At one time or another, every employee wonders what it would be like to work in a telecommuting situation. But, they look at their current job and wonder how they could ever do it from home. Well, that concern is quite correct as some jobs cannot be done from home. However, one possible solution is to change careers into something that compliments a telecommuting situation.I've heard it said that changing careers is one of
more stressful situations that a person can experience. This is especially true if you've been in a position for many years. There is a way, however, to ease into a career change without inducing any of stress that usually accompanies transition.
--- Baby Steps ---
Let's assume that you're an executive secretary with dreams of working from home. However, your current position is not practical outside of office. You start thinking of other jobs that you could do, but realize that no one will hire you immediately because you lack experience to take on such a position full-time. Instead of pursuing situation, you simply give up your dreams and accept fact that you are stuck in your current position until retirement.
Realize that you can still move forward with your dream of working at home, just not all at once. You have to take it a little at a time to gain experience and prove your abilities before you take leap into a new career. Your first step is to determine what you would like to do, that would lend itself to telecommuting, and still pay handsomely.
Let's think, you're an executive secretary so your immediate skills are telephone, organization, scheduling, data entry, research, and various word-processing and spreadsheet applications. Consider these various individual skills and put them together in different ways to see what type of jobs you can handle. One way to do this is to visit some of more popular job sites like Monster.com (http://www.monster.com) and Headhunter.net (http://www.headhunter.net) and type in your prominent skills to see what types of jobs appear. You might be surprised at what you can do!
>From a quick search for executive secretary, I found that similar skills are required for following types of jobs:
- Internet Sourcing - Transcription - Customer Support - Data Entry - Off-site Executive Administrative Assistant - Web Developer
As you will find, there are many things that you can do, however, you don't want to jump in and just do them. For now, use these career ideas to prepare yourself.
--- Setting up for Change ---
Once you figure out what you want to do, go back to Monster.com (http://www.monster.com) and Headhunter.net (http://www.headhunter.net) and search for various jobs that would fit your requirements and skills. Don't apply to any of them yet, just search for jobs that fit your desired direction. Once you find about a dozen or so different opportunities, examine them to make sure that this is something you want to do.
Don't worry about salary as of yet since this opportunity is something you will do "on side" until you get enough experience to do it full-time. Remember, objective here is to find something that you can do to help fine-tune your skills for your new career. Don't despair and don't get over-anxious as this career-preparing stage is only temporary.
--- The Resume ---
Here is tricky part. You need to rework your resume to emphasize your skills and strengths for positions you want to pursue. Your first thought is to list your skills and minimize your work history---the functional resume. This won't work as employer will assume that you're trying to hide something. You also don't want to list your work experience first because you won't get job since your work history will not reflect anything applicable for new career.
