by Michael Cahlin
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It's perfectly normal to start from scratch in a new career at any age or stage. Here's living proof.
Ellen Bressler Levine never intended to become a trendsetter. After two stints in college, four different career tracks, and hopscotching between New York, Florida, and California, all she wanted was a steady job.
Her low point occurred 17 years ago. Working for a New York-based giftware company, watching others get promoted, she realized, "Nobody knows how smart I am." Like many unhappy workers, she fled her old job in hopes that a new one in a related field would be better. It wasn't.
Just married, she moved to South Florida, and was working for a greeting card company when her boss called her a 'hood ornament' during an employee evaluation. "That was it," recalls Ellen. "I was tired of sales and wanted a career with more financial security, where I called the shots."
Then 33, she returned to college. Four years later, armed with a bachelor of business administration degree in accounting, she started the climb up the corporate ladder.
Looking back, Ellen thought her roller coaster job journey was over. Initially, she loved accounting, but didn't count on "hating the escalating pressure of tax season." After eight years, she'd had enough, and at 45, started searching for her next new career.
Sound familiar? Buffeted by a smorgasbord of evolving and constantly changing forces including the birth of new industries, the death of obsolete ones, and a peripatetic economy, today's workers are changing careers and reinventing themselves more frequently than sports figures and politicians. According to a 2004 survey by the University of Phoenix, whose emphasis is adult education programs, 58 percent of U.S. workers have changed their careers - not just their jobs - most more than once.
Recareerists or second careerers, like Ellen, are responsible for transforming old-school ideas on education, jobs, and careers into new school opportunities for personal and financial growth. Continuing education classes, certificates, graduate degrees, and online learning are just some of the avenues available to qualify workers to do something completely new.
In fact, adults ages 25 and older now account for more than a third of those enrolled at degree-granting institutions, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. By 2014, that number is projected to jump 13 percent among 25- to 29-year-olds, and a walloping 23 percent among 30- to 34-year-olds.
In other words, if you don't like the career you're working in now, there's always another one out there. Kathryn Mastrogiovanni discovered this after some sobering self-examination.
After high school, Kathryn enrolled in one college after another but a penchant for partying prevented her from finishing. In New Orleans, she worked at several radio stations, but when the nightlife again affected her livelihood, she found a way to fold it into her blossoming career: She became the marketing director for several nightclubs.
"I was in heaven," recalls Kathryn, "I was getting well- paid essentially to party." Heaven turned to hell when her best friend died, sending Kathryn through a binge of schools, jobs, and careers from cocktail waitress to hair stylist and makeup artist.
Winding up in Los Angeles, now in her mid-20s, she landed a job at a Beverly Hills investment company and very quickly was making $10,000 to $15,000 a month. She remembers thinking, "I have arrived! I have plenty of money, clothes, and rich friends - what else is there?" A reputable firm, for starters.
When the company was accused of fraud, she found herself once again unemployed and within months, broke. Then 30, Kathryn had a moment of life-changing clarity: "I stopped partying and decided to try finding out who I was and what I wanted to be."
During the next decade, like many workers seeking personal growth, she sought answers in a variety of careers while struggling to stay solvent. She worked in TV, became a legal secretary, then a talent agent, all the while bored.
"When I returned to school in the late 1990s, the last thing I wanted was a new career," she admits, but one course led to another, culminating in a master of arts in clinical psychology.
Today, Kathryn has a booming Beverly Hills practice and runs recovery groups at various high-end treatment facilities. "You have to be willing to believe in yourself, and that's hard," she asserts, "because most of us run on fear-based thinking versus love-based thinking, which requires a grounding belief in ourselves."
Like Ellen and Kathryn, Jason Parker was willing to take a risk. However, he engineered his recareer transformation from an entirely different path. After two years in college, he served in the Navy to "figure stuff out" and take advantage of its education benefits.
At 25, using skills learned in the Navy, he worked on a casino boat, then as a quality assurance lab technician at Azteca Milling, an Evansville, IN-based plant that makes corn flour. Looking for more responsibility and better pay, at 29 he returned to the University of Southern Indiana and graduated with a bachelor's degree. But it wasn't enough.
While Jason's reasons for returning to school were positive and well-researched, after three years, he concluded future career opportunities were limited in his area of research. Married with two sons, in June 2001, he qualified for student loans and enrolled in Lehigh University's distance learning program.
"The hardest part was adjusting to how weird it was to watch a class over a satellite link, but not physically be there," he says. "Luckily, I could always call the professor with questions and I had the benefit of reviewing past classes."
Even going to school part time, Jason underestimated the amount of work needed to complete his master of science degree in pharmaceutical chemistry. However, like many workers who later return to school and keep their day jobs, he discovered he was a better student the second time around. More experienced, more motivated, and less concerned with grades, Jason says, "I knew exactly what I wanted, what I was working for, and I had the support of my family."
It took four years, but in August 2005, Jason graduated and immediately switched careers from bench chemistry to pharmaceutical representative. "It felt great finishing and the new degree immediately gave me opportunities for more money and advancement."
Whatever your career course, all three recareerists say the secret is to start now. Don't hesitate or let things like age or money stop you. "You don't want to lock yourself into something you hate and [have to] do it for the rest of your life," warns Jason.
Ellen agrees. Rather than staying in a career that made her unhappy, she took her chances on a new one.
Using her accounting, research, and real-world sales skills, she and her husband and a partner started a home-based business in Florida teaching health care professionals how to maintain a safe environment.
In 1999, the Levines split with their partner, moved to California, and started their own OSHA (Occupational Safety & Health Administration) compliance program. Today, their company, Medical Compliance Consulting, boasts over 1,000 clients and sells licenses all over the country.
"The biggest obstacle in any new venture is figuring out how to make money while you're starting out," advises Ellen, now company president. "Be patient, don't be afraid to learn new skills, and don't ever let life's little setbacks stop you."
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