Caregivers on the Job–Part 3, If It’s “the Job”

Taking care of yourself for a caregiver often means taking time to fill in the holes in your own life, so that when you walk around you don’t accidentally fall in one of them. Your job is one of your main ways of taking care of yourself. To shore up the holes in your job life, you tried repairing your job performance (see Part One) and you tried improving your communication with your manager and coworkers (see Part Two). If your job cannot be made right by fixing these essential elements, however, then maybe it’s time to start thinking about changing it.

Traditional Ways to Start Altering Your Work Situation

There are of course the traditional methods of beginning the job-changing process:

Method 1:

With one traditional method—which has become the “new classified ad” standard ever since computers became our constant work companions—you:

1. Do a little soul-searching—maybe by reading Richard Bolles’ What Color Is Your Parachute or Ken Robinson’s Finding Your Element.
2. Prepare a professional-looking resume.
3. Hit the job-board sites online (Indeed.com, Monster.com, CareerBuilder.com, SimplyHired.com, ZipRecruiter.com, etc.)
   If you’re lucky here, your profession or industry might even have an online job board geared specifically to jobs in their field only. These sites can save you time mining through tons of jobs that are inappropriate to your needs.
4. Apply to appropriate job ads and/or post your resume and make it searchable by company recruiters.

Method 2:

With another method, requires that you:

1. Repeat steps 1 and 2 above.
2. Contact a staffing company or that headhunter, who called you last year when you were in a more contented frame of mind and not yet interested in seeing what openings they had on their books and seeking a new opportunity elsewhere.

Method 3:

With yet a third method, you:

1. Skip getting to know people you don’t know.
2. Join professional associations in your field or industry.
3. Begin networking—i.e., contacting people you know through your association with that professional group who are open to being asked about their companies, their field of expertise, or their specific industry.
4. Explore within your current industry and/or field.
   People who attend professional association meetings have invested in both their own professional status. They are more likely well-educated in their fields, committed to performing their specialties at a high level, and interested in remaining in their fields. They are probably the most capable people to steer you toward companies that would suit you best and provide an appropriate for your skillset.
5. Explore beyond your current industry and/or field.
   While exploring, remember you can be a computer person in a software company, but you can also be one in an insurance company, at a dance studio, and at a university’s administrative office. Computing is one of many universal skills, meaning most industries need these professionals. So, think wide when you explore this way.

While you’re looking at these traditional ways of changing the job into something that will add to your already full life, consider also some new ways of changing jobs.

Non-Traditional Ways to Start Altering Your Work Situation

Maybe, for example, full-time to part-time, or perhaps a job-share arrangement with a professional you know and trust might be an option. For example, those of you with medical knowledge (RNs, LPNS, etc.), might find medical writing an interesting and more flexible alternative to being a practicing professional in a clinical setting. If you’re only an average writer, perhaps you can team with a professional writer who doesn’t have your medical knowledge. Together you would make an expert team to fill a single medical writing position, if an organization would be open to that arrangement, and some probably are. How would this help you? Well, your job sharer can be there—either manning the phone for remote assignments or in the office for onsite work—when you’re taking your mother to the doctor and you can be there when she needs to get her dog to the emergency vet or he needs to escort his child to the ex-spouse’s for the weekend.

If your problem is the boredom you currently feel on what was once an interesting position for you, yet you feel too invested outside of work to manage a productive transition to a new and possibly more interesting job, then perhaps you can suggest ways to extend your current job into areas that do interest you. For example, perhaps your job supports an Alzheimer’s or other Dementia organization. You are gaining extensive experience and expertise in this area every day. If this area or related areas interest you beyond your simply ensuring the well-being of your own parent, then maybe you could look for aspects of your work that could contribute to that cause and your own official expertise. For instance, maybe you understand where and how the volunteer core they send to events each year could be better used. Maybe you have some ideas on the fundraising blasts they distribute to their employees. Consider these kinds of growing in place opportunities if you like your company and want to stay put during this transition with your parent. If the thought of having to be involved in this way at work as well as at home is too much for you. Then, stay clear of it, but consider other job-guided and needed ways you could make your daily work life more interesting. It must benefit, support, and of course be pre-approved by your employer, but it could be just the boost you need. Sometimes getting things right at work is the only place we’re going to get them right that day, and it counts, and if often makes you feel much better.

Ways to Make a Major Career Change

Anything from going back to school to starting over in a job that you have wanted to try for a long time can be used to launch a new career. One word of caution, however, since you are a caregiver, someone who may need a salary or that regular commission to continue taking care of a family member, someone who may need health insurance for themselves (and their caregiver stress or burnout), someone who may already be too tired to mount a major campaign for a new life, please approach this idea with appropriate caution.

Read and think about making this major change for a long, hard time before you leap anywhere. You have enough going on without a bad crash landing into a new field you don’t like, along with the bills you ran up taking courses to enter it. If you need help thinking outside your career box, try reading some of the new classics like Barbara Sher’s Wishcraft: How to Get What You Really Want or I Could Do Anything, If I Just Knew What It Was. Read What Color Is Your Parachute or re-read it and do all of the exercises this time. When you’re done, you will know whether you really want such a drastic change or just a week at the beach daydreaming about another life. Once you can feel the difference in your toes—and know that what you really need to remove stress from your life is a major change—you’ll know it’s time to start taking action. And when it is time to start taking action, seek the assistance of a career counselor. They have them at local colleges, universities, and technical institutes. They are more than happy to help you reimagine your life in a new career field and work with you to find the most practical way for you to achieve that goal. They will help you figure out finishing high school before you embark on their own programs and this new adventure if that is an issue. They will help you get ready for college coursework if you’ve never been. Don’t let your dream die on the vine, just don’t pluck it too soon either.