Deciding if You Should Relocate for a New Career

What industry do I want to work in?

Some of the best career change advice involves acknowledging your priorities and preferences. Deciding if you should relocate for a new career should be much easier.  Begin with acknowledging the distance you are willing to travel prior to identifying industries of interest. Keep in mind this may change as you develop your list of preferred places of employment or you may decide to relocate. Next, identify the industries you want to work in and the employers within each industry. As of this writing, a variety of information specific to industries, state employment demographics, and general career tools can be found at CareerOneStop.

Numerous resources exist to help you identify industry trends and careers. Perhaps you have worked a number of years in a particular industry and now that industry is in decline and you need to switch industries. Being able to identity which of your credentials and skills could transfer to other industries and being market yourself to the right individuals are important to a successful job search. Today’s job market is too competitive for job seekers to rely on inadequate job search methods including exclusively relying on online job boards, newspaper classified ads, or applying directly to an organization’s hiring department without knowing of a vacancy.  Deciding if you should relocate for a new career begins with your priorities and preferences but may end with factors out of your control determining the possibilities.

Photo by Thomas Hawk, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.