a new career. Some careers are good to start on a part-time basis or as a hobby before you take the leap into becoming what you hope to be. It’s never too late to ponder what you want to be when you grow up, so don’t let the present circumstances prevent you from seeing what’s out there for you as you blossom into an entirely different version of yourself in a new path.
