If you want to get professional advice on this process, do not pass "go", do not collect $200, go directly to your favorite bookstore and pick up the latest edition of Nelson Bolles' "What Color Is Your Parachute?". Mr. Bolles has been telling people how to do this for a long time, and he has excellent advice. (Get it here if you do business with Amazon)
This is my story, though. The lesson to be taken from my experience is that it a) takes a lot of time, b) takes a lot of patience, c) requires that you be open to unexpected opportunities, d) requires that you talk to anyone that Has The Power to Hire You or who might know someone in that position, and e) requires you to really think about who you are, what you can do, and what makes you happy. This last piece is the hardest part of the process, but absolutely critical as it's the starting point. Bolles' book has a lot of exercises that can help. A resource that I found helpful in reinforcing and clarifying my perception of my skills and interests, is an instrument called the Motivational Appraisal of Personal Potential (MAPP) that can be taken online at http://www.assessment.com at a cost of something like $45. Well worth the money in my opinion. Actually, I found it a little "spooky" in my case - the way a simple "pencil and paper" test can come so close to describing me!
I won't bore you with exactly how I got there, but if you look here you'll see what the result of my self-assessment was. What I was doing is what Bolles refers to as identifying my "transferable skills". If you know me, you probably have a good idea how I arrived at this list. If you don't, just imagine what kind of work you may be doing as a software developer, and what skills are involved. Don't just think about the actual coding, though the skills employed there are indeed important. Look at the larger picture of what it is that you're doing. Ask yourself how many different kinds of people you have to interact with. If you're like most of us, everything from shipping clerks to the CEO! How many different kinds of businesses or industries have you served? You learn something about each of those occupations and each of those industries on every project. What non-technical, or semi-technical skills did you have to master? Bolles tells you to look at "actions" you perform, and includes in his book long lists of likely words - things like "coordinate", "facilitate", "communicate", "analyze" - all things that we do in the course of our work as developers, right?
While I mention that identifying your transferable skills is a very difficult part of the process, the next part isn't difficult, it's just laborious, time-consuming and occasionally discouraging. The next step is to try to find out what business, industry or occupation can make use of those transferable skills. You might see right off what it is that you might like to do. But if not, the real trick here is to talk to a lot of people about those transferable skills, and see if they see a person like you fitting into any of the businesses or industries that they deal with. This can be very discouraging, because to be quite frank, the average person isn't very good at thinking outside the box - the know their job, and maybe a few of the occupations they interact with, and they know what the "qualifications" are and how they got to where they are. But beyond that, you're asking them to think rather creatively and abstractly - something that isn't in the skill set of the average person.
You therefore need to seek out very intelligent, successful and (if possible) well-connected people. Where do you find someone like that? First, exhaust your list of people you know - former colleagues, co-workers, family members, former employers, clergy and members of your congregation, former (or current) teachers, neighbors, fellow PTA members. If you're like me, most of these people won't be of much help. Usually the best you can hope for is when someone says "You know who you should talk to...".
Next, you have to start dealing with strangers. It's helpful if you can get someone you know to make some kind of introduction. But even though you have that kind of entrée, you will still run into people who are very suspicious of you - who are you and what exactly do you want? Explain to them that you're working on making a career change, and that you believe that their knowledge and experience (be specific here if possible) can help you identify occupations or businesses that might be able to use your skills. If someone responds with "Well, we're not hiring", immediately let them know that you'd prefer to talk to people who aren't hiring. That way you're not trying to sell yourself for a job, and they're not trying to screen you as an applicant - you can just talk which will prove much more helpful to you.
Some of the most helpful people I encountered are attorneys who practice business law, accountants, public or semi-public officials, and senior university and college faculty and administrators. The common factor is that these people are usually quite intelligent, come into contact with a wide variety of businesses and business people, and understand what networking is all about since it's usually an important part of their professional lives.
In my case, I talked to a person who was an attorney, a former public official and is currently involved in development activities for a local institution of higher learning. I had considered the field of economic development as an area to target, and this person told me that I had many of the qualities that are valued in this field. He then put me in touch with another person who was a veritable gold mine of information. I was told that this person "knows everyone" and it turned out to be true. She was able to refer me to over a dozen people (and senior people at that) working in economic development in my area. Equally important is that I was able to make a sufficiently favorable impression on her that she didn't hesitate to encourage me to "use her name" when attempting to interview these people. It's so helpful when you an influential person allows you to start a letter or conversation with "So-and-so suggested that you could help me...".
I started sending out letters and following them up with phone calls.
Most of these people were kind enough to give me an hour or more of their time, and it was fascinating. Each person had a slightly different perspective on this "industry" and provided me with a different picture of the types of organizations and the types of activities in which people in this field are engaged. Equally important, each person was able to confirm that my skill set and interest in business was ideal for gaining a position in this field. I asked each of them also if they felt that economic development was a "growth industry", and all felt that it was.
As time went on, and as the list of industry luminaries I'd already talked to grew, my "cred" increased as time went on. Most recently I was able to get an introduction (through one of these contacts) to the number-two person with the Economic Development Corporation of the state's largest county. When I rattled off the people I'd met with, I could see him immediately take me more seriously. I presented myself as someone who was acquainted with the "movers and shakers", who knew how to network, and who was willing to take initiative and expend some effort, not someone who just sat back and read the want-ads and sent out resumes.
I joined an association for people in Michigan's economic development community, and once I had access to their member list, put together a mail campaign to let folks know that I was interested and available. I drew upon some of the people that I had interviewed for advice and input on my materials - the cover letter and resume. In the weeks following the mailing (about 40 packages in all), I started following up with phone calls.
While everyone in the field felt that it was a "growth industry", what they failed to take into account was that economic development is funded in whole or in part by public money. At this point, public money is in pretty short supply in Michigan, and every economic development unit in the state (as far as I can tell) is working under a hiring freeze, or actually downsizing through attrition.
Things didn't look good.
Despite all of this good work, I was coming up empty-handed. I wasn't getting discouraged, but I was getting ready to back up a few steps and think about what other fields I could target. At this point I was about to benefit from something I had unwittingly set in motion months before.
Back when I was first starting to look at the economic development field, a friend suggested I contact an acquaintance of his. Now, this kind of suggestion is the kind of thing to which a lot of us wouldn't attach much importance. I didn't see a strong "fit" between who I am and what I was looking for with this fellow's business (other than that it had a dollop of computer-technology in it), but it's important to remember that things like this can be like the tip of an iceberg, with more below the surface than we might be aware of. So, I did as my friend suggested, and sent a nice cover letter explaining my situation, and a copy of the "skills and interests" document that I linked to above. I received an email a short time later saying that this gentleman didn't think that his company was in a position to make use of someone with my skills, but if anything changed he'd give me a call. Pretty typical response, and I promptly forgot about it.
About six months later, this fellow gave me a call and said that he thought we should talk. His company's situation had changed, and he also had a customer that was looking for someone. We met, talked, and he asked me to send him a resume which he would forward to his customer. I did, he did, then I started following up on this.
It turns out that the "customer" had a marketable product (which has a significant technical component) and was entering into a joint venture with another organization to further develop and market this product. A short time later, I was meeting with a group that was to be the board of directors for the new enterprise. What they were looking for was someone who could come in as the director or CEO of this new organization, and get it started and keep it running. (Ironically, one of the organizations was an economic development corporation for a large city).
While the end of the story can't be written yet, I have been engaged as a consultant on a six-month contract to get this company started. If all goes well, at the end of this contract I'll become the first full-time employee as the head of this company, and my family and I will be relocating to another part of the state. Even if things don't go as well as we're all hoping, I've succeeded in changing careers, and I can continue to advance my career dependent not on my technical skills, but on my skills as a business person.
This entire process took about ten months. I've interviewed at least two dozen people, written to probably three times that number, joined a professional association, surfed enough web pages to fill the Library of Congress if they were printed, and been very discouraged on many occasions. It did help that I have a degree in business with a concentration in marketing, and that I had a fairly broad business background before being seduced by technology. Also, having formed a partnership and participated in running my own company, and the fact that the last three salaried positions I've held had "Director" or "Manager" in their titles certainly helped.
But the most important factor was that I was lucky enough to get in front of, and make a good impression on people that were then willing to advise and help me, and finally some people who had the power to hire me. How I got into that situation took some careful self-assessment and some leg-work - old-fashioned networking. But if you can clearly articulate your transferable skills, and get in front of enough people, and are patient, someone will give you the opportunity you're looking for.
If you're embarking on a similar path, good luck to you. If you want to discuss your own efforts with me, please don't hesitate to drop me an email.
Steve Sawyer, August 2004