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Thinking about a career change? Your journey starts here

Posted on • Career planning

Whether it’s a conscious decision or caused by unexpected circumstances, making a career change can feel daunting. So where do you start?

Step 1: Self-reflection

Take time to discover your skills and qualities and match them to potential careers. This is the first step to achieving your goals. Discovering your career interests means finding out what you enjoy doing, helping you be more motivated at work and ultimately identify careers you might find fulfilling and rewarding. Our career planning guide has some great activities to help you pin down what motivates you and steps you can take to achieve your goals.

Step 2: Exploring pathways

Once you know what career areas you are interested in, explore possible pathways with our  starting points guides. Our ‘How do I become…?’ webpage also shows the qualifications, skills and experience you’ll need for a wide range of careers.  Reading or listening to the experiences of others is an excellent way of understanding what it takes to the make a career change, so check out What do OU students do? and get useful tips from employer advice videos.

“OU students are typically very autonomous and used to independent working, and they’re good at self-managing, which are important skills for anyone contemplating training for a new career and a qualification at the same time”

Teach First, Teacher Training Programme

Step 3: Making a decision

Struggling with decision-making? This is very common among career changers. Get help with making your decision with these career change podcasts and our brand-new ‘Decision making’ webpage.

Sometimes, decisions are forced upon us, but we can help you take control of your future. Redundancy is unfortunately a common reason for career change. Although it can be a difficult time, it can also present an opportunity to change to a more satisfying occupation. If you have been made redundant or are facing redundancy you might find reading our ‘Redundancy – your next steps’ webpage useful.

The journey towards career confidence can take some time but once you know where you’re heading, we can help you start applying for roles in your new career.

“Careers and Employability Services boosted my confidence. I thought I would never overcome [my lack of experience in the legal sector]. I was advised that…I did have transferable skills that I had gained through other work. I was shown how to craft my CV in such a way as to express these skills to employers.”

Alexander, OU Law Student who successfully made a career change

OU Careers and Employability Services