The Daily Recruiter

All around me, friends and former colleagues are changing careers. Some are leaving the corporate world to be entrepreneurs. Others are going into teaching. And others, in spite of the gloomy headlines, are leaving teaching for corporate careers.

But the biggest shocker was when I heard my former colleague, David, a newspaper editor very high up the chain, was taking a chemistry course at a community college. Why? He’s prepping for his next career … as a registered dietician. Talk about radical change.

In his early 50s, David has held many leadership positions and is highly respected in the industry. Sadly, the industry is reeling, though maybe he would want a radical change anyway. He probably has two more decades in the workforce, and news management is stressful.

As a second career, a registered dietician seems like a good bet. With an aging population and a national emphasis on healthy lifestyles to combat obesity and other health problems, it seems like a career that can’t miss. The U.S. Department of Labor predicts 9 percent job growth over the next decade, with good job opportunities for well-educated dieticians. The average annual salary is $47,000, which means David will be taking a significant pay cut.

Would you consider a radical career change? I’ve thought about a shift to nonprofit work, something tied to my passion for environmental causes. That’s not as radical as newspaper exec to dietician. Based on conversations with those who have made drastic career changes, here are some things I’ll do if I take the plunge:

• Be thorough and pragmatic in my research. It’s easy to get your heart set on something first and then find the data to make it rational. You have to detach yourself from your dream when researching education requirements, salary and job prospects.

• Save a lot of money. Even if I were going into a higher paying field, I would have to start low on the pole, right? If things didn’t work out, I wouldn’t want to feel trapped.

• Keep my day job as long as possible, going to school at night or on the weekends, and even working two jobs at once before making the leap.

• Give it a chance. It might be tempting to go running back to the safety of my old field, but I would force myself to stick it out long enough to know for sure if I could love my new career. For David, returning to the newspaper business wouldn’t be an option, but media is a broad field. He might have lucrative offers in PR and related fields. (Seriously, he’s that good.)

It takes guts to make a radical change. I’m risk-adverse, and I can’t say for sure I would have the stomach for it. I’ll be keeping an eye on David—he’s a Facebook friend—to see how the transition goes for him. If he’s successful, and I think he will be, his story may be just the push I need.