Do It Now If You Want A Career And Not Just A Job

For many of the men and women aged 28 to 35 who seek our assistance, their situations could be summarised as being that they are looking to move from having had several jobs to now ideally seeking a career. An occupation that suits them, stimulates them and gives them more purpose and satisfaction and ideally stability in their work.

Their motivation to move into something more “permanent” is often accompanied by events occurring in their lives – pending marriage, arrival of children, purchase of a house or similar.

One of the consequences of the COVID pandemic over the last three (3) years has been a shortage of people for most skilled and unskilled jobs. Allied with this has been a higher willingness by employers to consider hiring people who don’t have the ideal experience or qualifications for a job but appear to be capable of and genuinely interested in learning on the job.

This has provided a favourable opportunity for people to move into a career, and to change careers, throughout 2021 and 2022. This has included scope for people to move into occupations and industries different than they started their careers in technology and IT companies, health and aged care organisations and professional services firms (accountants, consultants, cyber security etc) are examples of employers who have been open to recruiting lateral people from other industries and backgrounds.

In this new era of the last few years, it would be easy for people to assume that a similar favourable opportunity to move into a new career might exist for a few years yet. While this might be the case in some sectors such as information technology, renewable energy and aged care, those who are contemplating changing careers should also be cautious of the implications of what looks like a challenging few years ahead for the global and Australian economies.

History shows that when economic and trading conditions become difficult, companies have to manage and often cut costs. Introducing hiring freezes is typically one approach taken by organisations in these situations. Allied with this, organisations who are hiring often focus more on people with experience in the jobs and industries concerned as opposed to recruiting people who would take longer to come up to speed on the jobs involved.

Governments and economic commentators are consistently forecasting that the world and Australian economies will grow more slowly in 2023 and 2024 than in the last couple of years. Inflation, including wages growth, is also significantly increasing operating costs for organisations across most industry sectors.

We are aware from our experience that many people think more about their jobs and careers over the December to February period of each year. Research shows that more people contemplate changing jobs over this period than at any other stage of the year.

Our suggestion would be that if you are one of these people who is either now contemplating a career change or may be likely to do so over the next four months, then realise that the number of opportunities that exist now may not be so favourable as we move through 2023 and 2024.

This shouldn’t put you off thinking and planning your next career steps. But it should be a factor that you build into your action plan and especially your timing. Getting on with your intentions may be wiser over the next six months than delaying it until a less favourable environment with fewer jobs available exists.