The best career swaps to make after 50 (and how they affect your salary)
Seeking fulfilment, income and a new challenge? Fiona Cowood on how to get the most out of the rest of your working life
Julia Randell-Khan was 53 and had worked at law firm Freshfields as a finance lawyer for more than 20 years when she started feeling the urge to do something different. “It was instinctive at first,” she says. “I was using the word ‘freedom’ for a lot of my passwords, and my morning walk to the office was taking longer and longer.”
She quickly paid heed to that inner voice and set out on what she called “Project Julia”, giving herself two years to work out a leaving plan and test new ideas for how the next phase of her career might look. That project, which included a fellowship at Stanford University’s Center on Longevity, led her to what she does today, helping others in their 50s and 60s figure out a new career with a certain satisfaction.
Since the pandemic, her services with The Purpose Xchange (thepurposexchange.com) are more in demand than ever. A 2020 survey found that about 1.8million people aged 50-plus were interested in changing career within the next five years, a figure that experts believe has only grown since. Covid-19 put a bomb under traditional ways of working, prompting restructuring and leading to a mass re-evaluation of what we are doing with our 9 to 5s. And that has been especially true for the over-50s.
“Before the pandemic, the 50-plus age group was the fastest-growing group coming into the workforce, but since the pandemic, a lot of people in their 50s and 60s have lost their jobs and they’re the group finding it the most difficult to get back in,” explains Julia. Add in the fact that we’re living longer, healthier lives and want to enjoy our retirement, and the clock is ticking for them to get back into work – but the question is, as what?
Thankfully, whether it’s by choice or circumstance, the over-50s are now a generation that are more open to reinvention and career change than ever before. Research by Microsoft recently found that nearly three-quarters of people over 45 are willing to invest significant time in learning new skills, and 52 is now the average age for a career shift.
It helps that, culturally, we’re living through a seismic rebranding of these decades as years of possibility, rather than a prelude to retirement. From Davina McCall, 54, dragging discussion of the menopause out of the shadows, through to Tom Cruise reaching a new career high at 60 with Top Gun: Maverick, and Iris Apfel dancing in the streets of New York at 100, everywhere we look, the “rules” of mid and later life are being broken. And this is fuelling people’s belief that a fulfilling second act is out there, if only they can find it.
Throughout my publishing career, I got to have some truly amazing experiences, from attending J-Lo’s second wedding at Lake Como to watching a pack of wolves parade in front of my eyes at an Alexander McQueen catwalk show in Paris. I loved the pace, the creativity and getting to work with incredible teams.
The last 12 years of my career were spent at John Brown Media, working on magazines for brands such as Waitrose and John Lewis; I still enjoyed it, but a restlessness had started to creep in. I began to feel that I had stopped learning.
Around that time, I had a chance conversation with a client who’d recently been promoted. I asked her about her experience of going from working among her peers to being their boss and whether it was difficult. “Oh, no,” she said, “it’s fine, because I have a coach.”
I’d never really heard the term before, but she went on to explain the relationship and how her coach provided a safe, confidential space for her to mull over issues that were coming up at work. It sounded fascinating and I thought, “I’d love to be one of those.”
So I did my research and enrolled on a part-time course with Meyler Campbell in January 2020. When the pandemic struck a few months later, my company downsized and I was made redundant. It didn’t come as a huge shock and, in fact, it felt like serendipity, because the wheels of my new career were already in motion. Having something new to study actually made lockdown very enjoyable and stimulating, and I spent the next year training and building up my practice hours with pro bono clients.
Since then, I’ve coached all sorts of people, from scientists to NHS nurses and bankers. It’s very rewarding; my job isn’t to advise, but to listen and help the client reframe the issue and think about it differently. It’s amazing to see the transformations in people.
With my years of experience leading diverse teams and solving complex problems, it felt like a very natural progression. It’s also made me feel much freer, as I can work remotely and plan my time. I’d planned my move into coaching for some time financially, so I’m comfortable earning a bit less while I’m building my coaching practice. With executive clients, you can expect to earn between £500 and £2,000 a session, with lower rates for those in education or the public sector.
I can’t put a price on the freedom and job satisfaction I’ve gained, and best of all, I don’t feel any corporate stress any more – instead I get to help others shoulder theirs.