Savoring the Sweet Smell of a New Career

Road to Job Satisfaction Begins With Exploring Interests, Networking

Megan Russell, 26, spent her spring juggling two very different jobs: flower arranging and health-care consulting.

At the end of May, she said goodbye to her corporate job and became a full-time flower designer for Petal's Edge in Alexandria. Although she stepped down a few rungs on the career ladder, her "passion for flowers" made the floral apprentice job enticing.

Russell took a lot of time and care before she decided to walk away from big business to something smaller, much more hectic -- and, she noted, much more uncertain. In preparation, she did everything the experts recommend that career-switchers do, from taking time to explore her interests and find the right fit to tailoring her expenses to meet her new job.

Janet Richert, the managing director of admissions and career management at the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business, has seen many people who are exploring new careers. She likens the process to building a bridge at the same time you are crossing it. "You are exploring and testing as you are laying the groundwork," she said.

The first step should be networking. Talk to people in possible fields and ask for informational interviews. When you speak to them, make sure you ask them not only about the job description but also about the lifestyle you can expect.

When you're looking for people to talk to, remember your school community. No matter when you graduated, career offices and alumni groups can help you find people on all levels of the corporate ladder and in many different arenas.

Laura Winkler, a career coordinator for the School of Management at George Mason University, recommends that career-switchers go through a process of assessing themselves before making the change. "People spend more time researching the cars they buy than what careers are a good fit for them," she said.

Russell had always been interested in event planning, so when she began to think about switching careers, she worked weekends for an events company. She came to realize the job would not be the right fit, but one aspect of it, flower design, did appeal to her. Petal's Edge agreed to take her on as an apprentice.

"I am going to be an hourly employee for a year with no benefits," she said, calling it a "huge risk."

Since making the decision to leave her job, Russell has changed her life, moving from what she called a relatively expensive apartment in Georgetown to something cheaper so she can afford to pay for health insurance.

A year ago, when Donnell Ocker, 36, decided to change careers, leaving an international conservation group in the District to move to Texas and what she hoped would be a lower-stress job, she said it was the mundane things that she did not think of that caused problems. "One of the things that has been frustrating is I switched from a Dell to a Mac and lost almost all of my formal data."

New careers can also have a big effect on your social life. Russell's friends are still getting used to the fact she does not work Monday through Friday. "Everything is in full swing, everything is on the weekends," she said. "My mom is devastated that I won't be able to go on vacation with the family this year."

Ocker said for her, it was an adjustment to go from working 24/7 for a cause she felt passionately about to something that required only a 9-to-5 commitment. It was a dramatic switch both socially and career-wise that took some getting used to. In October, she is to start a new job at another nonprofit.

Richert recommends that job-switchers create a résumé and personal marketing plan during the networking process to evaluate which skills are transferable. For example, many people have chronological résumés that focus on where they worked. Job-switchers should consider a format that instead focuses on their skills and accomplishments.

Ocker says the change she made would have been easier if she had thought more in terms of the functions she performed in her old job rather than about the conservation's goals she helped achieve. For example, networking might have come more naturally if she belonged to a group of people with similar job descriptions, even if they worked in different fields.

"A lot of what I did was program management, but because it was a specialized focus, it didn't occur to me to be part of organizations," she said.

No matter how artfully you prepare for a career switch, there will still be some aspects of your old life you will miss. "I am going to lose a big part of what I liked about my corporate job in transitioning to this role," Russell said.

Still, she is glad to make the jump. "If this is something I want to do for the rest of my life, it is worth it to me to sacrifice for a year or two or three."