Short answer is, yes you can. 

At any stage of your career you can switch.  I’ve change careers several times over my life, and some of those changes have been quite dramatic.  The complexity comes into it when you look at your personal circumstances and the extent of the career change.

When thinking about a career change the first consideration is the consequences around what that change would mean.  One of the first things that comes to mind is your financial situation, dramatically changing careers usually means some financial impact, going back to the beginning in terms of seniority and remuneration.  You may have to take a pay hit and a title change. The second things to take into account is the risk associated with that change, lets face it, most of that will be in your head, but its still a consideration, will I like my new chosen career, will it meet my future needs and will I be happy (happier)? The final consideration, and one I had not considered prior to one of my major career changes, is your loss of network from the previous career and the lack of network in the new field.  It makes a big difference, so I found out.  You really appreciate the power of your network when it’s not there anymore. There are a few other considerations that you may see, including your age, if you are thinking about a switch, but these were and are the big 3 for me.

The next group of consideration is what I like to call your portability and barriers of entry.  Your portability to a new role really depends on how broad your transferable skill range is as apposed to your industry specific skills.  If you are an engineer who does not have a network and a history of project focused delivery activity and you want to move into sales role, then your transferable skills to the new role may be limited and you would struggle to demonstrate you have the capacity to demonstrate those skills without the previous job history, plus you’d be going up again people who do have those skills.  If, on the other hand, you are a General Manager, then your broad range of transferable skills are likely to align with a wide range of options.  Barriers of entry are the amount of effort you will need to physically and possibly financially put into the career change.  If I wanted to change my career to become a Doctor, for example, there are a number of barriers of entry I would need to consider, primarily admission, attending and passing a medical degree, just for starters.  We have had a candidate come through our program who at 30 moved into the medical field after a number of years working on the mines, one could argue that the medical degree was her career plan all along and the mine job was her financial backing.

The barriers of entry to some new careers can be quite daunting, but with the right attitude and consideration, anything is possible.  And the reality is, you were making these decision at 18 anyway, they just seem that much more challenging now when you’re married with kids, with commitments in terms of mortgages etc., a whole network in your chosen field, a secured income and a known quantity (in terms of your current job).

Yes, you can change careers, yes it will come at a cost, but with one life to live why waste it doing something you hate or leaving this world without trying something you love.

Talking to a qualified Career Coach at Career Life Transitions can help you walk through the questions and answer of career change.  It may actually be easier than you think.