It’s always a treat to stumble across new ideas in making a successful job transition. Today, I found an interesting article from Blue Sky Resumes on How to Make a Successful Career Change. This particular article addresses the problem that most of us who make big leaps face: how to get hired with little relevant experience. The article references Nicholas Lore’s terrific book on career change, The Pathfinder (reminds me that I have it sitting on my bookshelf and is definitely worth giving it another read).

I found the article’s central point to be extremely helpful in how I consider my current direction:

As Nicholas Lore explains in The
Pathfinder, "you gain admittance into any group, social or
professional, by creating agreement." In other words, people are
accepted because other people agree they belong. Agreement is developed
through the things we say, the way we act, the knowledge we have etc…The goal is to become your new profession (emphasis added).

I often find the first words out of my mouth when talking to people about my change is that I am a non-profit manager transitioning to personnel training and development work. That just accentuates where I’ve been, not who I am right now and where I’m going.

The article offers a few ideas for how to implement this new strategy.

• Get started. Don¹t wait for someone to pay you to be what
  you want to be. Just do it!
• Learn everything you can. Understand the history of the industry in
  depth. Become an expert.
• Make contacts. Build a network of influential people
  within the field you want to enter. Find creative ways to approach them
  and maintain the connection once it is made.
• Find Creative Approaches. Do not rely on the
  standard resume and cover letter. You need to approach executives in a completely new and
  different way ­ showing what you can do rather than what you have done.