Your Career Q&A: Making a Successful Career Change

Best-selling author Martin Yate, a career coach and former HR professional, takes your questions each week about how to further your career in HR.

The biggest problem with career change is that you usually have to leave most of your skills and credentials behind. Plus, you are older and competing for lower-level jobs usually seen as suitable for younger professionals. So, lack of relevant skills and credentials coupled with ageism can make it harder to get a foothold in a newly chosen career direction. 

Nevertheless, career change can become necessary because of personal needs: You don't like your current career any longer, your job has been automated out of existence, or you've lost your job for other reasons.

Career change almost always demands a professional step backward. Make sure there are good odds for that strategic career move to ultimately take you two steps forward.

Choosing a Target Industry and Job

To get where you want to go, you'll need to leverage as much of your experience as possible. You, as an oil and gas engineer, can increase your chances by pursuing a target HR job within the oil and gas sector. You bring an important body of knowledge to the job: You know the language, the ways things are done, the way the industry works and the problems that arise every day. In other words, you already have a broad frame of reference for the challenges to be faced in any HR job in the oil and gas industry.

With a target industry in mind, you want a target job that provides the easiest point of entry into your new professional world. Choosing this is easier when you've thought through the long-term goals of your new career choice. You say you want to become an "HR business partner where I can make a difference." An HRBP is a deeply experienced HR professional who works with senior management to develop HR strategies and tactics that support the business's goals. Relevant industry experience is again a big advantage.

When you have the specific long-term goal of becoming an HRBP in mind, you can determine the easiest points of entry and how they will support reaching that long-term HRBP goal. To do this, evaluate HR job listings (SHRM.org will be invaluable here) in terms of:

1. How can my professional background support me in landing this job?
2. Once I have the new job, how direct is the path to my long-term professional goals? 
   

HR people make it to HRBP from any number of originating jobs, and there isn't any one best option. However, with your engineering background, there is an obvious choice that jumps out both as a point of entry into HR and a direct course to HRBP: Recruitment, talent acquisition and talent management.