How to change careers when you don’t know what to do next

In short

• Describe your past work as tasks, not titles. Tasks travel between jobs; titles don’t.
• Mark each task as energizing, neutral or draining. That’s your first map.
• Take a short interest test to see which kinds of work you’re drawn to.
• Look next door first: roles that share tasks with what you’ve done.
• Narrow to two or three ideas and test them before you commit.
• Talk to people who do the work. People you know a little count.
• Pick one small step for this week, and write it down.

Why “what should I do next?” is so hard to answer

It’s a big, vague question, and big, vague questions rarely have good answers. Job titles don’t help much either. “Project manager” or “QA engineer” says little about what your days were actually like, which parts you’d happily do again and which parts wore you out.

So don’t try to answer it in one go. Break it into smaller questions you can answer from evidence: what you’ve done, what gave you energy, what you’re drawn to, and what’s close to where you are now. The steps below go through them in order.

Step 1: List what you did, not your job titles

Take each role from the last five to ten years and write down the tasks you actually did. Be concrete. Not “stakeholder management”, but “ran a weekly call with three teams to agree on priorities”. Not “testing”, but “wrote test plans for new features and explained bugs to developers”.

Tasks matter because they move between jobs. Research suggests that skills carry over well between occupations that share similar tasks, even when the titles look nothing alike. A support engineer who explained complex problems to customers has done a core task of a trainer, a technical writer and a customer success manager.

Add things that aren’t on your CV: side projects, volunteering, the thing colleagues always asked you to help with.

Step 2: Notice which tasks gave you energy

Go down your list and mark each task as energizing, neutral or draining. Go with your first reaction. Being good at something isn’t the same as enjoying it, and many people are very good at tasks that drain them.

Then look for patterns. Do the energizing tasks involve people, ideas, making things, organizing, persuading? Do the draining ones share something too, like constant interruptions or work nobody uses?

Writing this down matters. Written reflection is one of five ingredients that make career help work better (more on those below).

Step 3: Check which kinds of work you’re drawn to

Your task list shows what you’ve done. An interest test adds what you might enjoy, including things you’ve never tried. Studies consistently show that when the kind of work matches what you enjoy, people tend to do better and stay longer. The link with job satisfaction is real but smaller.

Our free career interest test uses the 30 questions of the O*NET® Interest Profiler from the US Department of Labor. It sorts interests into six areas, such as investigative (ideas and problems to solve), social (helping and teaching) and enterprising (leading and persuading). Compare the result with your energy map from step 2. Where they agree, you have a strong lead. Where they disagree, that’s worth a closer look.

Step 4: Look next door before you look far away

Many people jump straight to a dramatic change, or only search for the job they already had. The space in between is often the most useful: roles that share many tasks with your past work but change the parts that drained you.

There’s good evidence for this step. In a randomised trial, showing job seekers related occupations based on their background raised the number of interviews they got by 44%. Moves that look like a next step also tend to go down better with employers. Research suggests that a path of related steps gets hired more often than unrelated jumps.

To find roles next door, take your energizing tasks and ask: which jobs do mostly this? A few examples of the kind of move this turns up:

• QA engineer who enjoyed explaining problems → technical writer, support engineer, product operations.
• Recruiter who enjoyed the people side more than the targets → people operations, onboarding, learning and development.
• Developer who enjoyed talking to users → solutions engineer, developer relations, product manager.
• Teacher who enjoyed planning lessons → instructional designer, training specialist, education product roles.

These aren’t recommendations, just examples of what “next door” can look like. Your own list will depend on your tasks.

Step 5: Narrow to two or three, then test before you leap

A long list of maybes is hard to act on. Pick two or three directions that fit both your energy map and your interests. For each one, write a sentence on why it might fit and a sentence on what worries you about it.

Then test them. Reading about a job only tells you so much. A small experiment tells you much more, and costs far less than retraining for a direction you end up not liking. Some options:

• A 30-minute conversation with someone who does the work (step 6).
• A small project that uses the core task: write one help article, run one workshop, analyse one dataset.
• A short course, taken to see whether you enjoy the material, not for the certificate.
• Volunteering or a small paid task in the field.
• Taking on a piece of that work in your current job, if your employer allows it.

After each test, ask the same question as in step 2: was it energizing, neutral or draining? That answer is worth more than any description of the job.

Step 6: Talk to people who do the work

An informational interview is a short conversation with someone in a role you’re curious about. You’re not asking for a job. You’re asking what their week is like, what they wish they’d known and how people usually get in.

Don’t stop at close friends. In large randomised experiments on LinkedIn, people you know a little (some shared connections, not close friends) led to the most job moves. Those conversations can also lead to referrals later, and studies consistently show that referred people are more likely to be hired.

A simple message works:

“Hi [name], I’m a QA engineer exploring a move into technical writing. I saw you made a similar switch. Would you have 20 minutes in the next few weeks to tell me what the work is like? Happy to fit around you.”

Have a short answer ready for “so what are you looking for?”: what you’ve done, what you want more of, and why this direction. In a survey by an education provider, hiring managers said a short, sensible reason for the switch improves a career changer’s chances.

Step 7: Pick one step for this week

Big plans stall. One step done this week moves you further than a perfect plan for next month. Choose something that takes an hour or two: send one message, finish your task list, take the interest test, read three job ads for one direction and highlight the tasks you’ve already done.

When you start applying, aim before you fire. A large review of job-search studies found that sending more applications brings more interviews and offers, but not a better job. Searching with a clear goal and a plan goes with both.

What makes career help work?

Researchers have studied what separates career help that works from help that doesn’t. Studies consistently show it works better when it combines more of five ingredients. You can cover all five on your own:

Should you quit before you know?

If you have a choice, test first. Most of the steps above fit around a job: an evening for your task list, a lunch break for a conversation, a weekend for a small project. You’ll make a calmer decision with an income and some evidence than without either.

Work out your money situation early, so it shapes the plan rather than surprising you. How many months could you cover if income dropped? Would a direction need paid training? Could you move in stages, for example part-time or through a role that bridges the old work and the new?

If you’ve been laid off, the same steps apply. They also give each week a shape, which helps when the usual structure of work is gone.

If you’re changing careers at 40 or 50

The steps are the same at any age. What changes is what you build on and what you plan around. We’ve written separate guides on changing careers at 40 and changing careers at 50, including how to handle age bias in hiring.

How findnewpath helps with this

findnewpath runs these steps with you. Add your CV, answer 30 quick questions and swipe role ideas and real job ads. You get three directions with the reasons each one fits, a new CV for the direction you choose and one step to take each week. It’s free to start. We can’t promise anyone a job, but we can help you find a direction worth testing.

Questions people ask