Why change careers?

There's a whole swag of reasons why people yearn for a career change. Some people lose interest in their field. Or get itchy feet and yearn for something different. And sometimes it's just plain old boredom.

Whatever the reason, TAFE NSW can be the bridge between your old career and your new career.

Case study #1 - Paul

It's never too late to make that change. Paul worked for a bank for over 40 years before deciding to follow his passion for landscaping.

"My working life was all about financial transactions, debits and credits, columns and ledgers, numbers and figures," he says. "I spent most of my time sitting at a desk under fluoro lights. The closest I came to landscaping were the occasional indoor box plants, none of which ever seemed to look very healthy or happy."

Now he's about to complete his third year in a Certificate III in Landscape Construction course with TAFE. And no-one is more surprised with this unlikely career change than Paul himself.

Case study #2 - Joanna

Joanna is another person who successfully transitioned to a completely different, and unexpected, career. After all, not many people who start out as a receptionist find themselves years later as a self-employed glazier. "I feel more involved now that I'm a tradie, rather than just sitting behind a desk and just selling a product," she says. "It's one of the best things I've done, doing hands-on work.

Image credit: The Sydney Morning Herald

Case study #3 - Katarina

Sometimes a person might make multiple career changes throughout their working life. Katarina's career path went from nursing to horticulture to quarantine to floristry. And she's found that these different careers can support and inform each other, giving her a broad range of different disciplines and specialist knowledge to draw from.

"I see floristry and horticulture and nursing as all complementing each other," she says. "If you tie all of those things together, it's that 10% of everything that adds up slowly to a point where what you're giving isn't just a bunch of flowers. There's a meaning behind them. It's an amalgamation of time and experiences."

Final thoughts

For Paul, Joanna and Katarina, changing their respective career paths has been both uplifting and empowering. It's made them realise that, as individuals, we have far more control over our working lives than we think.

So if you're feeling unhappy or bored in your current career, it doesn't have to be that way. A new, more fulfilling career is not only possible, but the logical choice. You owe it to yourself to make that change.