Thursday, March 29, 2007

How to Swap Your Career

Okay, let's admit it: Not everyone in accounting loves their job. (This being a career site, some people say I'm supposed to be enthusiastic all the time. Bah. Humbug.)

Does this strike a chord?

For most of his career, Tom White says he was "living in the world of could have been."

Over 23 years, Mr. White held senior management titles in audit and internal treasury operations at several big Canadian banks. In each of them, however, the problem was the same: "I hated what I was doing," Mr. White says.

"I would wake up in the morning not wanting to go to work. I found I wasn't getting intellectual challenge and there weren't really any opportunities to change or move higher."

He dreamed of a career with less bureaucracy, more autonomy and more opportunity to innovate. Though he kept telling himself he could have that dream job, he never took action to find it.


What did he do about it? Toronto's Globe and Mail says he invested in aptitude tests, hired a career coach and studied options in consulting, private equity and finance. Now he's, embarked on the path of finance manager for a mortgage insurance company. "He's looking forward to the challenge with fresh enthusiasm because it is a smaller organization that affords him the autonomy, ability to innovate and opportunities for advancement that he craves."

Wallace Immen's article explores how he got there - and how you might, too, if you're so inclined.

Waking up is hard to do when a job's unfit for you [Globe and Mail]

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