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Mid-Life Career Change: How to Switch Careers at 40, 50, or Beyond Without Starting Over · Happen To Your Career - Meaningful Work, Career Change, Career Design, & Job Search

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  Scott Anthony Barlow: 24% of people over 50 who lose their job, never find another one. 35% of everyone who's been unemployed for more than six months, they're over 55. And 60% of workers over 50 have personally experienced age discrimination. Now, these numbers could terrify you. But here's what they're not telling you.
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  There are countless people in their 40s, 50s, and even 60s who have not only successfully changed careers, but found work they actually enjoy doing fulfilling work that fits them, and they felt the exact same way that you might be feeling about it right now.
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  So what changed for them and how do you finally make the career change that you might have been wanting to make for years? Let's cover one of the biggest questions that we get.
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  Is it too late for me to make a real career change, particularly to work that fits and is much more fulfilling for what I'm looking for, especially late in my career?
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  Well, to answer that question, we have to first evaluate the four beliefs that tend to keep people stuck when they're considering a late in life career change. And more importantly, we have to evaluate what's actually true. Based on science research and the experience in this case of working with thousands of people all over the world, what are those beliefs?
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  Well, let's cover the first one.
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  Belief number one, that I'd have to start over if I was making that change. Okay. Where does this come from? Why do we believe that we would have to start over? Now, for most people, the honest answer is, we look at how we've been successful in the past. And for a lot of people, that meant, "I went to school", "I got an education", and then, "I went to my first job after that. Yeah, I started from scratch and then worked my way up."
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  So when we imagine making another big change and we don't know how that's gonna be possible, our brains actually fill in the blank the same way. And we assume wrongfully that I'd have to start over, but that's not what is actually happening. It's definitely not what we see in working with thousands of people.
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  Rarely do you ever actually have to start over. Now, why is that? Well, I want you to think about what do you have now that you didn't have at 22 years old or 28 years old? Well, you have relationships that may have taken decades to build. You have judgment that only comes from being in the room when real decisions are made, or experiences that lead to deep understanding of who you are and what you're actually good at, what you don't enjoy, and more importantly, what you do actually enjoy and where you want to spend your time.
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  Now, the single biggest mistake people make at this stage is not leveraging their signature strengths and their transferable skills. They underestimate how much what they already have is actually worth when it's applied differently.
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  Take our client, Scott, for example. We shared his story on a past episode, and you'll find the link to his story in the show notes, that he had 18 years of experience in pharmaceutical sales and when he walked away from that role, he actually thought all of his skills and experience were industry specific.
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  Scott Ingham: I thought, "Wait a second, these skills can be transferred anywhere."
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  Scott Anthony Barlow: It's crazy.
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  Scott Ingham: It's absolutely crazy. I'm like, "I thought I was like a one trick pony."
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  Scott Anthony Barlow: Spoiler alert, they weren't. We had another client, Bob, who'd spent 24 years as a chef and leading restaurants, and when I say leading, I don't mean he was just in the kitchen cooking.
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  Bob was a concept chef. He was a culinary director. He did just about everything that you can think of around restaurants. He was also the person responsible in his last role for the entire vision, designing the menu, building the brand, making the creative decisions that define the restaurant.
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  Most people hear Chef, and think somebody making food. Well, Bob was running the entire show. Now you can start to imagine how many of these skill sets were transferrable, but Bob couldn't always see that. So he came to us wanting to drag out the last stretch of his career across the finish line, and then retire.
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  Well, our team asked him one question, "What if you were doing the things you love to do with the people you love doing them with? Would you still want to retire in the traditional sense?" Well, with that one question, everything changed.
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  As he continued to explore, he realized he actually didn't wanna stop working. He wanted to stop working in a career that he didn't love anymore. Instead, he wanted to shift how he is spending his time.
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  The goal here isn't to rebuild from zero. It's to figure out which parts of what you've already built are most valuable to carry forward and where to take them next. Because at this stage, for the first time in a long time, you actually get to choose. Now at least choosing is something you can control.
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  Now, the second belief that stops people from the career they actually want to spend time at, feels like it might be completely outside of their control.
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  Now, what is that belief number two? Well, it's that ageism will stop me. Ageism is real. It is. The stats prove it. But here's the difference between ageism exists and ageism will stop you. That difference is worth understanding because it actually changes your strategy. Every company is different. Some genuinely value experience and higher specifically because the depth of experience someone brings, not despite it. Those companies exist and those are the only ones worth your time.
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  Now, the strategy shift that you might need to make here goes against what you're gonna find recommended all over the internet. Instead of applying everywhere and applying to way more than you think you need to, you've heard it, 50 applications to one interview. We're not gonna do that. Instead, what we're gonna do is we're gonna start focusing only on organizations where your experience is an asset, not something you have to apologize for.
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  We don't care about organizations that won't value what you bring. We're just gonna move those off to the side and not focus on those. Instead, we're going to focus on finding the ones where your specific background is actually going to be seen as an asset or an advantage. So how do you spot those organizations?
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  Well, one of the ways we can look at who they already have on their team. If they're hiring people, just in their 20s and 30s, well, maybe they don't value experience, maybe they just value the hustle. That's one area, as an example. But are people there already experienced in their fields? Is everybody fresh out of school? Do their job postings describe real problems that need to be solved? Or is it just a checklist of requirements?
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  And later on when you get to interact with them, I would encourage you to go well beyond just who they're putting in front of you for an interview. How do they talk to their team? Do they value that depth of experience? Are they just looking for that energy and potential?
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  All of these signals are going to tell you way more than a job posting will. By the way, once you've identified those organizations, the approach changes too. You're not just submitting that application into a black hole. You're often starting a conversation.
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  You are doing detective work to find somebody who works there. You're getting a warm introduction through your network. You are having a real exchange before there is ever a job posting sometimes, before there's any pressure.
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  That's by the way, an example of how you might get around the filters. If there is a job posting, you can still actually reach out and talk to somebody there before ever actually applying.
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  You're not gaming the system here. You're just trying to investigate what it's actually like before you move forward into a formal process. Or you might be just skipping the process in the first place. Here's an example. Our team actually worked with a VP of engineering who was getting nowhere on job boards.
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  So we shifted the entire strategy away from applications and toward his current relationships, you know, people that were his friends, his acquaintances. What we found is that we could get a lot more warm introductions that way. This led to real conversations with people at organizations that he actually cared about, was curious about. Now, what happened wasn't what he expected.
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  He was actually really convinced that the people he'd worked with in the past had completely forgotten about him, that they would have no interest in helping him whatsoever. But the people were actually thrilled to hear from him. They told him how much they'd valued working together way back with this individual, and then they made an introduction fast.
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  With this slight change in approach, he was having way more conversations with real people than he ever had mindlessly applying on job boards.
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  Scott Ingham: "Letting people know and talking to people about what I was doing led me to where I'm at now."
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  Scott Anthony Barlow: That that just wasn't working. And more importantly, it wasn't just him. We've seen slight changes in approach make drastic differences, especially the more experience that you have.
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  So Scott, that same client I mentioned earlier, he spent 18 years in pharmaceutical sales. Well, he said the same thing. Okay. Again, we all know ageism is real, but it doesn't have to be what stops you.
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  Your job isn't to suffer through ageism. Your job is to find the people in organizations that will value what you. Of course that requires a different approach than just, you know, apply through job boards and what everybody else tells you to do.
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  Let's talk about belief number three. It's a very common one. This is the belief that, "if I make a change, I'm of course going to have to take a pay cut." It's actually one of the biggest fears that people bring to us at all age levels. Even if they've done really well and have plenty of wealth built and reserves, then still they're not excited to take a massive pay cut.
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  And I think that you don't necessarily have to. Many people believe that making a career change later in life means accepting less money. But that actually couldn't be further from the truth. When we pulled our data a little while back, across thousands of career changes that we've supported at HTYC, we found that less than 15% of people actually needed to make less money to get where they wanted to go.
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  Most were making similar amounts or even more when they were making changes. That means roughly 85% didn't have to have a significant difference or really take a significant pay cut at all. Now, there's one really important exception here. And that's ultra high income earners. People making $750,000 or more, where finding the right fit can take significantly longer.
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  And on average, what we've seen when we're working with people that might take, you know, 18 months or even 24 months sometimes to make a transition that is optimizing both for that amount of money, but also for work that really truly fits. It's difficult. Just 'cause there's less available doesn't mean it's impossible though.
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  The thing I wanna point out is those people sometimes choose to accept lower pay because they don't wanna wait 18 to 24 months that it might take to duplicate that same amount of salary. So for them, that year in their life is more valuable than matching the exact dollar amount. They'd rather transition sooner, and that's a trade off that they're choosing to make.
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  It's not a requirement. They're not doing it because it's impossible. So here's what most people figure out along the way. Sometimes they don't actually need to match their old paycheck, dollar for dollar. Sometimes they actually do want less pressure, more meaning, more flexibility, and it just happens to work out.
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  This is your personal choice though. It's not a requirement. So let's review for a moment. You don't have to start over. Ageism doesn't have to stop you, and you probably don't have to take a pay cut. So what's left?
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  Well, the fourth belief is that, "It's too late. I don't have enough time." And it's often the hardest belief to get past.
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  This is the belief that keeps people counting down to retirement instead of building something worth staying for, and the people who actually get past it don't just find a new job, they completely redefine what this stage of their life looks like. Let me give you an example of Glenn's story that we've shared on the podcast in the past.
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  Glenn spent nearly two decades in healthcare sales, and then after 14 months of back pain, he got an MRI. His doctors found a rare spinal cord tumor. Glenn didn't use the diagnosis as a reason to stop. He actually used it as a reason to finally get it right, and something he said has very much stuck with us. Glenn made his best career move at 61, not in spite of how much time he had left, but because he finally stopped letting the clock be an excuse.
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  Now another client, Carolyn, had been in engineering for 35 years. She'd been unhappy for years, but kept telling herself, "I'm too far into change." Now after those 35 years, what else was she going to do?
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  Well, she was actually really burnt out in a management role, and she convinced herself that she needed to leave engineering entirely. She actually came in thinking the problem was her career. But here's what she found. She didn't hate engineering. She hated management. And after months of working with her to peel back the layers, we discovered that it was much more nuanced than just management or not.
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  She actually spent 35 years thinking it was too late when she hadn't even gotten clear yet on what the real problem was. She didn't quit her career. She found the version of it that was actually hers.
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  Carolyn: It's okay to step back. You don't have to just keep advancing and going on that career ladder that's basically pushing you into something that maybe you never really wanted.
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  Scott Anthony Barlow: Carolyn didn't need a new career at all. She needed to stop climbing a ladder that she never wanted to be on in the first place. You've heard that analogy, but Glen did it at 61. Carolyn did it in her 50s. It wasn't too late for either of them, and it's not too late for you.
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  One of the really interesting transformations that we see over and over again is that people who make career changes later in life, they don't just find a better job, they are completely reframing what their next chapter of life looks like. They stop counting down the years. They start making them count, instead. The urgency stops being a reason to settle and starts being the reason to finally stop settling.
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  Remember Bob? He was our guy who spent 24 years in restaurants and executive chef. Well, he put it plainly after one conversation with our team.
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  Bob Kalish: I probably wouldn't wanna retire if I was having fun with the people I wanted to have fun with doing the things I wanted to do.
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  Scott Anthony Barlow: That's not a small shift. That's someone going from counting down to actually building something. And it happened because someone asked him one question at the right moment in the right way.
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  The people who actually make this change all have something in common. They get outside of their comfort zones. They treat the process like a treasure hunt. They're curious. They're open. They're willing to consider paths they never would've looked at before. They do not wait until they have it all figured out.
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  They get comfortable being uncomfortable in the uncertainty. Doesn't make it easy, but they do it. They start before the ready. So let's go back to those four beliefs.
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  Number one, "but I'd have to start over." Well, Scott didn't start over. He took 18 years of pharmaceutical skills and sales skills and transferred them into something completely new.
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  Number two, "ageism will stop me." The organizations that hire specifically for depth of experience that you bring, well, they exist. It's your job to find them. And the way you find them often isn't through job board. It's through detective work, relationships, interactions, and you know, often networking. It's through that exploration.
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  Belief number three, that you'd have to take a pay cut. Across thousands of career changes we've supported, very, very few people actually need to take a pay cut. And most of them actually don't. The financial picture is almost always better than it looks, and much more workable than people assume going into a change.
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  Belief number four, "it's too late." We talked about Glenn, who made his best career move at 61. Carolyn, who found her way back, you know, in her 50s. Bob, who stopped counting down to retirement and started building something worth staying for.
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  Every single one of those beliefs is wrong. It makes sense. It's logical, but it's not accurate. What all of these people had in common, they stopped waiting for certainty and they stopped waiting for the perfect moment, the perfect plan, the perfect proof that it was going to work. They decided the next chapter was worth figuring out, and then they started.
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  None of them started over. They all built on something that they already had. They just finally pointed in the right direction. The question here isn't whether you can afford to make a career change at this point in life. The question is whether you can afford not to.
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  By the way, if you wanna go deeper on this and you want more stories or even the research for why we help people systematically make changes the way that we do, well, you can get the Happen To Your Career book. And the thing is, you don't actually have to go and pay for it right now. You can actually get the audio book for free. It walks you through how to figure out what's next and how we help people make the change without even blowing up your life. For a limited time, you can actually grab that at happentoyourcareer.com/audiobook.
• 0:16
  You'll put in your email and we'll actually send you a link directly to the audiobook. To make it even easier, just click into the show notes and description. Go get it. I'll see you next time right here on Happen To Your Career. Adios. I'm out.