Reinventing Your Career
Growing up, we were taught that delay of gratification brings a greater reward in the future. This was what we learned as ‘investing in our future’ with some of us grappling with this concept more strongly than others. Now after a longstanding career, in which you have invested more than just the last ten to thirty years, you are now finding yourself in an unusual predicament where that previous investment of your time, energy, and passion may not pay off in the end as you were always told. You invested your creativity, hope, and future into this career with the promise of a better tomorrow. You may be asking yourself, ‘What now?’ Do you let your dreams dwindle away along with your 401k?
Professionals are facing this potentially bleak outcome of their hard work and commitment head on by fighting the urge to let themselves get lost in the crowd amongst the piles of resumes employers are sorting through by revamping their outlook on their career and their future. Professionals are looking for new career opportunities, and a more recent trend is for individuals to promote their personal brand and career path. As social networking sites become more prominent in our culture and in the corporate world, personal branding is necessary to stay abreast in today’s job market.
When relocating, taking a cut in pay, or losing your position seems to be the only option, professionals are reinventing their careers by seeking freelance work to promote their name and work performance credibility, reformatting their prototype job, reshaping flexible opportunities with on-the-go tactics utilizing progressive technology allowing them to juggle multiple money making opportunities at the same time, cross-training within their companies, pursuing original passions, and pursuing entrepreneurship. Personal branding comes into play when working professionals are loyal to a profession, not a company. As more and more professionals are ‘for hire’ in order to make ends meet, simultaneously companies that have laid off permanent positions to meet budget cuts are willing to hire outside help for specific jobs or projects.
The ideal way to reinvent your career is to incorporate a variety of skills, past experiences, and talents into upcoming growing industries. Flexibility in the work force is the key to reinvention. You may have worked in HR for the last fifteen years, but could turn those internal recruiting skills into a lucrative executive recruiting role. Reinvention is defined by your ability to transfer your skills and think outside of the box. A career reinvention is a personal reinvention.
