Looking for a New Career? Try it Before You Jump

I hate shopping and particularly trying stuff on. Ugh. But if I didn’t try it on… I’d buy a bunch of stuff that doesn’t fit.

Since we know that people of all ages will need to change careers more often than in the past — how are we going to know if we like the job we THINK we might be good at.  I had the advantage of ‘student teaching’ — the great way to ‘try on’ a job.

A new service, LifeSwap.com allows users to connect with professionals in a specific job and shadow them for a set amount of time, at a price set by the host. Current swaps range from shadowing a PhD student to observing a henna tattoo artist. Imagine being able to see what a job is really like BEFORE spending thousands of dollars and years of study or ditching your current gig.

LifeSwap has recently set up an enterprise version for inter-company swaps for employees to pick up more skills at a specific company at a per-employee rate. Imagine taking your most talented employees and letting them ‘sabbatical’ at a company that teaches them new skills?

Imagine your career exploration in bite sizes — or inventing a whole new career based on what you learn by shadowing someone who’s already doing something similar?

Imagine if you could ‘show’ someone interested in your career choice what it’s like to do your job?

Thinking back… would you have chosen your profession/job if you’d had a chance to ‘try it on’ first? What would you have tried on?

If LifeSwap was available to you, what experiences would you try? You can probably do some of it without LifeSwap — so think and ask — opportunities are all around us.

Photo credit: Double vision  At~A~Glance