HOW TO SUCCEED IN YOUR PROFESSIONAL CONVERSION? Professional retraining can be an essential step in a professional and personal journey. In recent years, career changes have become more and more common, especially since the global pandemic. However, a professional retraining is not to be taken lightly. It is not an easy experience, it is a life choice that takes time, between 6 to 36 months, and which has a financial cost.
In order to succeed in your professional retraining and make a career change, it is important to follow certain steps. Here is a list to help you on the road to professional retraining:
1. Take time to reflect
Before embarking on a career change, you need to ask yourself the right questions. What are your desires? Why do you want to change jobs? What no longer suits you? For such an important life change, it is essential to refocus on yourself and take the time to reflect.
2. Do a skills assessment
To reassure you, motivate you, orient you or even make you discover an unknown path, it can be interesting to do a skills assessment. This will help you find the job that is right for you by highlighting your strengths, weaknesses, desires and motivations.
3. Seek help from a career transition coach
To benefit from complete and personalized support in your career change, call on a professional retraining coach. An effective way to be organized, rigorous and to know what there is to know about aid, training, possibilities, steps to follow…
4. Talk about your professional retraining project
When you embark on a life change, you need support. This helps boost self-confidence and remotivate oneself in the event of a drop in morale or failure. Family, friends, people passing through or professional encounters, to make things real, think about your project out loud and create a possible network in this new environment, you have to talk about your professional retraining project. It can only be beneficial to you.
5. Test before embarking on your professional retraining
It is not always easy to realize the reality of a job. The easiest and safest way is to test before you start. Observation internships, volunteering, concrete test thanks to a temporary work specialist… Do not hesitate to contact professionals in the trade. Collect information directly in the field, ask questions: lifestyle, schedules, advantages, disadvantages… Observe, try, collect testimonials… These are the best ways to form your own opinion on the job in order to be able to make a decision on professional retraining.
6. Get informed and choose the training that corresponds to your project
Is training an obligation for professional retraining? It depends on the profession targeted, your studies and the professions exercised… Some professions or sectors do not require compulsory training, so it is up to you to decide if you feel the need to train. Sometimes, if you choose to stay in the same sector or the same field, a simple VAE is enough (validation of acquired experience). However, in the event of profound professional retraining and depending on the profession, it is necessary to follow a more or less long training course.
For added value, it is often recommended to follow a certified and/or recognized training in the labor market. Company training, university, Grande Ecole, express training, training over several years… It is important to inquire to ensure that the professional retraining training chosen corresponds to your project.
7. Establish a professional retraining plan
Planning your professional retraining well allows you to visualize the different stages to be carried out and the duration in time for the success of your professional project. However, it is important to remain flexible and to know how to adapt. It is not possible to foresee everything and there are always unforeseen events.
