When faced with unexpected career change, as a result of redundancy or relocation for example, most people look for a job similar to the one they have just left. After all, if you've invested a lot of time and energy developing skills and acquiring knowledge related to your field, taking advantage of that seems would seem to be a sensible course. That, and the fact that changing direction is likely to entail retraining and starting again at a lower level.

However, changing jobs or looking for a new career, even though often stressful, can create a pause in our lives within which we can more easily assess what our work life has given us so far. If this is the case for you, ask yourself the following: Do you have skills that have never been recognised at work? Do you have a good balance between your work life and your leisure time, relationships and social life? Is there something you have always dreamed of doing but lacked the resources or even the courage to pursue? Perhaps self-development is important to you and you are wanting the challenge of developing parts of yourself that have lain dormant?

New careers are many and varied, and approaching such a major life-change can be daunting, so where do we start? One approach is to take a 'self-audit' - in other words to get a more objective sense of who you are and what you're capable of. Knowing your Personality Pattern for example, can give you a clearer sense of your personality, your strengths and weaknesses, and your individual approach to life. You can use it to find out if you are more suited to leadership or supportive roles, to working in the public eye or behind the scenes, or to dealing with information or people, ideas or products for example.

If you have been in a role that doesn't reflect your underlying personality, you are unlikely to have been as happy, fulfilled or as effective in your career as you could have been. We are all subject to 'falling into' roles and staying within them due to inertia, but at critical moments in our lives we can benefit from breaking out of these patterns, and by doing so we allow new experiences into our lives and new learning to take place, with the consequence that we feel more alive and have a greater sense of our own capabilities.

Looking for a new career needn't necessarily be about seeking success however. It can also be part of 'downshifting'. We may realise that we need fewer material resources that we have been led to believe by society or parental and family expectations, and may seek to trade in the stress of working long hours for a job that requires less time, responsibility or commitment. Developing practical skills after years working in an office for example may also make it easier to find work in the current challenging economic conditions.

To begin the process of finding your new career, check your Personality Pattern and read your free Work Life Profile. The process takes a maximum of 5 minutes and there is no registration required.

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