Expert Opinion: Changing Jobs is a Real Job!

Advice from Christian Héreault of the "Changing your professional life, evolving, validating your skills" department, of the Paris City of Trades.

1. What are the essential question(s) to ask yourself?
"You must distinguish between the desire to simply change companies while keeping your job or the desire to change your orientation and profession. The essential question is therefore to know if you were happy in your job or if you were already asking yourself questions about change, particularly for peripheral reasons: the schedule, the atmosphere, the way you are treated..."

2. How to move forward in defining a new job?
"The key point is support. If you have few or, on the contrary, too many ideas, or if you are simply at the stage of refusing your current job, a skills assessment approach is necessary. It is undertaken in two stages: there is first an exploratory phase, with the assistance of a consultant, where you gather information without censoring yourself; then comes the "selective sorting" phase, to arrive at a project. Because several projects do not make one project. It is a question of determining your desires and your strengths. And you must not mix these two notions. At the City of Trades, we try to help people find the common thread in their thinking, by providing them above all with elements of method."

3. At the end of the assessment, what should you do?
"We recommend conducting investigations into the professions considered, by meeting professionals. This makes it possible to confront the reality of a profession. Changing jobs is not easy, especially in the current context. And there is always the fear of change. Change is an investment, it is suffering today to live better tomorrow. My theory is to proceed in small steps. It can be risky to change everything at once, and it is better, for example, in the same profession to change functions, then sectors before changing professions. Overall, a project development approach takes time and is not linear: you sometimes go through euphoric periods and then through more difficult phases."

4. Are there transferable skills from one job to another?
"Yes, absolutely. But most people don't think about it. They see their job as a whole, with no possible bridge. It takes a little distance, or an outside eye, to distinguish them. Conversely, employers are ambiguous: on the one hand they want adaptable, mobile people, but on the other hand they look for calibrated profiles in their recruitment, who have done the same thing elsewhere."

5. How to validate your new job project?
"Here too, it is always good to confront reality, through real-life tests (temporary assignments, temporary work, internships...). If it is advisable to take the time to think about your new project, then, as soon as the project is validated, you must quickly start looking for a job or creating a business."

Christian Héreault

Posted online on April 14, 2009

Emploi France 5