If you discover at some point in your career that this is not what you actually want to do, rest assured that you’re not alone and you don’t have to stay in the course because being in a career that you aren’t passionate about will become stressful at some point and will reflect negatively on your performance and your health.

Regardless of how many years of experience you have, changing career paths is not impossible so don’t hesitate to take this step because:

• Many management skills are transferrable: Skills like planning, problem solving and decision-making. 
• Interpersonal and Soft Skills apply to all careers: Communication, emotional intelligence, Active Listening, Leadership and many more. 
• It might be difficult short term but it pays off long term: Even if you change companies while staying within the same career path, it will still be a learning curve while you adapt to the organizational culture. You might start with a lower post and salary but sometimes taking a step back to gain ten in the future is a wise thing to do. 
• You can always learn the same way you learned in your previous career. I personally know many who changed their careers after 10 years and now they are extremely successful. 

Believe in yourself and do not hesitate to take this step because it might be life changing. When you decide to take this step, make sure you:

• Chose the Right Path: Make sure you have a clear idea about the new career path you want to pursue and establish a measurable goal that you want to achieve in the future. 
• Establish a Plan: Just like you manage any project based on a preliminary plan, you should do the same. During your journey, you can inspect and adapt. 
• Chose the Right Organization: When changing careers, what’s more important than just finding a job, is to find an organization that you believe will help you achieve your career goals so you need to do proper due diligence. 
• Chose the Right Time: Timing of changing careers can make a difference for you. Don’t stay dwelling on your plan for a long time. 
• Pursue Professional Development: It’s a great asset if you pursue some certifications that are relevant to your new career plan and goals. Knowledge combined with experience is a recipe for long term success.

Below are a few tips that will help individuals build a solid career and stand out from the competition:

• Professional Development: Knowledge is power and when combined with experience, it is a recipe for long-term success. The knowledge you gain from practical experience is limited to that specific experience but that’s not enough, you need to go above and beyond the ordinary. To achieve this, put an annual professional plan for professional development to fill in any gaps knowledge that you might have, learn something new, get up to date with new technologies, frameworks or methodologies and you can do this in so many ways (Online Courses, Conferences, Webinars and so on). 
• Certifications: Pursue some certifications relevant to your line of business. Most organizations offer self-paced study plans and certifications. Industry specific certifications will help you stand out from the crowd. 
• Networking: Be it In-Person or Virtual Networking, your network is your net worth. However, networking alone doesn’t help, one should always aim to build genuine relationships with people and learn from them. This can help you grow in so many ways. 
• LinkedIn Profile: Refine and keep your profile up to date. Let’s be real, we are in the era of the Internet of Things (IoT) and digital transformation and online platforms are very powerful is used properly of which LinkedIn comes on top of the list. 
• Self-Reflection: Reflect on your current job and re-evaluate your goals. You need to ensure that what you do contributes to your long terms goals. Unlike finding a job, building a career doesn’t happen over night. It is an accumulation of years of hard work and experience.

Having a job is important because we all have to pay our bills but while you are busy working, make sure to also concentrate on building a career, because this is what will help you on the long run. It will make you stand out of the competition and will pave the road for you to be your own boss and run your own business in a career that you are passionate about in the future should you opt to do so.

I always treat Personal / Professional Development as a continuous product that is divided into phases where each phase has its own achievements “Increments“.

It’s always healthy to run your own personal “Sprint Review“ to inspect your achievement “Releasable Increment”, compare it to both your original plan and “Definition of Done” then adapt as necessary. It is also a good approach to self-reflect and evaluate what you can do better “Sprint Retrospective”.

If your progress is going on as planned, then you carry on with your next goal “Sprint”. If not, then you re-add what was not achieved to your plan “Product Backlog”, re-order your priorities in terms of professional development then plan your next sprint “Sprint Planning”.

The only difference is with the scrum team itself because in this case, its not a team but instead, you are the whole Self-Organizing & Cross-Functional team taking the role of Scrum Master, Product Owner & Development Team:

• You are the Product Owner who maximizes the value of their professional development by checking what best serves their career, where the market is trending and what employers look for.
• You are the Scrum Master who ensures that you are conducting your recaps as necessary and in timely manner.
• You are the Development Team who works hard on studying to achieve the goal as planned.

Scrum On Everyone !