Anatomy of a career change

I have changed career three times. I started out in European affairs, with an internship at the European Commission and then a job with an environmental NGO in the EU bubble. From there I fell into technology and product roles in the private sector, and found I enjoyed the work a great deal. I then joined the Department of Foreign Affairs as a diplomat, and some years later left the civil service to set up DEDICO. Many of the people who contact me now are near the start of the same process. Some want to move from the private sector into the civil service or a local authority. Some are already in the public sector and wondering about leaving. Most want to know how to do it. Quite a few are hoping I'll tell them it can be done without anything changing except the email signature, because they know themselves that it is likely to be a long process with twists and turns.

It rarely works out that way. A career change almost always costs something, whether that is money, status, autonomy or time, and the people who manage it well are the ones who worked out beforehand what they were willing to give up. What follows is what I've learned from doing it myself and from working with clients who are doing it now, in roughly the order it tends to come up.

The hope for a sideways move

Many people hope for a sideways move: same level, same salary, new sector. "I'm a senior manager now, so I'd like to come in at the equivalent grade." It's a reasonable thing to want. It looks like the safe option, and most people assume it is more doable than coming in at a higher grade. Sometimes it is, depending on the role, but more often there is a drop somewhere, in pay, in title or in grade, or a gap between one income stopping and the next one starting. The move from the private sector into the public sector is where this shows most, and the reason is that seniority means different things on each side.

Seniority doesn't travel between sectors

Private sector titles are nebulous. In one company, Director is a title people wait a decade for. In the next, half the floor are Directors, or everyone is a Senior VP and the decisions are made by someone called Head of Something. Titles are sacrosanct inside the company that issued them and mean very little outside it.

The public sector works the other way round. Grades are fixed, published and comparable across organisations, and each comes with a salary scale anyone can look up. When a private sector career meets that system, one of two things tends to happen. Some people decide they should be at a higher grade than the one they're applying for, and are frustrated when the competition doesn't see it their way. Others pitch themselves too low because they've undersold what they did, and apply a grade or two below where their experience would stand up.

Both of these are problems of framing. The people reading your application don't know what a senior manager at your last company did, and they won't go looking. They will read what is on the page against the competencies or capability dimensions for the grade (my guide to the civil service capability framework sets these out). If your seniority is going to count, you have to translate it for them: how many people you managed, what budget you were responsible for, which decisions were yours, and who you answered to. The standing you built up elsewhere won't map across on its own. You may think that's obvious, but recruitment tends to cloud people's judgement, often because they want the change to happen so much.

Transferable skills, with a caveat

I'm positive about transferable skills. I'm less positive that every skill transfers, or that it transfers to every role.

This year I worked with several teachers who wanted to apply for the civil service Assistant Principal competition. Teaching is an incredibly difficult job, and I was honest with them that I was less hopeful about their chances than they were. The overlap between teaching and the work of an Assistant Principal, a management grade in the civil service, is smaller than it first appears. The shared title doesn't help: in a school, assistant principal is a post of responsibility, and in the civil service it is a grade with its own competencies and its own expectations. To make the case, a teacher has to draw on everything else they've taken on, such as a post of responsibility, a year head role, time on the school's management team or an administrative function. Then they have to write the application form so that those transferable elements are obvious to a reader who has never worked in a school.

It is possible, and I've seen teachers do it well. It takes reflection and careful framing, and it starts from an honest view of where the overlap is and where it isn't. Being senior in one sector doesn't make you senior in another.

Salary works in a similar way. I've had people tell me they want to move into the public sector but can't take any change in pay, and I've had the reverse. That isn't undoable, but it narrows the options and makes the process slower and harder, and it's better to know that at the start than to find it out at the offer stage.

Moving from the public sector to the private sector

Moving the other way is also possible, but it usually takes more time and more creativity. What is clear from a grade in the public sector is not clear to a private sector employer. A recruiter in a technology company won't know what a Higher Executive Officer or a Grade VII does, any more than a civil service board knows what your last company meant by Director. The nebulousness works both ways, and the translation work I described above applies just as much in reverse.

The second obstacle is in people's heads. The civil service and local authorities can leave people feeling that they could only ever work within those systems, and that their skills may not be relevant elsewhere. A senior diplomat I deeply respect once told me they were worried they wouldn't be able to get a job in the private sector, because what did they know? They had done a fabulous job, using a whole range of transferable skills. When you've been inside a system for a long time, it can be hard to imagine working outside it.

My advice is that you don't know until you try. I don't necessarily agree with resigning first so that you have the motivation to find something new. If you're thinking about leaving the public sector, dip your toe in with a few applications and see how it goes. If you're invited to interview, go and see what the interview is like. You don't have to accept the job if you're offered it, and that is the part people tend to forget. Even the process of looking, and seeing what's out there, can help you clarify your thinking.

Why I moved, three times

My first change, from European affairs into tech, wasn't planned. I fell into tech and stayed because I enjoyed it. The two changes since then were both motivated by wanting something different and by frustration with what I had. In the private sector, I didn't want to keep working for the good of faceless investors. I recognise that's how capitalism works, but as I got more senior I found it harder to care about the work. I always cared about the people I worked with and about my team, but that isn't enough if you can't find the motivation to do the work itself.

In the civil service, I came to accept that I don't thrive inside a very large system. Working for myself, I get to help people, which I enjoy enormously, and I get the satisfaction that comes with working through something complicated. With organisations, that might mean walking through a difficult project, seeing what needs to be done and then solving it, or explaining a technology or a process to someone and helping them put it in place in their business. With individuals, it means helping someone prepare for a competition that matters to them. The work is varied, I'm learning all the time, and that suits me.

I mention this because the reasons behind a move matter as much as the mechanics. If you know what frustrates you and what gives you satisfaction, you can judge whether a new role will remove the first and supply the second. If you don't, you can change sector and find yourself with the same frustrations in a different system, or with a different title or grade.

Going in at a junior level

When I joined the Department of Foreign Affairs, I went in at a more junior level, as a Third Secretary. It was far more difficult than I had expected. I had gone from managing staff, with a good deal of autonomy and independence, to slotting into a hierarchy where I had no autonomy at all. That adjustment was hard, and I doubt any amount of preparation would have made it painless.

I found my way through it. I put a great deal of effort into getting to First Secretary as soon as I could, but logistics got in the way. That was only open to me after two years' service at the lower grade, and I couldn't even apply for a First Secretary competition before that point. That is standard across the civil service. So moving up fast all depends on what you think fast is. If fast is two years, fine. In the private sector, people sometimes move up and accrue a great deal of responsibility in a much shorter time. I was advised, with the best of intentions, that it was "ambitious" to expect to move up that fast, which was a kind way of telling me not to be disappointed. For me, that made it a target. I was promoted two years and two months into my time at the Department, and I was told that was "unusual". It wasn't a guarantee, though, and it isn't a given for everyone. I know plenty of people who took the same step back to come in as junior diplomats and are still working through the very difficult stages of promotion years later. Going in lower with a plan to climb is a legitimate strategy, but the climb depends on competitions and timing as well as ability, and it helps to know that before you start.

Questions to answer before you move

The self-reflection comes first, and it's often what decides whether a career change succeeds. These are the questions I'd put to anyone considering one:

• Are you willing to accept a change in your conditions?
• Could you take a temporary drop in salary, with a view to working your way back up through promotion?
• Would you take a title that doesn't reflect your experience, if the money is right?
• Would you go in at a more junior level, with less autonomy than you have now?
• What gives you satisfaction at work, and does the new role offer it?
• What, specifically, are you leaving behind, and is the new sector likely to have the same thing?

Nobody else can answer these for you, and it's much better to have your answers before you apply than to discover them six months into a new job. Allow for time as well, because the full move from one career to the next will probably take longer than you think it will. If you'd like a structured way to start, my career values exercise is a good place to begin.

Every career change looks different from the inside, and the anatomy of mine won't match yours. My advice to anyone thinking about one stays the same, though. Don't rule it out, but do the serious reflection first: what you want, what brings you satisfaction, and the strategy and tactics you'll use to get there. Then think beyond the obvious routes, because the world won't recognise what you have to offer on its own. You have to show it, in terms the people reading your application understand.

If you're moving into the civil service or a local authority and want help finding and framing your experience, I can help with building your examples, a review of your application form and interview preparation. For local authority competitions, see my local authority page. You can email me at sarah@dedico.ie.

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