77 / 124
JUNE
77
INTEL TIME
BUSINESS
“We’re trained to think about what’s a good job, what’s a responsible job, what’s the next
progression of the career that we’re in...”
Is your nine-to-five
more of a burden than a
breeze?
Verity Willcocks
talks to
Natasha Stanley
,
Head Coach at career
change organisation
Careershifters, for tips
on how to switch careers
Just
the job
Does the thought of the Monday-Friday grind
overpower you with dread every Sunday
night – or earlier? Do you struggle to get out
of bed each weekday morning? Once at work
do you go through the motions, clock-watch
until 5.30pm, and then mentally cross off
each day until Friday comes around? If so,
you’re not alone. A YouGov poll last year
found that 36 per cent of us either hate or
feel indifferent about our jobs.
It’s a familiar scenario for Natasha
Stanley, Head Coach at Careershifters, an
organisation set up in 2012 to help people
navigate career change. Through both
London-based and interactive workshops
and courses including the online, eight-week
Launchpad course and the nine-month
Highflyer course, the company takes a
refreshing new approach to helping people
find a job they love.
“What we see with the people we work
with is it’s reached the point where how
they’re feeling at work isn’t bearable any
more. They’re thinking, I can’t stand waking
up on Monday morning and the Sunday
blues start happening on a Saturday
afternoon now and I need out of this.”
So what’s gone wrong? Part of the
problem, says Natasha, is that people come
out of full-time education and instead of
thinking about their ideal vocation, take the
first job that comes along to pay the bills.
“Once they get on the career ladder they
wake up ten years later and say, ‘I didn’t
choose this, this isn’t what I want to do, but
it’s been so long since I asked myself the
question, what would I really love to do?, I
don’t even know where to begin’.”
Making the change
Also to blame is our deep-seated belief that
work and fun don’t go together. “We’re
trained to think about what’s a good job,
what’s a responsible job, what’s the next
progression of the career that we’re in,”
says Natasha.
And once you’re a few years into a job,
changing career can feel like a risky move.
“If you’ve got responsibilities like a
mortgage or a family it’s not just about, well
what would make me happy, it’s all about
what’s going to sustain my lifestyle, what’s
going to help me to meet my responsibilities.
There are so many questions and fears and
frustrations that get in the way of thinking,
what would I love to do, which is paralysing
for a lot of people.”
As a result many end up staying in a job
they hate, year in year out. “People we work
with have often been thinking about making
a career change for two, five, ten years
before they even get to the point where they
come to us and start having that
conversation,” says Natasha.
It’s this cycle of fear and procrastination
that Careershifters aims to break, and why
they believe that finding yourself a new
career should not be a solo mission. Instead,
at Careershifters, expert coaches with
personal experience of career change guide
and support career changers through the
process.
Dream big
One of the first lessons is unlearning the
assumptions about careers that stop people
from finding work that fulfils them and
teaching them to ‘dream big’ again.
“There are three career-change
paradoxes that we work with that keep
people stuck,” says Natasha. “The first is
‘it’s you that wants to change but it’s also
you that’s your own biggest obstacle’. You
can’t be what you can’t see,” she says, “so
when you’re trying to come up with new
ideas for what you might want to do next in
your career, you’re limited in terms of the
ideas that you can come up with because if
you’re an accountant you probably get up
every day, you go to work, you do
accountancy work surrounded by other
accountants. A lot of people just don’t know
what’s out there in order to be able to get