Posted on November 10, 2013 · Posted in General

Many people find themselves in a career other than the one they would have chosen. Many others discover that the one they chose didn’t turn out the way they had hoped, or that it had become something other than that. Career coaching can help people like this find a way through, or around, their current work difficulties.

According to Creative Vision Coaching, there are many ways to improve your career situation, no matter how bleak it looks. Career coaches can suggest possibilities such as the following:

  • Look for a growing industry, especially if it can accommodate what you already do, especially if you enjoy it. If your problem isn’t with what you’re doing, or even how you’re told to do it, but the industry in which you’re doing it, a change of scenery, to one in which “the grass is greener,” can help.
  •  Look for a different place within your current industry. Maybe you’re the right person who’s almost in the right place, but not quite. If you have good relations with other departments at your company, seek out the head of one of those departments, and see if you can be shifted over to it.
  • Change your skills to fit the demand. Some companies offer classes that can allow you to expand your abilities, to make you a better fit. If you can find another company that does this kind of career coaching when yours won’t, it’ll make training you for a new job easier.
  • Look into striking out on your own. I don’t mean “strike out” in the sense of baseball failure – career coaching can help you avoid that if you choose this path. But if you can find a way to do what you do, while being your own boss, it will give you more responsibility, but, at the same time, it can give you more freedom and more flexibility.
  • Look for a job that allows you to be your own boss, in effect if not in fact. Switching from your current employer to one who will give you more leeway can be a bit of a relief. If you’re allowed to work from home, it can not only reduce the stress of having to come into work five days a week, but it can also give you a friendlier office, especially if you’re used to having only a desk, not an office. A choice of benefit plans is also better than having only one choice, or none at all, from your current employer.

Changing careers, or jobs within a career, can be frightening. But knowledge of the available possibilities can ease that fear, and enable you to face it and rise above it.

Michael Pacholek writes for a variety of blogs.