When we think about a career, it’s not hard to think about it as a long-term commitment that we must keep up until the day we retire. In those terms, it can almost be seen akin to marriage. Of course, if we ever hope to truly excel at one thing, then investing our energies in one direction, by and large, is advisable. That said, many people have switched careers, have changed their life path even later in life and have succeeded. Morgan Freeman, for instance, had almost no public acting success until he was well into his 40s.
So – perhaps we should be focusing less on what path to follow until we can no longer work, and think about what direction is most appropriate for us, what we’d even like to invest our energies in for that amount of time. This way, even if we work a second or third-choice career, we can slowly make the moves towards a more positive and productive outcome.
In this post, then, we’ll discuss long-term advice for keeping your career as fresh as possible. With that in mind, let’s consider:
Consider Staffing Opportunities
Staffing opportunities that give you the chance to work within plenty of different companies or services can be a good way to give you excellent experience, while also retaining a sense of dynamism to your given skillset. For instance, healthcare staffing can help you find work opportunities you travel to, allowing you to find recruitment geared to your current needs, and of course, in line with what is available.
You may find that this can also help you refine your experience for more intensive roles later on, or qualify you for training that requires real experience to graduate. Staffing opportunities may also serve as an alternate measure should you need to secure more work for yourself going forward. It’s a perfect blend of need and want, allowing you to more easily curate the variety of your own given job role.
Think Of Potential Specialisms
A skillset is rarely just a given skillset, but can often branch off into many different disciplines or specialisms. For instance, someone working in the construction field for thirty years may wish to go into teaching once the physically intensive rigors of the job role become less appropriate to their current age and health needs.
For someone starting out, specializing in a given discipline such as a particular element of web design, SEO marketing for potential advertisers, or even graphic design for online YouTube creators can help you adapt your learned abilities towards a role more worthwhile for you. Specializing in this way can also aid you in giving you a fresh set of working opportunities, or allowing you to pivot in a new direction without entirely resetting your career path.
Fall In Love With A Craft/Discipline
Perhaps the best way to keep a career feeling fresh is to fall in love with a craft or the discipline surrounding your work. For instance, a guitar teacher may teach guitar for decades, but always deepen their understanding of the instrument, challenging themselves, playing at events, and perhaps even creating content online. There’s much to do in that space.
It might be that learning more about your own craft can help you sustain and refresh your own thoughts towards your career. Teaching, for instance, has many specialisms and possible avenues to go down. Construction can lead into other practical trade skills which are among the most valuable and important anyone can become qualified in. While you don’t have to make your life your work, having something that sustains your interest and curiosity during that time can be fantastic.
Network & Stay Active Within The Space
It’s good to stay active and understanding of your given discipline. Attending events in your space, networking in person and online, keeping up with the news, and remaining a commentator on certain disciplines can help you feel like an engaged member of that industry.
It may also net you better opportunities. After all, people like to work with those who are aware of how their discipline fits into the working world today, rather than twenty years ago. You’re much more likely to book driving lessons with an instructor who knows the ins and outs of the current testing and theory conditions before you hire them, as opposed to someone who only has a working knowledge of the process from twenty years ago.
Networking and staying active in the space helps you realize just how much changes each year, particularly as technological leverage becomes rampant.
Build Your Transferable Skills
Building your transferable skills will help you more easily pivot from one career to another should you need to, or rapidly move your career in a different direction. From logistics to administration, to learning how to make a stock inventory, or negotiate with suppliers, these skills can help you seem more interesting to potential employers (or help you build a business yourself) should you need to.
For instance, an administrator working in a given department could quite easily move into a film or advertising production office thanks to those skillsets remaining largely the same, only applied to a different format. There are too many major and minor transferable skills to count in this post, but you may be able to identify them by how applicable your current job role tasks could be to other fields or industries. Perhaps choosing to use them elsewhere once in a while can grant you that freedom you’ve been looking for.
Work For A Company You Believe In
Working for a company you believe in can help inspire you to get out there and put your effort forward each day. Even if you just believe in the company’s values, that can be enough, or if you’re excited to see what else they’ll come out with. That’s not always easy to find, but if you do get that opportunity, it may even be worth taking it even if it means slightly lower pay. After all, the feeling of knowing what you do matters could be worthwhile, and if you don’t have that, then even transitioning to a different role or career path could be understandable.
With this advice, we believe you’ll be able to focus on keeping your career fresh.
