Making a change to your career doesn't necessarily mean burning down everything you have worked for to date and starting from scratch. In today's episode, I share:

• How to leverage your professional experience and skills when pursuing new career opportunities.
• How to reframe your existing expertise to align with new roles.
• The power of your network and professional relationships to uncover hidden opportunities.
• Practical approaches for gradual career change.
• A reframe that helps you see age and experience as an asset, not a barrier to navigating career transitions.

About Nicola Semple

I help people build their career confidence and achieve their career goals.

You can book a free no-obligation chat about how I can support you to achieve your career goals: https://nicolasemple.com/chat

You can get my free guide "Back Yourself: Your 7 Step Plan to Build Confidence and Achieve Your Career Goals": https://nicolasemple.com/backyourself

You can buy my book The Career Confidence Toolkit: Take Control of Your Career and Fulfil Your Potential: https://nicolasemple.com/book

Connect with me on Linked In to carry on the conversation: https://linkedin.com/in/iamnicolasemple

A new episode of The Career Confidence Podcast is released every second Friday. Hit the subscribe button and you will be the first to know when a new episode goes live.

Foreign hello and welcome to the Career Confidence Podcast where we share inspiring stories, practical strategies, hints and tips so that you build your career with confidence in in this ever changing world.

I'm your host, Nicola Semple, a career and confidence coach and author of the Career Confidence Toolkit.

Today, I want to bust one of the myths about career change that keeps lots of people stuck in work that they don't enjoy.

And that is the belief that making a meaningful change means starting from scratch.

So the story that people tell themselves is that if you want to do something different, you will either need to accept a more junior role, take a massive pay cut, spend years retraining, and basically wipe out decades of progress that you've made.

Add to that, you'll probably be the oldest person in the room.

You'll be learning alongside people half your age.

You'll be struggling to be taken seriously because you're new to the field.

And when you think about it in that way, no wonder so many people stay where they are.

Who on earth would want to throw away years, maybe even decades of building a career to start over, to be the inexperienced newbie?

Now, the good news is that this story is, for the most part, fiction.

Career change doesn't have to mean throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

The years of experience, the skills, the professional wisdom you've got don't become worthless the moment you decide to do something different.

If you're smart and you think strategically, they can actually be your greatest assets.

When you've spent a long time, years, maybe even decades, in a particular role or a particular industry, it's easy to see your expertise as being highly specific and non transferable.

So you think of yourself as a lawyer or an accountant or a project manager, and you assume that your skills only have value in that exact context.

And this is a fundamental misunderstanding of how skills actually work.

Because the vast majority of what makes you valuable isn't the technical knowledge specific to your field, it's the broader capabilities you've developed.

And you've developed them over years of working and gaining experience.

Think about what you actually do all day.

Yeah, I'm sure that there's some industry specific technical knowledge involved, but I'd also bet there's also strategic thinking, problem solving, managing stakeholder relationships, communicating ideas so that people understand them, making decisions based on incomplete information, navigating organizational politics.

These capabilities are valuable everywhere.

If you've managed teams, you know how to motivate people, you know how to get them to perform.

If you've handled difficult clients, you know how to manage expectations and build trust.

If you've delivered projects under pressure, you understand how to prioritise, how to get stuff done.

These aren't marketing skills or finance skills.

They're professional skills that translate across virtually any context.

So the question isn't whether your skills are transferable, it's whether you can articulate their value in a new setting.

The key to making career moves without starting over lies in how you frame your experience.

So instead of defining yourself by your job title or your industry, start thinking about the problems you solve and the value you create.

A marketing director doesn't just do marketing.

They understand consumer psychology.

They analyze data.

They solve problems in a creative way.

They have commercial focus.

These capabilities are valuable in lots of different contexts, not just in a traditional marketing role.

An accountant isn't just good with numbers.

They are able to spot financial risks.

They create systems that produce management information that then allow people to make effective decisions.

They communicate complex financial information to non technical audiences and make it clear to them what that means and the impact on them.

They find efficiencies, and they ensure that organizations remain compliant with regulations.

Again, these skills can translate far beyond accounting departments.

So start to shift your thinking from what you do to the value you bring.

And when you do that, new possibilities emerge.

You don't need to find another position with exactly the same job title.

You can pursue opportunities where your particular unique combination of skills and experiences creates unique value.

One of the most effective strategies for career change is building bridges from where you are now to where you want to be, rather than just burning everything down and starting over again.

It might mean taking on project work or consulting in your current field while you develop expertise in a new area.

So the existing skills and reputation that you have become your financial foundation.

And that gives you the safety net to explore alternatives without having that immediate pressure to replace your full income.

It might mean looking out for and identifying roles that sit at the crossroads of your current expertise and where you want to be.

These hybrid positions allow you to leverage what you already know, but also gradually build up new capabilities.

Or it might mean finding ways to shift your current role toward work that interests you more, and then that will allow you to eventually transition into something different.

Making a move internally within your organization can often allow you to maintain a level of seniority and also maintain your salary, but at the same time changing your area of focus.

The point is, career change does not need to be a dramatic leap into the unknown.

It can be a series of strategic steps that leverage your existing strengths while gradually Repositioning you for different opportunities.

It might mean volunteering for projects in your current organisation that align more closely to where you want to go.

It could be about taking on responsibilities that develop new skills while you still leverage your existing strengths.

And each small shift compounds over time.

Within a few years, you can end up in a remarkably different place without ever having started over in a traditional sense.

And the beauty of this approach is that it's low risk.

You're not betting everything on one big change.

You're making small but strategic adjustments that keep you financially secure while gradually repositioning yourself for different opportunities.

What I often hear people say is that they're too old to make a career change.

And I counter that by saying no matter what age you are, you are never too old.

Your age and the experience you've got aren't liabilities to overcome.

They're actually differentiators.

They make you valuable in ways that less experienced professionals simply can't match.

You'll be coming to opportunities with a wealth of experience and also, most importantly, a sense of perspective.

You've got the wisdom that comes, and it only comes from experience.

It comes from seeing multiple cycles of the economy.

It comes from seeing organizational changes and strategic initiatives actually playing out.

And it takes time to experience all of that.

You have got the lived experience that gives you the ability to see the bigger picture.

You can anticipate problems before they arise.

And you can make decisions informed by years of witnessing what works and what doesn't.

The other benefit of experience is that you can use that experience to develop a career model that really works for you.

The traditional model of career change assumes you need to find one new full time role to replace your current one.

But we've now got much more flexibility in terms of how we construct our career.

So there are lots of people that are going down the path of portfolio careers combining multiple income streams that either collectively replace or perhaps even exceed their previous single salary.

This might include taking on consulting in your existing field and then freelancing in an area that you're developing.

Maybe you've got a passion project you want to pursue.

Maybe there's a fractional role that you can take on where you get to use your expertise, but the organization doesn't actually need a full time person within that role.

Taking this approach has lots of advantages.

It's reducing your risk because it's diversifying where your income's coming from.

It lets you maintain a level of financial security using your existing expertise while building new capabilities.

Actually, for lots of people, it provides More interesting, more varied work than any single role could offer.

You're not starting over, you're just expanding your professional identity.

You're taking on these multiple dimensions that support each other.

If you've been working for a few years and you've got some experience under your belt, you have something incredibly valuable that people starting out don't have.

And that's a network of relationships.

I know that when I say the word networking, lots of people recoil in horror, but I can't express enough how important the people you gather along the way of your career are to you.

These connections can be instrumental in making career moves without starting over.

Think about who you know, the former colleagues, clients, contacts you've got in the industry, even just professional acquaintances.

They all create a web of opportunities that aren't advertised on job boards.

And not only can they give you access to opportunities, they also know that you can deliver.

They trust you.

They can vouch for you, which is particularly helpful as you're moving into new territory.

Lots of successful career transitions happen through conversations with people in your network.

And it's not just about finding jobs.

It's about finding people who can help you understand what opportunities are out there, who can make introductions, who can give you advice, and who are able to help you build that bridge from where you are to where you want to be.

And remember, it's not all one sided.

You can do exactly the same for the people in your network.

So if you are thinking about making a career move, then I want to encourage you to stop thinking about it in terms of starting over.

Look at it through the lens that you're building on, everything you've learned, everything you've experienced, and everything you've achieved so that you can create something new.

Your years of experience aren't wasted.

What we want to do is use them as the foundation that makes your next move possible.

If you think you'd value support identifying how you can leverage everything you've built to find work that really fulfills you, then let's set up a time to chat.

Go to nicholas semple.com chat I would love the opportunity to have a conversation with you to help you shift your perspective from focusing on the expertise specific to your role and thinking more in terms of the value that you bring.

That's all from me for today.

I've got more episodes lined up for you over the next few months, so be sure to hit subscribe on your podcast app of choice and those episodes will be delivered straight to your device when they become available.

Remember, you can also buy my book, the Career Confidence Toolkit on Amazon, where it's available in paperback, Kindle and Audible formats.

And if you'd like to keep in contact, be sure to download my free guide Back yourself.

Your seven step plan to build confidence and achieve your career goals by going to nicolaseimple.com backyourself as well as getting instant access to the guide.

I'll send you my fortnightly newsletter with Career confidence hints and tips.

But for now, thank you so much for listening, and I'll talk to you again very soon.

Bye for now.