Career Change: YOU Have To Create The Process

I knew Kyle since he was freshman at The Williams School in New London. My first company, The Learning Consultants, has a program called Student Mastery that trains students to master their job as students. He worked with either me or my teammates through high school as he went through SATs/AP classes and the college process. His mother and I had become friendly so I was kept in the loop about Kyle’s college experience and post college employment.

Kyle recently came to me for a career counseling session. He’s 27 now and was feeling the burden of being an adult.  He had an epiphany in our meeting. “I have to create the process to make the change and left completely fired up to do so.”

Here’s what happened: we reflected back on his school experience.  Every year, the process of change was thrust on him by an outside force.  1st grade to second grade and so on, straight through college. After college, he bounced around in a couple of jobs that just paid the bills but by his third year, he found himself working in a local Connecticut financial advisory firm. He knew he didn’t want to do this work for the long haul. But there was no outside force to make him change. He realized that he was, in his words, “waiting for something to hit me.”  It didn’t happen and based on my experience providing career counseling through the years, it rarely does happen.  People don’t walk outside their door and get offered a new ideal career path.  Instead, career changers take control of their careers by creating their own process.