When people think about career change, they often focus on the individual. What skills do I have? What do I want to do next? What course should I take? What job should I apply for?
These are important questions. However, they can overlook something equally significant: the role of community.
Career theorist Bill Law’s Community Interaction Theory suggests that the people and communities around us shape our career decisions. In other words, our peer groups, families, neighbours, schools, workplaces, cultural backgrounds and wider social networks all influence how we see ourselves and what we believe is possible.
My career experience part 1
Before studying for my degree, I had to resit an ‘A’ level because my results weren’t good enough to go to University. As a result, my parents suggested I go to see a Careers Officer to explore my options. He advised me to resit my ‘A’ level French at evening class and get a job at W.H. Smith & Sons while reapplying for Uni.
Consequently, I attended the interview and got the job and signed up to resit my ‘A’ level. Although the job was hard work and involved long hours, I discovered that I enjoyed helping customers.
When I graduated, I was an enthusiastic but unfocused Arts graduate entering the job market during a recession. Therefore, my options were limited, and I needed to return home to pay down my overdraft.
Eventually, I ended up working for an employment agency as a permanent interviewer. Initially, I had naively thought that this role would enable me to help people find work they genuinely wanted to do. In reality, however, employment agencies focus on sales targets rather than personal fulfilment.
While I was there, I complained to a friend about my job. In response, she suggested that I consider what her sister-in-law was doing. As it turned out, her sister-in-law was training to become a Careers Officer. For me, this was a lightbulb moment and precisely the spark I needed to investigate how to enter this field. I then recalled the positive encounter I’d had a few years’ previously.
Subsequently, I spoke to my uncle, who I remembered had once been a Careers Officer himself. He gave me some valuable tips. Then, after spending two days on work experience in the local Careers Office and speaking to staff about the work, I applied for training places. A year later, I was able to start my course and went on to secure my first ‘proper’ job.
Community was my catalyst
Looking back, my community — comprising my relatives and best friend — together with trial and error through work experience, enabled me to discover fairly early in life what I wanted to do. In this way, community became a catalyst for my career direction.
You can’t be what you can’t see
In career coaching, I often find that understanding someone’s community can tell me as much about their career choices as understanding their CV. Indeed, one of my favourite phrases is:
“You can’t be what you can’t see.”
Our communities expose us to certain careers while simultaneously hiding others from view.
For example, if everyone you know works in healthcare, teaching, engineering or academia, those careers can feel familiar and achievable. By contrast, careers outside that sphere may not appear on your radar.
Many of your assumptions about work come from the people around you. Over time, you absorb messages about what constitutes success, what’s realistic, what’s secure, and what is “appropriate for someone like me.” Often, these messages become so embedded that you mistake them for your own beliefs.
On the one hand, this can be empowering when your community encourage exploration and growth. On the other hand, it can be limiting when the range of examples around you is narrow.
Where did your ideas about careers come from?
When working with clients, I sometimes ask a deceptively simple question:
“Where did you get your ideas about work and careers?”
The answers can be remarkably revealing.
Perhaps a parent valued stability above all else. Alternatively, maybe school encouraged university as the only route to success. Your family may have valued professional status, whereas your peer group may have celebrated entrepreneurial risk-taking.
Whatever the source, these influences become part of the stories you tell yourself about who you are and what you can do.
Many of us carry family descriptors that have followed us for years:
- “I’m the responsible one.”
- “I’m the clever one.”
- “I’m the funny one.”
- “I’m not creative.”
- “I’m not leadership material.”
Over time, these descriptions can become fixed identities rather than simple observations. Therefore, career change often requires you to examine whether these stories still serve you.
What’s your career story?
Another useful question is:
“What’s the story you tell about your career?”
Most people have a narrative that helps explain how they arrived where they are today. Sometimes that narrative is empowering. However, at other times it can become restrictive.
The interesting thing about stories is that there’s rarely only one interpretation.
For instance, the same career history can be viewed through entirely different lenses. What one person sees as a series of unrelated jobs, another may see as evidence of adaptability and curiosity. Similarly, what one person describes as a failed career path may actually be a process of learning and reinvention.
Consequently, career transition often involves rewriting parts of your career narrative. Not by inventing a new story, but by recognising that there may be other equally valid interpretations of your experience.
To support this process, tools such as the career lifeline can help you reflect on the experiences, influences and turning points that have shaped your journey.
Community as a source of support
Communities do more than shape our beliefs; they also provide practical and emotional support.
The people around you will know you well. As a result, they may recognise strengths that you overlook or suggest possibilities you’d not considered. Furthermore, they can offer encouragement when your confidence wavers.
Role models are particularly powerful. After all, seeing someone else make a successful transition can help you imagine yourself doing the same.
Today, these communities are not limited by geography. In fact, professional groups, online networks, alumni communities and social media all provide opportunities to learn from people whose experiences differ from your own.
As a result, virtual communities can offer information, advice, support and feedback at every stage of career transition.
When your community doesn’t want you to change
Of course, communities don’t always support change. Sometimes, the people around you have a vested interest in you staying where you are.
For example, if you’re an academic who want to leave academia, your colleagues may genuinely struggle to understand why anyone would want to leave. Likewise, family members may question your decision, and friends may worry about the risks.
Consequently, the very people we turn to for advice may unintentionally reinforce the status quo.
This is one reason career change can feel lonely. At times, you need to loosen your attachment to one community and begin building connections with another. Not because your existing relationships are wrong, but because they may not be able to help you navigate a world they’ve never experienced themselves.
The value of second-degree contacts
One of the most effective ways to broaden career possibilities is to connect with people beyond your immediate network.
Think about moving house. Typically, you’d ask local people about schools, tradespeople, transport links and amenities. In doing so, you would gather information from people who already know the area.
Career transition works in much the same way. If you’re trying to enter a new occupational world, you need people who can help you understand how it works.
For example:
- Which skills and behaviours are valued?
- What workplace language and terminology do people use?
- How are jobs found?
- Is there a typical career path?
People one or two steps beyond your immediate circle are often best placed to help. Indeed, second-degree contacts bring fresh perspectives. Because they’re less invested in your existing identity, they are better able to see possibilities that those closest to you might miss.
In this way, they can help you fill gaps in your understanding and challenge assumptions about what is and isn’t possible.
My career experience part 2
More recently, my move into self-employment has required me to reach out beyond my immediate network and build new relationships with others working in a similar space.
Fortunately, several of these people have been incredibly generous in offering tips and guidance as I made the transition from structured employment into the unfamiliar world of freelancing.
Career reinvention is a social process
We often talk about career change as if it is a private journey of self-discovery. In reality, however, it is also a deeply social process.
Our communities shape our beliefs, our aspirations, our confidence and our opportunities. Moreover, they influence the stories we tell about ourselves and the choices we make.
Map your community
Therefore, if you’re considering a career transition, it can be helpful to map your community and ask:
- Who has influenced my thinking about careers?
- What messages have I absorbed about success and work?
- Which relationships support my growth?
- Are my assumptions limiting me?
- Who could help me understand the world I want to move into?
- What new communities might I need to join?
Ultimately, career reinvention is rarely something you do alone. The people around you help define what you can see. And often, expanding your community is the very first step towards expanding your possibilities.