Changing careers presents many challenges, which can be met and overcome with planning, hard work, and creativity—and sometimes luck!
Here are the stories of one individual who made the leap from one field to another and one who is still in the planning stage.
Engineering a higher education career
Marilyn Reeder, nontraditional career specialist for the Community College of Allegheny County (CCAC) in Pittsburgh, spent much of her working life as an engineer. “My career as a mechanical engineer lasted for 22 years,” she says. “I chose bioengineering as a back door to med school, but never made it there. Working as an undergrad research assistant in college, I fell into my first job at a nuclear power plant,” she remembers.
However, she says, “After the Three Mile Island accident and resulting new regulations, I wasn’t permitted to do much, and sought more challenging work.” For 14 years, Reeder was a design engineer in Navy nuclear projects at Westinghouse. “The best thing that ever happened to me was getting the ax due to defense spending cuts,” she says. “I was in a rut and it made me re-evaluate my goals. I then consulted in different industries, including transportation and biomedical. I enjoyed engineering but preferred project management, so I took a project manager position with a capital equipment manufacturer.”
Still not satisfied in her career, Reeder—who holds a master’s degree in leadership—came to the Community College of Allegheny County after her own leadership consulting company went bust in a bad economy, she explains. “I felt that the combination of my management and leadership background combined with being a nontraditional career person for more than 20 years placed me in an excellent position to support students in this type of career.”
Reeder attributes obtaining her job at CCAC to being in the right place at the right time. “I picked up the paper one day, read the job description, and thought it described me. I applied and got the job—it was kismet,” she says. Interested in women and leadership, Reeder also participates in outreach programs to attract and retain women to the science and engineering fields.
“Sometimes career changing is something that just happens, especially to people with wide interests,” she says. “Although my career change was pretty drastic, some are less so—from project engineering to marketing, for example. When people are looking for work-life balance, they find they have different priorities at different times in their lives [prompting the desire for a career change].”
Discovering her accounting style
Lisa Johnsen, soon to graduate from Warren County Community College (WCCC) in Washington, New Jersey, and transfer to DeSales University in Center Valley, Pennsylvania, is a former hair stylist now aspiring to a career in accounting. “I was a hair stylist for about seven years,” she says. Years earlier she was a dental assistant but was not happy in that career, so she decided to go back to college.
“I thought I had to know what I wanted to be to go back to school,” she remembers. “Since I was impatient and didn’t want to spend time in school without knowing what I really wanted to do, I decided on hair styling.” Johnsen had a friend who was a hair stylist and saw that she could finish the program in eight months and start working immediately.
“I always thought I wanted to own my own business, maybe my own salon,” she says. But working in the [hair styling] business, a lot of things weren’t clicking with me, or with my personality.” She went back to school again, to the local community college. “I knew I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but to own my own business I knew I needed a business education behind me.”
Johnsen put off taking accounting until almost her last semester. “I never considered myself good at math—I was afraid of it. But within the first two weeks, I thought, ‘This is really cool, I like this subject,’ ” she remembers. “I had a fantastic teacher who was able to explain things in such a way that I just grasped it. All of a sudden I knew—this is what I want to do.”
Accounting tells a big story, Johnsen says. “It’s not about the math, it’s about the inner workings of every business. The financial standing, cash flow, expenses, why it is or it isn’t making money. It tells the whole story about a business or a person’s finances in general.”
Although Johnsen plans to transfer to DeSales University to study for a bachelor’s degree in accounting, she attended a career fair. “I needed a job to ease back into work—to transition from hair styling to business.” She worked on her resume, focusing on the business end of successful hair styling work to show she could also be successful in accounting and business management.
“I had no expectations of getting a job,” she says, “but I gave my resume to a financial investment firm that does a lot of auditing.” They interviewed her twice, and at the second interview, she was offered a job on the spot. “When I told them my story, the partner I interviewed with was impressed,” she says. However, she found that job to be too demanding due to the hours and travel necessary. “I’m still in school and I had to make a hard choice [to turn down the offer]. But the partner said please call us when you’re finished with school, and said he was impressed with my vision and focus.”
Now Johnsen says she’ll eventually go for a master’s degree. “There’s no doubt about that,” she says with a laugh. “It’s been life-changing in a positive way,” she says of going back to college and finding her new field.
Career services professionals at WCCC advised her along the way, Johnsen says. “You have to know yourself, but there are always people available to talk to you.” She took workshops that career services offered, and sought the advice of Fae Guerin, career development specialist at WCCC. “Her office is always open,” Johnsen says. “I showed her my resume and we worked on it together.”
In addition to looking for a staff job, Johnsen is also considering freelance bookkeeping. “It would give me flexibility—I could work part or full-time until I finish my bachelor’s degree,” she explains. “I like the bookkeeping aspect, and working with small businesses is a little more personal. I like working one-on-one with people.”