Career Crisis Plan

Learn new job hunting skills and how to effectively respond to redundancy during an economic downturn

Philip Kent-Hughes

• Publisher: Publisher
• Year: 2020
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9780648930013
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Careers

Sometimes the word “career” is used inter-changeably with a job or occupation. For example, a person has a career as a carpenter, doctor or firefighter. Alternatively, “career” describes the advancement through a series of jobs within an industry, following one specialization. An example of this is starting in a job as a marketing assistant, then being promoted to coordinator, manager and then marketing director.

“Career” also describes the movement through a few different jobs within an industry, possibly at more than one organization. Examples of this progression are: store checkout clerk, salesperson, sales manager, department head, then store manager. A career is not just an upwards progression; it can sometimes be sideways.

A career may also be a collection of jobs that are unrelated to one another. Overall, a career can be seen as progression through one or a series of jobs over a lifetime. It includes your education, training, work experiences and all of the decisions you make about the path you take.

Career is also used as a verb, to describe an action, “to move swiftly and in an uncontrolled way”. For example, “The bus careered across the road, mounted the sidewalk and crashed through the shop window.” If I look back on my life the latter sounds like the more appropriate way to describe my career — lurching from one accident to another. However, this time, I’ve decided to take more control of the wheel and steer my life in a specific direction. The path I have chosen has been informed by going through this process.

With that in mind, I invite you to consider not just your next job, but a direction or path you would like to follow. This may include an initial destination, or a series of destinations, to get to where you want to go. Of course, this doesn’t have to be final, and it can be adjusted or changed significantly whenever you decide.

One reason why people stay in jobs they don’t like is because the situation is predictable. They know that tomorrow they will go to work and spend a large proportion of their time doing tasks they don’t like, and then they go home. The situation is unhappy but manageable. The issue with solving this problem is that it involves change and uncertainty, which may produce stress. Research has even shown that predictable negative consequences are less stressful than uncertainty.1 As a result, some people will stay in a job they don’t like and only move once the pain of staying outweighs the stress produced by change and uncertainty.

Alternatively, change happens to us.

There are several things that can be done to reduce and manage the stress caused by the uncertainty of changing careers. A starting point is acknowledging that the uncertainty of career change causes stress. The next step to reduce uncertainty is to make an informed decision about a new career based on detailed information. Another step is to look at a range of investigative options that you can employ to confirm that the choice you are making is the right one.

The problem is that you can’t make career decisions based on nothing—that would be like throwing darts at a board with your eyes closed. So, I’ve deliberately made this a detailed process to help you make an informed decision. Mak...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Thank you
• Introduction
• Overview
• Tools and Templates
• Emergency Response
• Crisis Response
• Getting the Same or a Similar Job
• Getting a Different Job Quickly
• Developing New Career Options
• Deciding on the Best Option
• New Career Plan
• Job Search
• CV Resume and Documentation
• Promotion and Networking
• Interviews
• Becoming Who You Want to Be
• Looking After Yourself
• Sign Off
• Author Biography
• References