Life changes and so do jobs. It is all inevitable. Increasingly, in fact, job changes come late in life. Sometimes these changes are forced on people and there are also times when mature adults look to make drastic career changes later in life—in the 50s, 60s or even 70s after decades in one profession or another. Think of an accountant becoming a musician, a doctor opening a bait and tackle shop or maybe an investment banker going into advertising or special education. These late-life career shifts come about for all sorts of personal, professional and even financial reasons. On the surface, these shifts seem exciting and they are. But they take work, patience, diligence and determination. And they are not for everyone. A guide to late-life career shifts can help navigate the complexities of transitioning to a new profession, offering insights into common misconceptions, opportunities, pitfalls and best practices. Caroline Ceniza-Levine, founder of the Dream Career Club, spoke to WellWell recently about what it takes to successfully change careers later in life. The journey is a job in itself.
From your perspective, are there more Americans making late career transitions, either during their normal working career or after retirement age?
Across all ages, people are making more career changes. And it’s more accepted on the employer side too, to see people coming from different roles, from different industries. What I will say about later-stage career change, people are living longer. Certainly, right now there’s inflation. And I definitely saw this after the pandemic that a lot of people had just an inflection point where they looked at what they had been doing and saying, “Is this all there is?” I definitely saw that pick up a lot in the last few years. So, I think it’s a combination of different things that are pointing people to making career shifts at all stages of life, including later stages.
When you say this is all there is, you mean someone looking for something more in life, something more professional? Or is it economics?
It’s a combination. People will define it differently. I ask that question and for many people, it’s around the meaning of what they’re doing, the legacy that they’re leaving. And this comes up mainly with a later stage where they’ve been in a career two, three decades and maybe they enjoyed it while they were there, but again, as they’re looking back and saying, okay, did I accomplish everything that I wanted to accomplish? What is the message that I’m sending to my kids, to my grandkids? And that’s where that kind of introspective comes into play. Is this all there is? And some people are driven by have I made the money that I want to make with inflation, with all the volatility? Sometimes it’s looking at their bank account and saying, is this all there is based on how expensive things are? But for the most part, when people get to that third decade, and especially if they’ve had some career milestones along the way and maybe have enjoyed their career, but they still are saying, okay, should I be doing something more, something different, something maybe that I had set aside earlier that I want to choose?
Do you see people who would be traditionally retired also looking to either work or make a career change?
The population that I tend to work with is knowledge workers. These are mostly white-collar jobs. They are desk jobs, whether in the office or working from home, they’re based on a specific expertise or a skill. These folks tend to be intellectually curious and ambitious for long stretches. So, retirement is less about I’m putting in my four decades and at the age of 60, 65, 70, some magical age, I’m going to hang up my shingle. For the most part, the client base that I tend to work with are looking at specific goals that they have, whether it’s financial or knowledge goals or professional goals or personal goals. And so, it’s more geared around where they are in life as opposed to an age range.
Is it also a matter of keeping active?
There’s a lot that’s been written about staving off dementia by maintaining your relationships and maintaining your work purpose. I know that’s on the minds of the folks who tend to come into things like career coaching or executive coaching because again, they’re ambitious, they work hard, and they want to maximize both their professional life and then just their health and wellness. Career counseling is a big part of that, staying active, staying vital, mentally and emotionally.
Are there any demographics that tend to lean this way?
I am not an economist or sociologist who studies this across the board. And so, the patterns that I’m seeing are based on the industries that tend to come to me. I tend to work with financial services, tech, media, more the private sector. My demographic is pretty split, men and women of different races and ethnicities. Again, more around the professional milestones, things like going after the C-suite or maybe starting a business for the first time or maybe turning a personal hobby into something more. I tend to see people all across the board, really pursuing those types of goals.
When we make this transition, are people transitioning within a company or are they saying nope, I’m going to open a bait and tackle shop.
I’ve definitely seen both. And I think as people live longer and are looking at multiple decades, they don’t need to stay in the same company, certainly not even in the same role. They might be accounting and then move into marketing, not even in the same industry. They might have come from finance, but now they’re in hospitality or whatever it is. They might have been in a big company, but now they’re looking at small companies or starting their own company. And so, I do see it across the board. I do see people who say, okay, I’ve built up a body of knowledge, I have a track record, and the focus on the career transition is more about lifestyle. It’s more about how do I take the stuff that I know and maybe work part-time, maybe do some consulting so I can pick my own projects. It’s less about changing industry or role in that case.
I worked with a lawyer recently who composed music and wanted to do more of that. So, he didn’t walk away from his practice, but it was more around how can I start building this in and doing some more. He released an album. And so, it really became something viable for him in his later stage.
Given the economic climate over the last four or five years, are you getting people who have lost their jobs in their 50s and saying, I can stay in marketing, but I have to transition out. Is that a significant part of your business?
It’s less so just because of the investment required for career coaching, but I will say I do run into professionals whose company gets acquired or there’s restructuring at the top or who face uncertainty with what’s happening with the federal government. I do have people who come and they either have already lost their job, so they are using severance or whatever it is or they have outplacement or they feel like they’re at a particular risk. I’m working with someone who is sponsored by the company where he’s at, and for whatever reason, the green card application was denied or sent back for some updates. Meanwhile, the company’s not doing well. This process takes a really long time. And so, here’s someone who’s looking at all their options, looking at, of course, staying and seeing that application through, but then also really thinking about, if I have to make a move right now, what is that going to look like? So sometimes it is driven more by economics or by the job market or just some of the practical considerations.
What do you see from people emotionally when they go through a career change?
The job search is anxiety-inducing. I’m not going to sugarcoat it because you are setting yourself up for lots of rejection. At the end of the day, you get one job. Maybe you get several offers, but for many people, it’s one offer, one job. And to get there, it’s rounds and rounds of interviews. It has lots of applications. It’s lots of networking meetings. And some of those meetings are born out of outreach that never gets responded to or sometimes you send out applications, you never hear back from them. So, it’s just a lot of rejection, even for ultimately successful candidates. And when you’re making a career change, when we talk about the finance person going into the bait and tackle shop or whatever it is, there’s just this uncertainty around meeting a whole new set of people. I have a track record that doesn’t matter anymore. Starting at the beginning, right? So. then there’s all of these other things that come into play when you’re making a big change. It can be emotional.
Are people generally happier when they make a career change?
I used to do outplacement with companies where companies would send me people who they had just laid off. And so, I do have some experience comparing those two populations. Obviously, when people are pushed into a job search that they didn’t plan, the negative emotions run high. There’s a lot of fear they might not have been prepared. Their severance might not be enough and they might not have as big an emergency fund as they would like. If they are later in their career, they might have been counting on, maybe a few more years of retirement contributions or whatever it is or vesting for a pension. That’s no longer there. Emotions run really high. For individuals who come to me directly, there’s a reason. Typically, there’s a spark. Sometimes it’s arguably a negative inflection point, like let’s say when the pandemic hit, people were starting to think, my goodness, I know people who got sick or whatever it is. And so, it prompts them to make a big, big shift. But even then they’re in the driver’s seat. They know that they’re in the driver’s seat, that they have choices about what’s next. It’s a very different feeling.
And once they make the transition, how do they feel? Do they seem to enjoy the change?
It’s called work for a reason. It’s not all roses and unicorns, right? What I’ve seen is that, yes, there is a lot of personal satisfaction and a lot of fulfillment. Especially with the more extreme career changes where people tend to integrate things that they’ve done in the past. I had a finance person who had spent 20-plus years in finance and ended up transitioning into K through 12 education. And she went from an operations role in finance to a development and community outreach role. So very, very different, both from an industry perspective and a role perspective. And she spent several years in her new role in her new industry, really, really liked a lot of it, but frankly missed a lot of the financial. And so, she ended up transitioning back into banking, but in a relationship manager role for the public sector clients of this bank. You can see it was actually a perfect peanut butter cup of what she’d done before and what she transitioned to. And that’s what I see a lot, that people figure out, I didn’t hate everything about what I did before.
Is there a type of personality or person who succeeds in making a transition?
Yes. I would say that the biggest thing that successful career changers have in common is that they feel empowered to make a change. They feel like, okay, I might not have the network, but I’m going to meet these people. And I might not know everything about all these companies, but I’m curious enough and I’m self-starting enough to figure it out. There’s a growth mindset there’s a self-starting aspect to them. There’s a resourcefulness. And they’re willing to figure it out. They hit a brick wall and they’ll dig under it, go around it, climb over it, whatever. I see some people get some of the way there. They’re super excited about making a change. Maybe they start getting their resume together. They start talking to some people. They start making applications. But then they hit some roadblocks and then they say, wow, maybe this isn’t for me. So, they lose that momentum and the people who can stick it out are again, they’re resourceful, they’re self-starting, there’s some spark about them that keeps them going.
How do companies deal with older people coming in? Is it tough if you’re over 50 doing this?
I came to career coaching because I was a long-time recruiter. So, I have hired thousands of people over my almost 30 years in recruiting. I’ve been on the other side of the desk. And what I will say about employers is that their questions and their hesitation about career changers are not without merit. Their concerns are that the person is not really committed because they have this track record and something else and that they might just leave, that the person is trying to learn on their time and their dime so that they don’t really know what they’re getting into. And when it comes to someone who’s at a later stage in their career, because they have a longer track record, more time doing something else and having done other things and being perhaps more senior and more expensive, companies will say, gosh, do I want to take a flyer on this person? And I think those are legitimate hesitations. So, someone who is older, who is thinking about making a career change, make sure that you’re not coming in and expecting to be a VP when you don’t have that experience where you are. Make sure that you’re not looking to exactly meet your previous salary, especially if your salary was based on being very senior where you are. Make sure that you’re not expecting employers to guess what your skills translate, and how they translate when you’re the one who’s supposed to be making that argument.
Do these more mature transitioners also face a substantial amount of pushback from their new colleagues who may be younger?
I do have some situations where they’ll come back from an interview or for a networking meeting and they’ll say, I really don’t think that person got me or liked me. And they jump into the age thing and they’ll say they’re junior. Maybe they felt threatened by me or maybe it’s a generational thing. And I really try to get them to step back from making assumptions that it is in this case, an age difference, or it could be an industry difference or a gender difference. I will say that obviously as a late-stage job seeker or career changer, you have to know how to interview with people at all stages of their careers. You are going to be meeting people who are junior to you. If you’re in your 50s, 60s or 70s, you’re going to meet people in their 20s, 30s or 40s, and they’re going to have a say in whether or not you move forward. You need to figure out how to make sure you come across as inviting and engaging and respectful honestly to people who might not be at your level or have the experience that you have.
What do companies see in these late career changers? Do they have legitimate concerns?
Absolutely. With the ones that are successful, the example that I gave about the finance ops person who went into education, development community outreach, the organization where she ended up working really saw her background as an asset because they were looking to put more metrics and numbers behind some of their strategic plans. And so, she actually took her outsider status because when she got into the final rounds, she knew she was up against a lot of people who had years in education, years in K through 12, et cetera. She really sold them on her outsider perspective, on being able to bring best practices from very different firms. And because she understood that what they were trying to do was install these new metrics, she was able to draw a direct parallel between what she had been doing to what they were trying to do. If you really understand what the employer is looking for, you can make that same case. Employers are interested in your experience. They’re interested in your expertise, especially where it translates.
Another person who is very successful in making a career change, again, in their 50s after decades in a completely different area, was in pharmaceutical operations and then moved into business development. They were interested in his experience working with complex hierarchies, really understanding just giant firms and how to cut through the red tape because, in his role, which would be calling on clients and trying to figure out who the decision makers were, It made sense that someone who had grown up in that environment would have that background. So, it wasn’t a liability, it was an asset.
How do I start if I want to make a career change? What are my first steps?
One of the first things that I do check because we’re looking at a later stage in the career is financially, where you are, can you make this pivot? Especially if someone comes to me and they might be interested in something where they might need to get a certification. I didn’t coach this person, but I knew someone who in their 40s decided to go back to med school. So that would be an example of taking on an enormous amount of debt. Obviously, they need to go back to school because you need a medical degree, right? And so, depending on what you’re trying to do because you have a shorter runway to make that money back, I do check what their financial situation is, what their goals are to see if we’re talking about something that is very much like that med school example. But for most people, it’s not. You don’t have to go back to school necessarily. You don’t need to have a certification or spend an inordinate amount of money. Usually, it is totally fine. So, barring that, really what I like to start with is what is it that you want to be doing? Finding that pull factor, that thing that is going to make them feel empowered and self-starting and resourceful when things get tough because if you’re excited enough about it, you will actually do it. And then I would say, the rest of it is then the, well, then how do you get that? So, what does marketing look like in terms of a resume, LinkedIn and how you talk about yourself? What does your networking look like? Who should you be talking to? You have an extensive network because you’re later in your career, but they tend to be people who either worked some more roles that you did or maybe in the same industry. It’s like, how about everybody else? And who do you want to be meeting? And then it might be a while since you’ve interviewed. So, there’s interview preparation and technique. And so, then there’s all that job search logistics.
For people who don’t have a very clear target or maybe they think they have a clear target, but I can sense from again, all that time as a recruiter, it’s like, it’s not specific enough or let’s really hone in on, you can’t just say financial services. I mean, there’s a whole world of insurance, accounting and banking. There is commercial banking, retail banking and investment banking. So, really trying to get that specificity around industry, role, geography, where you want to be or what areas you want to focus on. For people who already know that and where they have a very clear sense of what they want to do, then it’s positioning, it’s that interview prep and technique, it’s networking strategy, it’s all the stuff around the how. It really depends on where people are and that’s the way it should be. I mean, that’s what happens with career planning is that there are so many aspects to it, but it really depends on where you are in your career, what you’re trying to do and then what needs to happen in between.
And a career coach can help at any part of the journey?
Yes, and there are career coaches who specialize in different things. There are people who only will work on things like resumes and LinkedIn. There are people who only work on interview prep. There are some who will only work with people on job advancement issues. So, you really want to talk to people that you’re considering and find out where they specialize and who they tend to work with. They might work with the public sector versus the private sector or nonprofit or early stage versus late stage.
What are the biggest mistakes someone makes when they’re thinking about making a late-career transition?
I would say the biggest mistake is not getting started at all, is assuming that it’s too late. And you’d be surprised. Sometimes I talk to people and they just talk themselves out of it, even as we’re just brainstorming, just talking about what might be possible. And you can already see the self-censorship. They don’t even allow themselves to dream enough to find something that’s going to be interesting to them. So, I would say that the biggest mistake is to just assume that it is not possible. But I think from a practical perspective, let’s say that you’ve got big dreams and you’re willing to jump in, I would say the second most common thing is that you give up too easily. That you hit a roadblock and rather than just saying, okay, I’ve hit a roadblock, but I’m going to figure out how to get around that, then you say, this must be a sign from the universe or from the job market that this is not for me.
What’s the biggest misconception about a late-stage career change?
I’ve made a lot of career changes in my own life and I myself am in my 50s. I’ve changed industries, I’ve changed roles. I’ve also been a recruiter, like I said earlier. And what I tell people is that my recruiter self would never hire my career change self. Meaning that by the time you get to an employer, counter-intuitively, you can’t really seem like a career changer. They obviously saw your resume. They can see that you never worked in education if you’re a finance person or music if you’re a lawyer. But you can’t make them feel that way. So, the focus isn’t on career change or career transition. It’s actually career arrival. You’re there, you’re ready. You have such and such skills and such and such background and you’re ready to make this contribution. And it’s to turn all the focus when you’re making that move into, I’ve already moved. And I think people forget that. So, they refer to themselves as newbies or transitioners, or they talk about the journey. And of course, if you’re getting your teeth done or you’re going into surgery, you don’t want to hear that your surgeon is just trying stuff out. You want them to know that they’ve arrived. And so prospective employers want to feel that way too.
About Caroline Ceniza-Levine
Caroline Ceniza-Levine is a career expert, media personality and founder of the Dream Career Club. She is a senior contributor to Forbes.com, LinkedIn Voice for Executive Coaching, Career Counseling and Personal Development and a former career columnist for Money.com, Time.com and Portfolio, She has been a repeat guest expert on CBS, CNN, CNBC and Fox Business.
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