When you change your career into another sector compared to your previous job, you need to prepare more than enough because your old work experience is not completely suitable for a new one.
In the field of career development strategy, there is a kind of career path that is quite common in this century which is called zig-zag career pathway. That means a person can change into many different companies, with different fields and different job categories.
This rarely happens in the last century when people tend to stick with one company throughout their lives. But now everything is different, one person can change through many stages of his or her life.
So inevitably there will be times when you search for a job in a field that is completely different from your previous experience.
In this article, I will talk about how to prepare for an interview in case you change your career path, so you can successfully apply to another job with your irrelevant previous experience.
Do some researches
You should spend time researching about job requirements and ask yourself if you can take charge of that job.
Learn about the short courses, books, articles, videos about a job you want to apply. You just need to read about four or five bestseller books related to a certain field. When you learn from those books, you almost understand the knowledge of top experts.
Of course, you can not ignore some short courses to quickly complement your lack of knowledge and skills.
After completing a synthesis of information come from many sources, you draw on paper a picture of a workflow compiled from documents you've read. These are your own words summarized from various information sources. The benefit of doing this is that you will truly understand what you have learned and will remember longer.
How to use LinkedIn
Next, visit LinkedIn and see profiles of employees who are working in a certain field. Observe their language, their personal image, or their shared items and what kind of stuff they usually do.
Then, you edit your LinkedIn profile to fit the position you're applying for, of course, all the information must still be true about you.
If necessary, you can write an article sharing on LinkedIn about your ideas. Present yourself as an expert.
Use experience that you already have in order to achieve your next job
Although your next job is not related to what you did before, but you can still find in your old jobs a little relevant experience.
For example, your previous work has helped you develop communication skills, leadership skills, teamwork, problem-solving skills, project management. So, let call them transferable skills.
A skill that is transferable is a skill that will follow throughout your working life. Whatever you do, you will need them. Let's make the most of those skills. Maybe you will need to have a quiet place and time to look back and explore yourself.
Past experience may include the time you got stuck, challenging you have been facing and how you overcome it.
After my practical experience in an interview, I realize that a question comes quite often from an employer is that how you can overcome challenges in the past. You also should prepare yourself answers for such questions.
SWOT analysis
You start using SWOT analysis tool to research the company you intend to apply. Learn about the company's advantages, competitors and what challenges it has encountered in the market.
Then you will give ideas to develop the business under your own opinion. Do not care about whether your idea has been applied or not.
But it shows that you really understand thoroughly about the company and you show up in front of the employer like an expert who provides insightful solutions rather than a job seeker.
That will help increase your chances of being employed whether the experience of your previous work seems irrelevant to the current task. So your task is to prove for your employer to see in you a suitable candidate whatever your past experience is.
In short, for those who are switching jobs to another sector, an employer will require you more in knowledge, skills and ability to adapt to a new environment.
So you need to focus on transferable skills and practice SWOT analysis for the company you want to apply for.
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