My Best Advice to Career Changers

My life is full of left turns.

Electrical engineering graduate to IT consultant.

IT consultant to executive recruiter.

Executive recruiter to career coach.

Don’t even get me started on blogger, author, speaker, trainer, podcaster, YouTuber, and aspiring TikToker.

I know a thing or a bajillion about making a career change.

If there’s only one piece of advice I could give you, it’d be this…

If you'd like to build a great career and lead a rewarding life, check out some of these other places where I share my teachings:

1. Check out the milewalk Academy, my coaching and training site, for freemiums and premiums.

2. I have hundreds of educational and inspirational videos on my YouTube Channel.

3. Grab any of my three books related to interviewing, hiring, and goal setting. All can be found on my Amazon Author Page.

4. Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter (X), TikTok, Threads, and Facebook.

5. Stay in touch with me in your email inbox by joining my newsletter here!

--Andy

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
How do I make myself a good candidate if I am networking to a company from a completely
different field if I want to change careers okay there is a several step process if you are a
career changer it's it's to do it right there is a number of steps that need to occur in sequence

(00:21):
there's usually four stages there's usually 12 steps but without going it without spending
another hour explaining all of that first thing I want to tell you is I have a career changer
playlist on my YouTube channel I would totally investigate that if you're in the premium program
meaning if you're in the job search coaching program the career changing tactics are embedded

(00:41):
in all of the different stages that I take you through there also is a separate career cheron
session that breaks down the four stages and the 12 steps when what the biggest mistake career
Changers make is they do not properly research the career change itself meaning what they are

(01:02):
usually doing F I'm not saying you're doing this I'm saying I don't want you to I don't want you to
make these mistakes is you think it sounds cool or you think you'll be it'll be rewarding to be
a one of these whatever that is you want to be a career coach I want to make a change I want to be
a career coach when people have absolutely no idea what a career coach does so wait let's let's just

(01:25):
have a little laugh for career Changers then just make it analogous to what ever you want to do what
you see is you see me here chatting it up giving you a great session I hope you enjoyed it if you
did click the like button and I'm having a time in my life and that's true cuz I'm helping you and I
feel great and you're learning and I'm educating and this is awesome okay what what what you don't

(01:51):
see is well I had to figure out all the different things that needed to occur in order for me to
create a product and a service that enable me to do these kinds of things build them sell them that
meant I needed to know how to blog create a video build a podcast I needed to know how to build an
online training product then I needed to know how to build a community build a brand Market

(02:15):
myself Market the brand Market the market to the community figure out how to market the product
sell the product then service the product and all of these things and then all of the problems that
are occurred in all the skills that I had to build not to mention being able to focus and
communicate with you through a camera that I had never done before that I didn't know if I

(02:37):
was going to like and all of these things and all the heartaches and all the money I spent and all
the trials and errors and all the wasted dollars and all the wasted wasted time that no one sees
but they see at what they feel as a finished product for somebody who's been doing this
portion of his career for 10 years so there's an investigative process now you don't need to take

(03:01):
10 years to figure out whether you want to make a career change but it's really important that you
research upfront to see if you even are going to like the career and the best thing for you to do
is not take a class the best thing for you to do as a career changer if somebody said Andy if you
could give any career changer one piece of advice what would that be I would not do anything until

(03:27):
I talk to people who are actually doing that job now not before not somebody who was a career coach
not somebody who was a recruiter not somebody who was a salesperson somebody who is doing exactly
what you want to do right now and make sure that you understand everything that goes along with it

(03:47):
and then make sure you're going to be willing to learn everything you need to and you're going to
be able to overcome every challenge you're going to need to and make every sacrifice you need to
and all of those things and all that needs to be done upfront because what happens is you
you you try to put a resume together to Target a a career that you think you might like that
you have absolutely no understanding of what's actually happening inside that career and so I

(04:10):
want you to be I want you to be making an educated decision about whether you want to pursue that
career path and the only way to make an educated decision is to have all the information which you
obviously will never have but enough information that you'll make an educated decision don't the
the times change being a career coach today is different than yesterday being a recruiter today

(04:31):
is different than yesterday there's a lot of similar principles but you're recruiting
different kind of people using different kind of mediums and and different kinds of of of
demographics or different kinds of position types and so whatever it is that you're looking to do
there's got to be an investigative component that you need to not blow off and that you

(04:52):
need to spend a considerable amount of time truly evaluating it and yes there's researching and on
your own and yes there's following uh subject matter experts and coaches and trainers that
train on the skill sets you'll need not just the career you need for any of you that say decide I
an engineer I want to be a salesperson you better be following the best sales people reading their

(05:15):
books all the all the psychologists and watching their channels and listening to their podcasts
what about your organizational skills what and all of the other things that it's going to take
to be effective at that so there's a number of these things that you need you need to do
so that's that's what I would that's what I would say there you and and you heard Tracy in the case

(05:36):
study talk about networking this this um when you actually if if you get the time and you want
to flip over to that to that page that I that I mentioned if you check out this woman right here
Jane and you check out this guy here you I won't be playing these this week John both of them said

(05:58):
the same thing now both both of them were making career changes or so they thought and they talked
about the sequence of how they did everything backwards so career Changers you should watch
those case studies because we're not we're not reviewing those this week but the the figuring
the path out so that because you asked about the networking you can't Network effectively as

(06:23):
Tracy showed you and as Jane and and John will share with you until you understand story and
why you're going after that career and how they can help you and what information you need from
them so meaning even if you just want somebody to make an introduction for you it's they're
just introducing you to somebody else to get you closer to where you want to go if you don't have

(06:44):
your story down cold as to why you want to make that move and what value you can offer it's not
going to go over well they both talked about that about the hiccups and the missteps and the wasted
time that they went through those are great case studies if you have time to take them in