Embracing change in an uncertain job market

The message on the car park paystation always makes me smile: Change is possible.  Regret spending so much in the shopping centre? Change is possible.  Think that the top you tried on would look better if you lost 10 pounds? Change is possible.  Feel like you’re stuck in a rut? Change is possible.

Actually I would like to change the “change is possible” message.  It should be “change is inevitable”.  This can be difficult to accept when it feels like you’re getting nowhere or when you are happy with where your life is.  Change is inevitable and for the most part we cannot control when or how it will happen.  We do, however, have control over our response to change.  I recently attended a talk by career psychologist Sinéad Brady, who said that we should “embrace change”.  This is a daunting prospect for people who like things to remain the same but since change is inevitable we might as well get comfortable with the idea of snuggling up to it!

Brady's excellent advice was given in the context of changing careers, and from the career-changer’s perspective. It would be nice if employers showed the same positive attitude to change when reviewing less conventional CVs. Figures from across the Atlantic suggest that workers can expect to change job on average every 4.4 years.  Statistics for the number of career changes in a lifetime are harder to come by, seven seems to be the magic number (magic because there seems to be no data to back it up!) Since the figures for career and job changes are averages this means some will change a lot more often than others.  Both figures can be expected to increase as people live and work longer and with the increase in job instability versus more traditional permanent jobs.

My own career path has taken a more scenic route, going from studying journalism to working in a bank to a project management role in a non-governmental organisation working with young people to researching my PhD.  At times some of these career paths were overlapping leading to a split-personality lifestyle of sitting in a language lab learning Old English in the morning then spending the rest of the day looking at excel spreadsheets and legal documents.  When I say I’m adaptable in a cover letter, I mean it! During my PhD I lectured and taught poetry courses and although I enjoyed many aspects of university life I decided a career in academia did not hold as much appeal as the more varied possibilities outside of the university walls.

For some the decision to leave academia comes later on the career path, as illustrated by Jillian Powers in this recent THE article, where she notes that “Change means growth, and growth can be powerful”.  I think Powers’s phrase is a very positive way to re-frame change for people who are change-averse. Every morning I spend a few minutes looking out my bedroom window at the back garden.  This practice has given me a deep appreciation of the seasonal changes to the garden, trees losing their leaves before they gradually re-emerge, the busyness of the birds during Spring and Summer, their gradual absence later in the year, the varying growth and colour of the flowerbeds.  Accepting and welcoming the potential that change brings can lead to a fuller and richer life, not just in the garden. Change is possible, change is inevitable.