And yet we all have a very limited view of the careers that are out there. How often have you thought about what else you can do, and come up with a very limited list? We see the careers that our friends and colleagues do, we are far less aware of those that are beyond our immediate experience.

But those people considering a career change do need to be aware of the full spectrum of careers. Not every job title of course, that would be impossible. But it is important to have a good overview of what is possible. Which is why good career research is essential when considering a career change.

There are many ways to research careers. You can start with the Guardian or Penguin guides to careers, both of which provide a good general summary of the most popular paths. To get better depth, once you are aware of the general areas you are interested in you can access a corporate research database on the internet to drill down in your chosen sector. Better still you can meet and talk to people working in the fields that interests you. Best of all, go and do some work shadowing or work experience in a company that operates in the sector you are looking at. As you work there, explore the roles in the company, and in the companies that supply to them or who are their customers.

The more research you do, the more you will uncover new ideas and new career paths. You will still need to work out which careers you are best suited to. But without good research your options will always be limited and your career change may not be as good as it could be.

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My first wish is for society to recognise that career planning and long term career management is the culmination of our educational system. We should not have to spend all those years in education only to find that when we come out the other side we simply stumble into the first job that comes along. Nor, for most us, to continue to stumble from one job to another for the rest of our lives. I would like to see career planning integrated into the educational system. Not necessarily at the same time as we leave education, most people need a few years to really understand what full time work is all about, and who they are in their working persona. But a proper career planning process should be made available to all at the right time during their twenties, funded by the state and delivered by qualified career professionals.

My second wish is to get rid of job centres. David Cameron sort of put his finger on it yesterday when he said that job centres should be replaced by local charities, support groups and private companies. He didn’t get it quite right because well meaning charities and support group groups are not necessarily staffed by qualified professionals. But he is on the right track; job centres have been failing for years and need to be replaced by an effective,  professional service. The same goes for Connexions, Prospects and all the other publicly funded initiatives that currently misdirect and ill-advise job seekers and school leavers.

I would like to see common sense in the qualification process for Career Development Loans. At the moment anyone can apply to a bank for government-backed Career Development Loan. For any sort of training, other than career advice. What nonsense! How can one plan a self development  programme properly without effective advice and planning? Career advice should not only fall within the scope of Career Development Loans; it should be a essential prerequisite.

Finally I would like to see a common qualification standard for career professionals. There are some excellent courses out there but there are no regulations as to who can set up as a career consultant. Ours is an emerging profession. It needs to develop. It is vulnerable to cowboys and charlatans. A common standard, backed by an effective professional body (not the handful of self interest groups that currently exist) would make all the difference.

That’s my wish list. Do you think Santa will come on May 6^th?

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At the risk of sounding like a broken record, most of us are in the wrong jobs. And, if we were all the right jobs, jobs we enjoyed, were motivated in and good at, we would be far more productive, the economy would be more successful, we would recover from the recession more quickly and the long term outlook would be far more positive! Simple, isn’t it?

What is really need then is the facility for people to understand which careers are right for them, and to be able to receive personal, targeted career advice which will help them to make the right choices and progress faster. This advice should not be given on the day they leave education, but after they have spent three or four years learning about work, through a structured series of work experience, internship or apprentice programmes; because it takes time to understand what a long term career is all about and people in their teens and early twenties find it hard to make decisions that will last until their sixties.

Structured career planning is the last piece in our young people’s education. It is available today for those who are prepared to pay for it. But it would be far more satisfactory to have it provided as a state service. After all, by helping people into a successful career we will save a fortune in benefits and the cost of running Job Centres.

Extending the 6 month training guarantees for under 24s may have been the best jobs-related benefit the Treasury could think of. But it is a missed opportunity.

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However, there is a difference between the sort of wholesale redundancies that are made at the peak of a recession and those which are likely to be implemented over the next few months. As far as businesses are concerned this is a time to cautiously pursue increased revenues, whilst protecting expenditure. This means that, provided there is little risk to the business, many firms are likely to hire staff who can bring business in, whilst seeking to reduce headcount amongst those who play an administrative or back office role.

So what do you do if you are looking for a job bow, or reviewing your career strategy in order to keep the position you have?

It’s all about knowing where you add value. If for example you are a sales person looking for a job and genuinely believe you can increase a company’s sales, you might want to think about offering to work for them on a commission only basis, at least until you have proved yourself. If you believe you can reduce costs and improve the bottom line, you might propose a performance related deal in order to get yourself back into employment. If you can genuinely do these things it will not be long until the company recognises your value and offers you a conventional role.

The same goes if you are in work but are fearful of losing your job. Renegotiate it now along performance related lines. Of course, they are going to know a lo about you and you will need to genuinely believe that you can deliver the savings or revenue you promise. But we live in difficult times. Don’t be afraid to take extraordinary measures.

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So what do you do if you really don’t want to go back to a similar job in a different company but you know this is the only sort of job that you can realistically get quickly?

The economic imperative has to take precedence. For your own sake and that of your family you have to get back into work. But that does not mean that you should abandon all thoughts of making a change. As we exit recession and enter a period of renewed growth, companies will start looking to replace the staff they have had to let go. At the same time, many people who have hung on tightly to their jobs for the last couple of years will feel that it is safe to make a move. So the labour market is likely to become much more liquid, opening up new opportunities.

A new job may be time consuming initially but it is well worth holding on to your recession-induced dream of changing to a career that you find more motivating and enjoyable. It is possible to work and plan a career change at the same time, indeed the vast majority of people who consult  us at Career Energy to get help with their career change are in work when they do so.

Redundancy creates opportunities. But this does not mean that being in work eliminates them. Redundancy can kick start your desire for change. Being in work gives you the economic freedom to put it into practice.

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The Dubai bubble generated billions of pounds of work for overseas contractors, many of them British firms. They are now finding it difficult to get paid. Estimates of how much is owed to British contractors vary, but the figure is certainly in the hundreds of millions.

This means that a lot of companies are going to be in financial trouble- as if the problems of the recession were not bad enough. Another wave of redundancies, this time amongst companies exposed to Dubai is likely.

Job losses will not just be confined to employees who have been working in Dubai. The fact that the debt is owed in Dubai does not mean that employees in the UK will be safe; if a company gets into trouble, it gets into trouble everywhere.

So what should you do if you fear that your employer is exposed to Dubai debts? You only have two choices. One is to sit tight and hope that the problem will go away. The trouble with this strategy is that, if it doesn’t and your employer is forced to make redundancies, you will have no control over the situation. You will enter a weak job market along with dozens, perhaps hundreds or thousands of colleagues.

The better strategy is to pre-empt the situation. First of all, try to find out what your company’s exposure to Dubai is. How much are they owed, and what will be the impact on their balance sheet if they fail to collect any of it? This is not always easy to find out, but the more you can discover, the better placed you are to make an informed decision.

Then get yourself into job search more. Think about the sort of jobs you should be applying for- treat this as an opportunity to progress your career, not as a crisis that has been thrust upon you. Bring your CV up to date. Revisit your networks, are you still in contact with the people who you will need to meet in order to explore opportunities within your field?

Most importantly, think ahead. You do not yet know if the Dubai crisis will result in redundancies in your company. But you do know, because it has happened too often, that there will always be employment crises. None of us can expect our careers to be uneventful any longer. Think about long term career management. The more proactive you can be about your long term career planning, the more aware you are of your skills and where they can take you, the clearer you are about your career goals and the strategies needed to achieve them, the better you will weather this and other shocks.

We live in a world of frequent change and uncertainty. Be prepared.

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I have never come across people who were as confined to their box as these two. In each case they were literally unable to see their way past their former careers. Neither were prepared to engage in the very creative, yet thorough process of planning a career change. Each wanted solutions presented to them on a plate, ignoring the fact that we were still midway through the process of finding out about them (it takes time) and in any event could not do their thinking for them. And despite the fact that they wanted instant answers, every suggestion that was made to them was batted away as soon as it was made.

Career change is a creative process and some people are able to engage in the sort of lateral thinking that is required. Other people are structured, process driven, logical thinkers who find it difficult to make the creative leaps that change planning requires. Career professionals have a range of skills and tools that assist people who think in these structured ways. But these skills and tools do require that the client engages fully and is prepared to allow their career professional to get to know them and explore possibilities with them.

Career planning is a positive, life enhancing process. In my whole career I have only come across a handful of people who were so inflexible in their thought processes that they were unable to take advantage of it. It is a shame for them. But it also acts as a warning to career professionals and clients alike. To make sure that the box that we all live in is flexible enough to allow us to step and think outside it.

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Those careers that stand out as likely options are researched in depth, until the career changer is able to make a decision as to how to go forward, and to draw up a long term career plan. However, within this structured process there is one creative leap that is critical to making the right decision and without which the whole enterprise will fall.

This creative leap is between the stages where the career changer has identified what they are looking for from a job, and discovering which options are relevant. It is at this point that the career professional’s skills are most needed. There are various techniques that can be used, but each one needs to be presented in the right way, and thought through fully.

The most simple, but most time consuming way is to work through a list of jobs, picking out those which seem to be possible and then comparing them against the career changer’s personal profile. Alternatively the consultant and changer can define what an ideal job can look like, in theory, which should lead to a few options that can be expanded upon. Perhaps mind mapping will be used, to take ideas that have already been discussed and branch out from there. There are many techniques but they all require lateral thinking.

To my mind it is this creative lap in the middle of a very structured process which makes the career profession such a fascinating disciple. It requires a mind that is able to approach a problem from a number of angles, and which dare not take short cuts because a client’s future well being is at state. It is why career professionals are far more than career advisers, and why it is imperative that everyone who works in our field is professionally qualified.

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Personal development is very much a buzz word today. And like all buzz words, it can be used without a lot of thought behind it. It is all very well to work for a company which will develop you personally. But what does this mean? How will they develop you? Who will choose which development activities you will engage in? What are the strategic objectives of the development exercise? And ultimately, whose benefit is it for? The company or yours?

Companies who visibly commit to the development of their staff are endorsed as good places to work. Apart from the obvious benefits to staff, entry into the list of best companies to work for is a fantastic boost for a company’s reputation- and business performance. Most companies will not need a lot of encouragement to adopt and continually improve their staff development policies. But staff cannot sit back and leave it to the company to take them in hand. For personal development to be effective for them we each need to take responsibility for ourselves.

Personal development begins with planning. What do you want to achieve through your development programme? What are your goals, what training and experiences do you need to acquire in order to achieve them? What else can the company offer you; for example participation in a socially responsibility programme, flexible working or planned sabbaticals for study and travel? These all come under the heading of personal development, because they all enhance our skills and values and lead us to feel that we are heading somewhere in our lives.

The opportunity for personal development is essential at work and it is gratifying to see that new graduates value and expect it. But we cannot just pay lip service to the idea; each of us needs a personal development plan, and to ensure that we are working to achieve it.

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At Career Energy we have seen clear signs of the economy improving. This is because of the nature of the work that we are asked to do. Typically our work falls into one of two categories. Some clients come to us because they want to change or progress their career; they are not happy with what they do and need to find new direction. Others come because they need to find a new job- they are quite happy to work in a similar position  as before but they need help in finding opportunities and marketing themselves. Many people come to us for both.

Last October, when the banks collapsed and the recession caught hold in its entirety, people suddenly stopped coming to us for help with a career change. We saw many more job seekers but those who had jobs, however unhappy, were prepared to stay put rather than risk their chances in an uncertain job market at a time of upheaval. It made perfect sense, but it was also an indication of the severity of the recession; economic factors were given preference over personal well being.

In the last few weeks career changers have starting to return. We are seeing as many as we are seeing job seekers, and it is likely that their numbers will increase even further as confidence increases. Because a career change requires confidence; in one’s latent talents, in one’s ability to change and in the belief that something truly better does exist.

Of course the fact that some people are considering a career change is little comfort if you are one of the 2.5 million unemployed. But signs of increased confidence in the labour market will filter down, there may be a long road ahead but at least it looks as if there is light at the end of the tunnel. In the meantime we are helping job seekers to get jobs.

So city bonuses are back and career changers are back. All it needs is for mortgages and credit deals to start growing again on trees, and it will be as if the great recession of 2009 never happened.

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