Career change seen from both sides of the coin

During a seminar on career change, a sociologist presented pessimistic figures that highlighted the difficulties of retraining and changing jobs.

For my part, I was working on a small sample of people undergoing retraining, analyzing their words (see my post “The analysis of speech acts: deciphering a text or speech to establish a profile”). I observed the reality of the difficulties of retraining on several levels: social, emotional, professional, and even cognitive difficulties in the case of returning to education. However, while the future seemed blurred for those in the process, another underlying trend was taking shape. These people were being tested by themselves. They were undergoing an experiment that was transforming them, they were (re)discovering themselves. They were able to (re)position themselves according to the values they held and which, for some of them, they were able to identify or even rediscover.

This exploration of one's inner self revealed aspects of an underlying process that are often invisible to the subjects themselves at the time of the psychological turmoil:

-    Greater self-awareness,

-    A reconfiguration of one's image,

-    A new positioning in several dimensions of one's personal and professional life,

-    A new perspective on work and one's previous profession,

-    An openness to new environments, prompting new reflections

-    A release of emotions that may have been repressed until then,

-    An ability to forge new relationships.

The analysis revealed that the foundations for a new professional life were already in place, particularly in terms of desires, rejections (“never again!”, decisions and values, even though these individuals expressed feelings of confusion and a loss of direction. The rest of their journey showed that these foundations served as a guiding thread and led to concrete results.

I have been pursuing this research for years, the results of which consistently show the same aspects. I have named this process of self-experience during formal or informal learning “experienciation” (Chirot, 2019).

A career change is indeed a challenge, but each of us can give meaning to that challenge: the meaning of moving toward the life we want to experience.