Sage advice

A lot of people doing an MBA want to change careers (including yours truly) and find it really difficult. I've been doing some reading on the subject, and found two great books I can heartily recommend if you're thinking about changing careers and want a little back up/support/good ideas.

The first book is Po Bronson's What should I do with my life? (see the webpage here), in which he talks about his conversations with people who've changed careers or who are about to change careers. It is not the usual 10-strategies-to-change-your-career book, it's more a book that tells it like it is, the ups and the downs. It's not meant to be prescriptive, but very much descriptive. I found it comforting that other people struggle as well, what can I say... misery loves company. Gave my copy to my housemate to read and he loves it.

The second book I recommend is Herminia Ibarra's Working Identity. Unconvential strategies for reinventing your career (accompanying website is here). This is a prescriptive book, aimed at mid-career professionals, so slightly ahead of me, but I found some very useful tips in there. What I find hard with talks that Career Services give us is that the process of finding out which career you want seems to go something like this: you think a couple of days on what your passions are (introspection), a jobtitle you want follows from that, et presto: you can make a battle plan for getting to that job. I don't know about you, but for me it doesn't work that way. I roughly know what area I want to move into, but it's by no means narrowed down yet, and I don't think that'll happen soon. The way I found out about the field I want to move into happened not by looking inward, but by looking at what I love doing without having to be prompted to do it, the books I love reading, the articles I will read in the newspaper. Ibarra talks about this and more, and if you're thinking of changing careers I definitely recommend this one.

Some top tips from Working Identity:
1) Act your way into a new way of thinking and being. You cannot discover yourself by introspection.
2) Stop trying to find your one true self. Focus your attention on which of your many possible selves you want to test and learn more about.
3) Allow yourself a transition period in which it is okay to oscillate between holding on and letting go. Better to live the contradictions than to come to a premature resolution.
4) Resist the temptation to start by making a big decision that will change everything in one fell swoop. Use a strategy of small wins, in which incremental gains lead you to more profound changes in the basic assumptions that define your work and life. Accept the crooked path.
5) Identify projects that can help you get a feel for a new line of work or style of working. Try to do these as extracurricular activities or parallel paths so that you can experiment seriously without making a commitment.
6) Don't just focus on the work. Find people who are what you want to be and who can provide support for the transition. But don't expect to find them in your same old social circles.
7) Don't wait for a cataclysmic moment when the truth is revealed. Use everyday occurences to find meaning in the changes you are going through. Practice telling and retelling your story. Over time, it will clarify.
8) Step back. But not for too long.
9) Change happens in bursts and starts. There are times when you are open to big change and times when you are not. Seize opportunities.