‘Cross the street’:
Switching careers can be challenging but possible
Candice Harrigan spent the first nine years of her career as a sales representative for a large pharmaceutical company. “I loved the job originally but as my life changed, I became less interested in selling pharmaceuticals and more interested in selling something else,” says the 36-year-old Chicago resident. “I took a job in the hospitality industry working on sales with larger accounts, but it didn’t take long before I realized I wasn’t into it at all. It wasn’t what I was selling that I was tired of, it was actually the act of selling itself.”
After less than one year at the new job, Harrigan realized that she needed to do more than change jobs; she needed to change careers. “I was talking to my dad about it on the phone one night and he said something like ‘I think it’s time for you to cross the street,’ meaning it was time for me to do something else entirely,” she says. “That phrase stuck with me, and it wasn’t long before I realized I needed to make a big change.”
But Harrigan soon realized that her pending change would be smaller than she thought. “I talked to a bunch of people about transitioning from one career to another and the biggest takeaway was that I learned I could use a lot of the skills I learned – and frankly, excelled at – as a sales rep and use them to do something completely different,” she says. “I retooled my resume a bit and jumped in head first.”
After considering positions in customer service, business development and product management, Harrigan decided to pursue a career in marketing. “I realized that my background in sales and the subsequent successes I’ve had were based on my understanding of market trends, customer needs and how to manage the competitive landscape, especially when there were small or significant changes to our industry,” she says. “I realized that with some tweaking, my sales proposals and my reports could be the base for creating strong marketing campaigns.”
But Harrigan knew that wasn’t enough. “I blitzed my LinkedIn contacts and set up conversations with as many people in marketing as I could,” she says. “And I took some seminars and online courses. I learned a lot about marketing and more importantly, what I didn’t know, which I addressed later with more school.”
While meeting with others and taking classes, Harrigan began shadowing some of the marketing contacts she made at her previous job and offering her services to some local shops in Boulder, Colorado, where she moved with her boyfriend after leaving her sales job. “Big changes all around,” she says. “To be honest, leaving Chicago and going to Colorado made the transition seem more real, more complete. It definitely gave me more momentum.”
Jacob Gold, a career consultant in Providence, Rhode Island, says stories like Harrigans are common. What sets Harrigan apart, though, is her dedication to learning about her new industry while building on the skillset she already had. “A lot of people say they want to change careers but are then unwilling to do anything different,” Gold says. “Let’s say someone in sales wants to do something similar to what [Harrigan] did. Most of them would treat their new job the same as their old job. They’d set similar goals using metrics that might not apply. They’d deal with people the same way they’d deal with customers, which in most cases means bending to their will to make the sale. But in marketing, you have to work with others and take the best concept and make it work, whether it was your idea or not.”
If asked for references, Gold also says it’s important to use people who can speak to your abilities and work ethic and if possible, individuals who can vouch for your skills in the new career path.
According to research from the U.S. Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, individuals may change careers anywhere from five to seven times over the course of their working lives.
“Those kinds of stats were unheard of 30 or 40 years ago,” says Shadd Weber, a former U.S. Department of Labor job analyst. “But so many things are different today – the idea of loyalty, which employees expect from their employers instead of just the other way around; social media, which allows people to share more information and to see what others are doing with their careers; the idea of the hybrid workplace – there are so many things today that can give people the realization that they can make a complete career change – something that just wasn’t that common in the past.”