How To Make A Successful Career Change At 30

Key Takeaways

• Starting a new career can help you earn more money, live your values, and challenge yourself.
• You might want to change careers if you’re stressed, undervalued, and underpaid.
• Reflecting on your skills, career options, and goals can help you change careers.
• Making a plan and taking action now is essential—the first step is always the hardest.
• Your career has transferable skills that will make it easier to start a new career earlier.
• You have people and resources you can lean on for support.
• Changing careers comes with challenges, but you have skills that you did not have when you were younger.
• Robertson College can help you successfully transition to a new career.

Why Start A New Career?

The average Canadian works for 37.6 hours each week. That translates to about 22% of a week; we all want to make the most of that time.

Changing careers can be the best way to transform your life for the better. Finding a new career can help you:

• Earn more money
• Pursue your passions
• Grow as a person
• Find a better work-life balance
• Challenge yourself
• Gain unique new experiences
• Make the world a better place

A new career doesn’t even have to replace your existing career. Over half of Canadian workers have a side hustle; learning new skills can help you open a new business and earn some extra income. With hard work, ingenuity, and a little luck, that side hustle can become your main source of income! 

How To Know It’s Time To Change Careers

Everyone changes careers for different reasons; some are financial, others are personal. We can’t tell you whether or not it’s time for you to pursue a career in a new field, but we can share some common reasons people do opt to change their career paths. If you look through these reasons and think “This sounds like me”, it may be a sign that it’s time for a change:

• You’re feeling stressed, tired, burned out, bored, or unproductive at work.
• You’ve accomplished everything you set out to do in your career.
• You dread going to work.
• You’re dreaming about a fresh start.
• You feel like you’ve reached the maximum salary in your field, and you want to make more.
• You don’t feel like you can grow in your current career.
• You’re curious about a different field—maybe you’ve even started a side hustle in that field.
• Your priorities have changed.
• The career you’re in does not offer the work-life balance you’re looking for.

Most of us are looking for more than just good pay; even great pay and a great working environment may not be enough. We need meaning in our work; some of us derive that from the importance of the work itself, while others get it from working in a team or the satisfaction of a job well done.

When you’re considering a career change, think long and hard about whether or not the work you are doing feels meaningful. If it doesn’t, and you cannot see a path to change that, changing careers could help. 

How To Change Careers At 30+

Reflect On All Your Skills

Changing careers doesn’t mean abandoning what you’ve learned; it means using the skills you’ve obtained through your work experience and education to expand your opportunities. Even if you transition into a completely different career, where your hard skills won’t apply, the soft skills you’ve gained over the years will be invaluable.

Here are some of the questions you can ask yourself when thinking about a career change:

• What are the hard skills I have? How could they apply to the field I’m interested in?
• What are the soft skills I have? How could they apply to the field I’m interested in?
• What is my learning style? How can it help me acquire the new skills I need?
• What new skills am I interested in learning? How can my existing skills help me develop these skills?

By reflecting honestly on your skills, you’ll see that you have more transferable skills than you might have thought—skills that will help you follow a new career path. 

Understand Your Options

A career shift can be daunting because there are simply so many options for new careers—if you don’t know what you want to do, but you know you want to change careers, taking time to understand your options can help.

A thorough self-assessment is a great start. You’ve already taken the time to think about your skills and how they might transfer to a new career. Now, take the time to think about your goals, your personality, and what you enjoy.

There are a number of online tools that can help you through this process:

• Canada’s Job Bank features some excellent career planning quizzes that can help you narrow down which careers best fit your personality, interests, values, and abilities. 
• Personality tests like The Big Five, Myers-Briggs, and the DiSC assessment can help highlight different aspects of your personality and how they fit into a workplace.
• Other tools like the MAPP Assessment can give you an in-depth look at how what motivates you can impact your potential career path.

Some of these tools are free, while others are paid; the tools you’ll use will depend on your budget and your goals.

Once you’ve used these tools to get a better understanding of the career paths that interest you, you should consider how you can begin the transition from one career to another. Ask yourself:

• Do I need more education to move to my desired career?
• Can I start my new career as a side hustle or part-time job before fully transitioning?
• Do I know people who are working or have worked in the careers I’m interested in? Can I talk to those people about their experiences?
• What does the career transition timeline look like? How many years will it take me to change careers?
• How much money will it cost me to move from one career to another? Will I take a pay cut, or will my pay increase when I change careers?

Resources like Job Bank’s Job Outlooks tool and Alberta’s Occupations in Alberta tool can help you better understand the demand for a given career, as well as the average salary for people in that line of work. 

At Robertson College, we have courses that can be completed in under a year; perfect for people aged 30+ who are more likely to have bills to pay and families to take care of. These courses can help you find a better-paying career that’s more aligned with your goals, values, and lifestyle—all in a fraction of the time it would take to get a university degree. 

Start Developing A Plan

Once you’ve narrowed down your options to a few careers, it’s time to create a plan. We recommend doing this for multiple different potential career paths; that gives you the power to weigh the pros and cons of each path before making a decision. Your career change plan should include:

• A timeline (education, finding a position, gaining work experience, and moving up in your career)
• Estimated costs for the transition (schooling, time away from work, the cost of tools and materials)
• The education required to secure a job in that position
• The educational facilities that offer courses that can help you secure a job in your chosen field
• The transferable skills you can apply to the new position
• Whether you will need to move for work or school
• Whether remote positions are available
• How you will divide your time between your current work and your new work and school
• Whether you will need to quit your current job entirely
• How much you will need to save to complete the career transition without suffering unacceptable financial setbacks
• The resources available, including government grants and loans, to help you in your career transition
• The people who can help you through the transition

Compare each of your career plans with your goals and needs, and write up pros and cons for each. This will help you decide on a career path; once you do, the plan can act as a roadmap to guide you through the transition.

There are almost endless branching paths when it comes to career changes; you can work part-time in your new career, start a side hustle, split time between your current role and getting an education, or even quit your current job entirely. Your financial situation, the time you have each day, and the amount of time it will take to make the change will all play important roles in your decision.  

Create A Support Network

A career change can sometimes seem daunting, and there may be moments when you struggle with the transition. From getting a formal education to undertaking a job hunt, building a support network can help you through the toughest moments. Best of all? You’ll have people to celebrate with when you succeed.

And you will succeed.

Your support network can consist of friends, family members, mentors, fellow students, and other career changers. Here at Robertson College, we have Student Advisors, many of whom took courses with us to change careers themselves. They, and your fellow students, can support you along your journey. 

Start Taking Meaningful Action

You can take steps right now to start the journey toward a successful career change. We recommend:

• Make a list of the careers that interest you.
• Make an inventory of all of your transferable skills.
• List your goals, values, and the reasons you want to change careers.
• Start a job search for an entry-level position in the careers that interest you.
• Take in-person or online courses to get you started on the path to a new career.

At Robertson College, we offer online, in-person, and hybrid courses to people looking for a career change. Going back to school at 30 or later can be incredibly fulfilling, and our Student Advisors and staff are here to help. 

Jobs With Great Transferable Skills

The career you’re already in has transferable skills; skills that will help you quickly learn, develop, and grow in a new career. Here are some jobs that have excellent transferable skills, and some careers that those skills lend themselves to. Don’t worry if you don’t see your job on the list—all jobs have transferable skills!

Customer Service Representative (CSR)

Transferable skills:

• Communication
• Conflict resolution
• Emotional intelligence
• Time management
• Working under pressure

Careers to transition to:

• Sales
• Human resources
• Recruiting
• Account management
• Tourism and hospitality management
• Digital marketing

Tradesperson (Electrician, Plumber, Carpenter, etc.)

Transferable skills:

• Problem-solving
• Technical proficiencies
• Client communication
• Working under pressure
• Self-reliance

Careers to transition to:

• Project management
• Technical sales
• Building inspection
• Financial analysis/bookkeeping/accounting (if you were running your own business)

Administrative Assistant

Transferable skills

• Scheduling
• Coordinating
• Editing
• Communication
• Software tools (Excel, calendar management, etc.)
• Analytical skills
• Confidentiality

Careers to transition to:

• Operations management
• Executive assistance
• Event planning
• Marketing
• Business analyst 
• Search engine optimization (SEO)

Creative Artist (Performer, Musician, Fine Arts, etc.)

Transferable skills

• Storytelling
• Improvisation
• Emotional intelligence
• Brand building
• Collaboration under creative tension

Careers to transition to:

• Digital marketing
• UX design
• Web design
• Community support worker
• Early childhood educator

Salespeople

Transferable skills:

• Persuasion
• Strategic planning
• Networking
• Communication
• Self-reliance
• Sales
• Analytics

Careers to transition to:

• Digital marketing
• Project management
• Startup founder or consultant
• Product marketing or customer success

Benefits Of Changing Careers Later

The biggest benefit of changing careers later in life? You know yourself much better than you did in your teens and 20s. You’ve probably already worked in one or more different fields. You may have already received some post-secondary education. 

In other words, you have the self-knowledge and skills to change careers much more readily than someone younger than you. Ask yourself a few key questions to take full advantage of these benefits:

• What do I love doing?
• What jobs have given me joy in the past?
• How do I want to spend my time?
• What do I want my life to look like?
• What careers will allow me to live my values and achieve my goals?
• What are some career changes that pay well?

These are heady questions—but the answers to them may come much more readily to you now than they did when you were younger.

You may also have more disposable income and savings than you did when you were younger—this can make switching careers a lot easier. 

When considering a post-secondary education as part of your career change, there’s good news: Many mature students also find it easier to learn as they get older. Your study habits and motivation may be stronger than they were as a young adult. There are also resources to help mature students transition from working to taking classes.

Common Career Change Challenges

A career change at 30+ is not without its challenges, but these challenges are not insurmountable. Here are a few of the challenges you may face and how to overcome them:

Changing careers is overwhelming. Start slowly. Take a few online courses or micro-courses to get your feet wet. Learn a few technical skills and other relevant skills while you continue to work in your current career. This can help you better understand if a career change is right for you, without letting your career aspirations overwhelm your day-to-day life.

Changing careers is time-consuming. Looking through job opportunities, writing resumés and cover letters, going through interviews—it all takes a lot of time, and that’s without even talking about getting an education. Lean on friends, family, job agencies, and student support to help. Consider opting for shorter courses; many of the courses here at Robertson take under a year to complete, with practicums that get you job-ready.

Changing careers is costly. Even if you land your dream job, you may find you have a lower salary to start. Beyond that, you may need to take time off at your current job, or quit it entirely—not to mention the cost of schooling. Fortunately, there are plenty of bursaries, loans, and other financial supports for new and mature students. Additionally, while your new career may pay less to start, the right career might pay much more as you progress—not to mention the job satisfaction that comes with doing what you love.

Securing A New Job

Career coaches and career agencies can help you secure a new job; so can taking the time to write a career change cover letter to explain why you’ve changed your career. At Robertson, we also provide practicums in many of our courses; the industry knowledge and networking opportunities gained in these practicums can help you secure a new position in your chosen career. How to make a career transition is all about hard work and diligence—you can do it! 

Next Steps To Take

We have a number of resources to help you through a career change. Take a look at our articles on career changes that pay well and how to make a career transition—they’ll help you find the right plan and the right career for your goals.

We also offer several courses to help you succeed in an exciting new career; we recommend taking a look at our business programs in Calgary to start! 

Finally, we highly encourage you to speak to one of our Student Advisors; they can help you find the perfect course for your career aspirations.

You can make a career change in your 30s. We can help. Believe in yourself!