Dec 14, 2021 in Career Coaching

5 mistakes I made in my first career change.

Blog about my personal experience of my first career change.

Have you thought about what a career change will look like? 

What if you made a mistake and didn’t choose the right career?

Today, I want to share with you my first career change.

If you follow me on Instagram and read my blog previously, you already know that I studied as an accountant. I worked as an account and office manager for 5 years. 

If you know my history, you would know that I worked 8 years in the travel industry after that, so my first career change wasn’t the last. Some people can think that I make a mistake. For me, it wasn’t a mistake.

At that moment, I was following my passion. It was what was more aligned with who I was and that moment. That career change I did by myself. And everything came to mind; after my gap year, you can read my experience here.

When I thought about changing my career, I didn’t know what I wanted to do; or which things I liked the most or even my strengths. I just knew that I didn’t want to be an accountant or anything related to finance anymore.

So, if you are reading this today, you feel that you just hate what you are doing, or you do not like it anymore, but you do not fully know what the next step or what you want to do is. 

Don’t panic, and do not think you will never find it.

For me, I took a gap year because 2 years before, I made my first solo trip to the US and fell in love with San Diego (my fav place in the world). There I met the love of my life, and after two years in a long-distance relationship, I decided to move there to see where that goes.

At that moment, I had no idea of where I was going career-wise; I figure it out on the way.

I have two things clear, I didn’t want to be in finance anymore, and I wanted to take a break to figure out my next step.

I discovered that I wanted to work in the travel industry; because I loved to travel. This was one of my passions and still is. But, I didn’t do any research about it. 

When I was in San Diego for a year, besides travelling and learning English. I did some volunteer work. One of them was in a Hotel as a back office. I liked it a lot.

When I went back home to Spain, I enrolled in a tourism course and started to work in a hotel. Soon I realized, being at the front and back office of a hotel was not the job I wanted (long hours, weekends and festive work, different shifts…) It wasn’t my ideal job.

So, I start to look for work on bed-banks. When I started, I had the opportunity to design destinations from scratch, create strategies to sell those destinations, travel a lot to know those destinations. And I love it.

But soon wanted to do more, and I started to take more responsibilities. Started to train other team members and new people, create procedures to work, and my passion disappeared.

In my 7 years in the travel industry, I changed companies four times. I was looking for something that I won’t find there.

Today I want to share with you the 5 mistakes I made in my first career change:

1. Do not work on my values – Have no idea about that until I hire a coach to work on my second career change.
2. Don’t set a plan and strategy – I was just going with the flow; I liked volunteering in a San Diego hotel. But I never thought about anything else. 
3. Do not analyze my strengths- Never work on my strengths, transferable skills, or anything like that.
4. Do not work on my why? – Your Purpose is your why. Why do you wake up every day and go to work beside your salary? If it’s nothing else, you need to work on your why.
5. Do not ask for help – I should hire a coach back then, not wait to change myself, and seven years later do it. Hiring someone who can help you will save you time and headache.

 I will suggest that you reply to those questions to yourself as the first thing if you find it difficult, I will recommend you look for help.

4 questions that you should ask yourself before any career change:

• Which are my core values?
• Why do I go to work every day? (salary is not valid)
• If I go back in time, which is the thing/task that I always practice and love it?
• Which thing/task I could be doing for hours?

I love this quote below. As I always said, certifications are great; they teach you a lot about how to practice and how to help better your clients. But experience is critical. 

” Experience is the teacher of all things.”

~ Julius Caesar ~

My reason for being a coach has always been to help women like me who didn’t choose the right career; navigate their career transition much more smoothly.

The reality is if you are reading this today. If you follow me on Instagram, you look at that topic online, and you found this. Then this is the sign that you really want to change. If not, why you are looking at it?

If you are committed to making this career change and doing the inner work. Instead of freaking out and convincing yourself to stay safe but not growing, and it looks like you are not getting anywhere by yourself. You realize you feel stuck and need someone to help you get through it. So let’s have a free vibe call! I got you!

Life is happening right now, and time is the only thing we will never get back, to lose it in a job where we spent most of our time that we hate.  

Let’s design your Heart-led Career Change together right now!

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