The Importance of Networking to Career Changers
Changing careers is one of the biggest steps that you can take in your working life and people who are going through this change are effectively hitting the reset button on all of their previous contacts. It makes sense that they will wish to build new contacts quickly in their new industry in order to gain back the advantages that come with being integrated into the heart of a network.
Finding Your (New) Tribe
There are many networking tools available on the internet and some of the best ways to get a feel for a new industry are to look at some of the Facebook groups that are associated with it. There is often excellent advice for people starting out, though it sometimes takes a bit of digging to find those golden nuggets amongst some of the spam adverts for foreign exchange trading websites.
Persevere and you will almost certainly find groups that can help you to connect with people who are now your peers in career terms. This can help you to feel more established and healthily tethered in your new job role, particularly if you are working from home. Some of the groups are location specific and some of them may even have offline meets and greets near to where you are. This allows you to make actual real-life friends in your industry and can help to make it all feel real and help you to process the gigantic transition that you have made.
Reasons for Career Change
Most people who choose to make a career change do so around the age of 40 so have already spent a large part of their working lives in a different career. There are many reasons for making a change and one of the most common is that they just weren’t feeling it in the job any more. Their heart had ceased to be in it and they couldn’t find the level of excitement or interest that they started off with. The feeling of discontent can grow from there to the point that people decide to move jobs and careers entirely.
Alternatively, there are also a great many people who have moved careers because the job they had for years asked them to come back to the office after they had successfully worked at home during lockdown. A great many people were very disenchanted at the response from their employer to the end of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Employers seemed to want their employees to come back to the office en-masse and employees decidedly didn’t want to do that, having tasted life without commutes and being able to work from their own homes in their pajamas. Many people felt strongly enough about not going back that they moved jobs or careers to facilitate continued working from home.
Networking via LinkedIn
One of the ways that people can do this effectively is to use professional networking tools such as LinkedIn to broaden their reach and give themselves the chance to interact with whole new sets of people that they would never have reached before the days of social media.
If people can post interesting and thought-provoking content on LinkedIn after connecting with some of these people within their new industry, they can get the reputation of being a thought leader really rather quickly.
It is clear that social media strategy is key in being able to position yourself as a knowledgeable and interesting contact to have within the industry and it won't be long until this begins to pay dividends. The larger your network and the better your name is known, the more chance that you have repeated endorsements of your skills on LinkedIn and the greater the chance that you will be offered lucrative contracts by potential clients.
Utilise Your Old Network
Although it can feel like you have burned your entire network by moving careers, if you are a freelancer now, you may end up being referred work by former colleagues. This is true of many industries and the service that you provide now may be one that is required by your former workplace or your wider network in general.
If you changed careers from website development to content writing for example, those are complementary skills and you may actually end up with work as a content writer where previously you only developed the websites and they bought in the content from freelancers. Now you are a content writer who they want to buy in content from, because they have read your portfolio and like the way you describe things. They also have the advantage of already knowing that you are a trustworthy person who hits her deadlines.
Let all of your friends know that you have left your former employer to pursue new opportunities in the career that you are following now. The more people that you tell, the more chance that you will be asked by some of them for assistance with one of their projects. If you do get asked by a friend, be sure to very clearly tell them your hourly rate for the kind of work that they are asking for. Don’t give them a special rate for friends and don’t ever do anything for free. You compromise your perceived value when you do something for free and the recipient will never appreciate it as much as they would if they had paid for it.
Share Your Portfolio
If you have a portfolio, share it. Share it everywhere that you think it may be seen. Share it in email signatures, Instagram and Twitter bios. The more people you network with and the more people you show your talents to, the better and quicker your success in your new field will come. Try not to worry and concentrate on producing the best work of your career so far, in an area that feeds your passions. Enjoy the feeling of the wind in your hair as your old career gets further away and you accelerate into your new career, full speed ahead!
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