How to Switch Careers: A Guide for Mid- to Later-Career Professionals

It’s not too late to switch careers

Making a career change can be daunting, especially if you’ve spent years building expertise in a specific industry. But the good news is just that: you have built years of experience! While pivoting into a new sector or industry may feel overwhelming, countless professionals before you have successfully transitioned. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average American changes jobs 12 times during their lifetime with a median tenure of 4 years. It is by no means unusual to change careers at some point in your life. With the right strategy, you can make a smooth transition and land a role that aligns with your goals and strengths.

How to switch careers with a clear plan

Before you start job searching, you need career clarity. It is the MOST important, yet often overlooked aspect of job searching. Many jobseekers make the mistake of casting a broad net, thinking the more titles and positions they say they are interested in, the more opportunities will be yielded. The opposite is true. Applying to jobs without clarity is like setting out on a road trip without a destination in mind. You’ll keep moving, but you might end up lost, frustrated, and far from where you actually want to be.

As a recruiter, hiring manager, and business owner, I want to hire people who demonstrate they are committed to a company and function. The minute someone tells me they can do this, this and this is when the red flags go off. It screams this person is using us as a bridge job or a paycheck. The risk is I hire them, train them, and have to replace them when a more aligned opportunity comes knocking on their door.

Recruiters and hiring managers get excited about candidates who can showcase this opportunity as the one that is a long-term fit. Thus, your goal is to get crystal clear on what you’re targeting because your clear vision will be the foundation to help you market yourself appropriately.

Switch careers without starting over

If you’ve been working in the same industry or similar roles for several years, you may be unsure how your background translates to other industries. Rest assured, it does! You just need to find examples.

Let’s say you have decades of experience working in a niche organization as a federal employee, a niche sector with its own unique culture and sets of rules. You could see how others have taken their experience working for a federal agency to work in another industry or sector by doing a simple LinkedIn search.

Here’s how:

In the search bar, type a keyword or skill or target title related to your work.
Click the People tab, then go to All Filters.
Under Past Companies, select your agency and other government organizations.
Hit Search.

This will show you where former government employees have landed. Not only does this prove that a transition is possible, but it also opens the door for networking. Consider reaching out to someone whose career path interests you. Position them as an expert and ask if they’d be open to sharing advice on how they made the move. Bonus: This conversation could lead to mentorship or even a referral!

If you feel nervous about inviting this person to chat, remember, they’ve been in your shoes before. Who better to relate to your desire to make a career pivot, then someone who has already done it? Most people enjoy helping others. Allow others the gift of helping you. So why not give them this feeling of making a difference in your life by sharing their career transition story and maybe some tips along the way!

Still hesitant to network? Here’s 3 Practical Mindset Shifts to Start Networking Confidently!

How to identify your transferable skills

One of the biggest hurdles you may face as a career switcher is understanding how your current experience applies to a new field. Most people who are looking to pivot get stuck wondering how to switch careers with no experience. While you may not have experience working in a different industry, you have loads of work experience and refined skills to draw upon.

Many professionals focus too much on job titles and specific responsibilities rather than the core skills that make them successful. When you’re mining for your transferable skills, you need to move your focus away from the Form (what you do) and to the Essence (the deeper skill that defines how you approach your work).

For instance, let’s say you were responsible for managing a retirement program to ensure eligible citizens enroll before an annual deadline. The deeper Essence of you being able to meet this objective is your ability to manage large-scale projects, as well your ability to manage a team of colleagues. These 2 transferable skills can be utilized in any organization across any industry, even though the scope of work or subject matter may change.

When you go through your paid and unpaid background, you can start to mine for the common threads of Essence you possess. It can’t NOT be there because this is just who you are. As you gain clarity on this, you’ll start to recognize you have so many different titles you can hold and position yourself for!

Here are 5 questions to help you pinpoint your transferable skills:

What tasks or projects have I consistently excelled at, regardless of my job title or industry?
Which skills or traits do colleagues or managers frequently praise me for?
What problems do people naturally come to me to solve?
What parts of my job energize me the most?
What common themes or patterns emerge in my past roles, even if they seem different on the surface?

Translating your experience when you switch careers

Let’s take someone pivoting from government into tech as an example. One of the biggest barriers to successfully making a career switch (especially when moving from the government sector to the private sector) is communication. If hiring managers can’t understand your background, they won’t see how you’re a fit (even though you are!).

It’s your job as a jobseeker to translate all the government jargon on your resume to what it means in your ideal industry. You might have unique divisions, acronyms, or proprietary software you work with, so take the time to review your resume line-by-line and see what you need to translate to an outsider. For example, terms like “legislative mandates” or “regulatory compliance” in a government context may not immediately make sense to someone in the private sector, but you can translate them into something more widely understood, like “corporate policies” or “industry standards.”

Always write your resume for your ideal audience and ask how you can write this for them to understand because if they can’t understand your background, they won’t see how you’re a match even though you are capable of doing the job. Translating your previous experience so it makes sense to someone working in your target industry is a major component for how to write an effective resume.

Ultimately, your goal is to present yourself in a way that makes it clear to hiring managers that you have the skills they’re looking for, even if your past job titles or the industries you’ve worked in are different from what they’re used to. Think of yourself as a bridge. Your experience is valuable, but it needs to be presented in a way that speaks to the specific needs and language of your desired industry.

How to market yourself for a career change

When asked the question “Tell me about yourself”, most professionals will share a list of disconnected facts or a chronological history of our experiences. Hiring managers are looking for common threads and themes that exist throughout all your work experience. They need you to help them connect the dots between your background and their needs. You can do this by crafting your career story, one of the job search strategies I teach in the Happily Hired Formula. Assembling your career story can be really fun as you get to reflect on your career timeline.

This process takes some thought as you’ll want to spend time to identify recurring themes and patterns in your previous roles. Based on those patterns you can write a concise 3-5 sentence summary that highlights one key thread in your career. For example: “Across all the roles I’ve held, relationship-building has been at the heart of my work. I take the time to understand others’ needs, which has allowed me to create tailored solutions and close some of our company’s most significant deals.”

Once you’ve got your story polished, be sure to practice it as much as possible so that it feels natural and becomes second nature. You don’t need to memorize it word-for-word as coming across as robotic in an interview can come across as disingenuous. Instead, you want to know your story well enough that you feel confident being able to share it at the drop of a hat.

You can get a quick crash course on how to craft your career story in my guide, How Do I find a Job in 2025?

Is 40 too old to change careers?

One of the biggest concerns I hear from people considering a career change is the fear that they might be “too old” to make the pivot. It’s a common worry, especially for those in their 40s, 50s or 60s, who often feel that their age will be a barrier to landing a new role. Let me reassure you: Your age is not a limitation. It’s an asset.

You bring so much wisdom and unique perspective to the workforce. As you’ve encountered a fortitude of challenges throughout your career, you’ve had the opportunity to strengthen your skills in ways that unseasoned professionals haven’t been able to do yet. Resilience, problem-solving, strategic thinking & leadership skills are all highly sought after abilities, transferable to any new career.

There are employers who prefer to employ professionals with more experience and maturity. Organizations are often looking for individuals who can bring both expertise and a fresh, strategic perspective to their teams. So, the notion that you are “too old” is not only inaccurate, but it’s also an outdated view of the workforce.

With that said, I do want to acknowledge that ageism does exist in the workplace, but that doesn’t mean it’s insurmountable. Check out my proven tips for how to overcome ageism in the workplace.

Bottom line: making a career transition isn’t about starting over – it’s about repositioning what you already bring to the table so you and the employer both know your value.