By Judit Price, MS, CDFI, IJCTC, CCM, CPRW

Many have committed themselves to a career change.  Although they have been successful, many extremely successful, they come to a stage in their professional lives when a fundamental change looks attractive.  In fact, the reasons they believe a change is appropriate vary from person to person, but I have found that many have not thought this through very carefully.

In general, job pressures, long hours, poor supervision, limited growth, boring work , many, many years doing fundamentally the same thing and a host of other reasons motivate the desire to look at options.  One result is too many people think that a career change is the answer when other options may be better.

I do not discourage career changers.  Most people generally have four or five careers during their work lives.  But, I also do not want clients to get on a career changing treadmill, looking for that holy grail of career satisfaction only to go from one frying pan into another one.  Therefore I believe it is essential to understand the underlying motivation for the desire for career change to ensure, as much as is possible, that a new venue will truly open new doors to greater career satisfaction. » Read more: Career Transition: A Career Change may be less of a Change than you think