Taking a page out of the book the young children experience, I make a suggestion to you career changers about how to go about your evaluation process once you’ve narrowed down the scope to a few alternatives.
Start at the beginning. That's advice I give people all the time when they're thinking of a career change. I'm Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter. And if you think about amateur sports with young children running around doing a bunch of stuff, what happens is eventually they're guided into learning how the game is really played. And as they become older, they become better, or they level out. Like, for example, I'm just going to use this as one example, a baseball player, seven years old, boy or girl doesn't really matter, they get out on the field, they don't know what they're doing, they got a glove and a ball, and they're trying to catch it, right? It's as simple as that. And then as they get the high school, the game becomes more complicated, and requires more practice and more successes. And the young child learns by the time they get to high school, what their talent is. They've been coached. They've been guided through the process, right? They get to college, much the same thing happens. They become even better, they become bigger and stronger and more capable, until eventually, they're ready to become a professional. Now, for you who's thinking of a career change, my advice is always do something related to the field that you're thinking about. So for example, you decide, okay, there are three alternatives I'm considering. I'm not sure which one I should go for because I may need more training. I may need to go back to school for them. And that's an expensive nut to lay out for me at age, whatever you are, in order to figure out that maybe I don't really want to do this. So try and help someone else. Try and find out what it's like to be a beginner in the profession. Work side by side with someone so that, in this way, you start to see what it's really like. Go in with a beginner's mind, not an expert moind. You may be an expert at what you do now. But in this area, you're a beginner. And the idea becomes learn working with someone who's already doing it. Do a day a week, on the weekends working next to someone. Find a couple of people to do because especially if you're in white collar work, the weekends are time for other people to knock off. So you want to rotate between them. But find people that you can work with, even if it's an evening during the week, every week, or volunteer with an organization that would value you. And then from there, you'll start to figure out whether this is something you want to do, whether you want to commit to it, whether you want to go to back to school for whatever it is, or you can rule it out. I'm Jeff Altman, I hope you found this helpful. My website is TheBigGameHunter.us. Go there, go to the blog, go exploring. There's 1000s of posts there to help you. In addition, if you're interested in one on one coaching, you can schedule time for a free discovery call. You can schedule time for coaching. I'd love to help you. Follow me on LinkedIn. By the way, linkedin.com/in/TheBigGameHunter. You'll get notified when I release something new of course, and my network tends to be bigger than yours, you'll have access to my network as well. Lastly, lastly, I hope you have a great day and be great! Take care!
