Career

Are you in the wrong career? Are you struggling to make mid-career changes?

With those questions being asked, what methods do you take to have a total professional life makeover? “Just make sure you don’t listen to the usual advice about changing careers.” (2002, p. 40). This is the message sent by Herminia Ibarra in How to stay stuck in the wrong career, (Ibarra, 2002). In this article, Ibarra proposed an alternative to the “plan and implement” approach, which is called “test and learn” (2002, p. 44). It involves exploring possible future selves – working identity. (2002, p. 42). The “test and learn” approach has three main elements: crafting experiments, shifting connections, making sense; in addition to that Ibarra also analyzed why “the conventional, reasonable sounding “plan and implement” method will lead to the most disastrous of results, which is to say no result” (2002, p. 42).

In this article, Ibarra suggested that during career change the problem led people to fail was not in the motives, but in the methods (2002, p. 42). For those who are going through career changes, they are ready to leave current occupation, in other words, they may’ve started to determine what to do. In most cases, people would follow the conventional “plan and implement” career change methods. They are researching, planning, networking, and thinking what they want to do next, furthermore applying that awareness to single out the jobs or fields that their skills, experiences and passions can be combined. In all these scenarios mentioned above, thinking is always coming first than actions. By taking the conventional “plan and implement” approach, it cautions people against making a move before they know exactly where they are going (2002, p. 42); confusion, fear and worry get in the way of opportunity in a long run; thus it leads to no result (2002, p. 42).

In Ibarra’s study, “change actually happens the other way around, doing comes first, knowing second” (2002, p. 42). “Career...