My random musing for this week is on: Jumping off the corporate ladder

A month ago I took the plunge. I surveyed the ground below me, took a deep breath, loosened my grip on the corporate ladder, and then let go.

In all fairness, the rung I had climbed to in my 3 year career was not especially high off the ground. I was still a fairly low paid minion, so in jumping I did not have far to fall.

“Why did I jump?” You might ask. Oh, for so many reasons. But that is not what I want to discuss here. Far more interesting is to examine career changes more broadly.

If like me you are wondering how common career changes are, you might find these statistics interesting: those aged 20-24 are three times more likely to change jobs in a year than those aged 45-54. In fact nearly 1 in 4 of those aged 20-24 change jobs in any given year. (1)

So does 1 in 4 of us have an attention deficient disorder or is there something in our nature that drives this need for change? Life Two, a career counselling organisation, says it is common for employees to re-evaluate their current career in terms of how they currently feel about what they want to do, what they want to earn and how they use their talents and strengths.

So if you are thinking about changing, don’t feel disloyal or freakish. Turns out it is completely natural.

Indeed we are no longer serfs tilling the land of our feudal war lords, or prostitutes enslaved to our pimp (although working in professional services can make you feel like one sometimes...). We are in fact adults who have the power to exercise free will. Technology today enables us to exercise our free will and change careers more easily; Career websites like Seek.com.au are easy portals to the great unknown, and LinkedIn is a convenient channel for head hunters.

The main reasons workers consider a career change are fairly obvious:

-       Promotion – i.e. a better offer somewhere else

-       Unhappiness – scraping plates has become somewhat unappealing

-       Obsolete skills – move along check-out-chick, we have machines that do your job now

-       Life needs – You just need a new challenge

And sadly, sometimes people don’t have a choice. If, for example, you chose to come to work naked, well you will likely get fired thereby forcing you to change careers. More realistically, you may find that your job is being moved offshore; I read in The Age today that ANZ bank is estimated to cut around 1000 jobs by the end of this year (2). This is supposedly part of a broader ‘While Collar Crisis’, in which companies are laying people off in a bid to protect their profit margin in this time of economic anxiety. So, depressingly, redundancy may also prompt change.

The American Bureau of ‘Labor’ Statistics reports that men and women hold an average of about 14 jobs by the time they turn 40. The majority of these jobs are at the beginning of their working lives – when they are teenagers and in their early twenties. Apparently Vincent Van Gogh, the impressionist painter, was a schoolmaster, student priest missionary and art dealer before he became a painter.

Now that I stop to think about it I have actually changed jobs quite a few times in my 27 years. I went from baby sitter to ice-cream scooper to Heigh’s Chocolates to the drudgery of Spotless Catering to Kordamentha to Deloitte then to where I am now (with a few other payable stops on the way). All up, that still does not bring me close to 14 changes. So by this reasoning, I am guessing I need to be prepared for more changes to come.

As do we all.

Anyone want to do an impressionist painting class with me?

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(1) ABS Labour Mobility Australia Cat 6209.0

(2)  “ Bank on white-collar crisis” Gareth Hutchens, Mark Hawthorne. January 14, 2012. Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/business/bank-on-whitecollar-crisis-20120113-1pzhx.html#ixzz1jP5bVK7F