Thinking about changing your career or job?

It is an absolutely key and important element in your clarification process to think about your daily reactions in your job situation and identify the aspects of your current work that you are motivated and demotivated by. It is important to take a look at your previous experiences to identify how your interests have been accommodated and how your skills and competencies have come into play in the tasks you have handled.

Once you have done so, you can supplement with a coaching session with a career consultant at Finansforbundet if that seems relevant to you. You can book a free career interview on the website.

Once you have identified the elements that are important to your job satisfaction, you have some indicators to navigate by when assessing whether a job in another industry suits you.

Personal core values, you are navigating blindly and are more impressionable in terms of other people’s values and attitudes.

For example, if your compass points towards supporting others, go in that direction. It is specifically the obligation to commit to supporting others that gives you a sense of purpose. The next question is what alternative industries, organisations and professional roles can support your values and give you a sense of having a meaningful work life.

Transferable skills and competencies are skills and competencies developed in one context (such as a job, hobby or volunteer work) that can be transferred to another.

You undoubtedly have many and it is crucial that you can put them into words. If you do not know what they are, you cannot communicate them to your potential new employers. The many transferable competencies and skills you possess equip you with much more than what your current and previous job titles show.

This is important because it can strengthen you by:

• Building your confidence and the sense that what you can do has value and relevance. Not just in your current job, but also in many other jobs.
• Preparing a good CV and a strong LinkedIn profile that responds to the selection criteria companies evaluate new and future candidates with.
• Making you more convincing in interview situations when you need to clearly express the relevant skills and competencies you bring with you.
• Building and expanding your range of competencies, identifying gaps and giving you ideas for skill development areas that can continuously improve your market value.

If you want to move on to something new, be aware that your experiences and preconceptions can push you in a specific direction. Therefore, you have to have the courage and curiosity to learn about the unknown. This requires openness, curiosity and, not least, research.

Job searching via networks is now a well-known and well-described discipline. But when it comes to cultivating knowledge about new areas of work, organisations and/or industries, your curiosity and ability to open up a dialogue that provides you with the right insights is vital. Many people concentrate so much on having the sales pitch ready that they forget to formulate questions that tell them more about the unknown. Once you have found people who are in other departments, companies or industries that you do not know much about, it might be helpful to ask questions like these:

• What is your primary responsibility?
• What experience was crucial for you to get your position?
• What does your own experiential background look like?
• What is a typical work day like?
• How much variety is there in your work?
• How much customer contact do you have?
• How much contact and what type of collaboration do you have with people or groups outside your department or organisation?
• What do you like/dislike about your work?
• What are the toughest challenges and decisions you face?
• What do you wish you had known about your position/field before you started?
• What type of professional and personal competencies and skills does it take to be successful with this type of work?
• What does your organisation look like?
• What do you see as the biggest problems/trends in the field you work in?
• What would be a typical next career step be for someone in your position?
• What recommendations do you have for me if I were to get closer to getting a position in your company?
• Who else do you recommend I talk to? May I tell them you referred me to them?

Some people think they need to plan and know a lot before they can start making their dreams and ideas about a new job a reality. But really you should not think that you have to master a lot before you start looking around and exploring alternative career directions.

Instead, turn the logic around and think based on the “test and learn” method where action trumps planning. The idea is that you only find out what is right for you by experimenting with different options. The goal is to try or research alternative work identities to find the one that suits you best. It is only by trying things out that you get a tangible sense of what types of tasks a new field may hold.

The road to a change of company or industry may be shorter than you think. Here is a list that shows what companies and sectors are looking for profiles with competencies from the financial field:

• Insurance companies
• Pension companies
• Mortgage institutions
• Financing companies
• Auditing companies
• Fintech companies
• Leasing companies
• Investment associations
• Financial IT companies
• Private limited companies
• Stockbrokers
• Stockbroking companies
• Shipping companies
• The consulting industry
• Trade unions/trade associations/interest groups
• Ministries/departments/government

If you have a professional IT background, here is a list of companies and sectors that could be looking for a profile like yours with competencies from the financial field:

• The Danish Security and Intelligence Service
• The police
• Insurance companies (for fraud cases)
• IT security companies that specialise in hacker cases – such as IBM
• The Danish Council for Digital Security
• The consulting industry (gives advice in the field and might help make contingency plans for IT security for companies)
• The legal profession (some specialise in financial crime, such as the Public Prosecutor for Special Financial and International Crime, Blinkenberg Advokatfirma and Advokatrådet)
• The Danish Ministry of Justice
• The Danish Ministry of Taxation
• The Danish Ministry of Economic Affairs
• The Danish Tax and Customs Administration
• Educational institutions/research, such as the University of Copenhagen.