Career Change Success: From IT to Marketing

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Career Change Success: From IT to Marketing

by Brooke Eaton, Monster Staff Writer

A career change can mean many different things, from changing jobs within one field, to taking skills from one industry and making them applicable to another.

Monster member polyloquent used IT skills to embark on a successful marketing career and has some tips to help others do the same: I've been working in IT as an e-commerce/Web BA for the past six years, and for the last year, I started to feel the pressure of being stuck in a rut. I didn’t like the idea of becoming a project manager, but agencies and employers were starting to become suspicious of why I had stayed at that level for so long.

To be honest I was a bit sick of documentation. My true passion is the Web and Internet communities, and I got to experience some of that by shaping the solutions I was documenting, but not to the extent I wanted. So I started being proactive and identifying what other strategies we could put in place to complement the solution. I ended up winning over the marketing manager, who asked me to present to the director. He was won over by my enthusiasm and ended up asking me to head the online arm of a campaign for a new product we were running. That ran smoothly, and based on that success, the director created a new role for me and poached me away from my project manager, raising my salary in the process. Now I am going to be the new online strategy manager, and I will get to work on totally amazing stuff like new campaigns and the company roadmap.

What I learned from this experience:

Be in an organization that is agile and encourages and rewards change.

Be passionate about what you do. If you love your job you will do it well.

Discover a niche in your company where you can add value and don't be afraid to sell yourself.

Don’t be scared of doing stuff that isn’t part of your job, or stepping out of your comfort zone.

Now It’s Your Turn

If you work for a company with many different departments, changing careers doesn’t have to be drastic. Polyloquent took the steps to move into a new line of work. By identifying what you do and do not like about your current situation and being proactive about discovering what would make you happy, you can rejuvenate your career by redefining it.

Tips for Making an Internal Career Change:

Identify What You Want: If you are unhappy in your current position, identify what it is about it you don’t like. Focus on where your passions lie, and what about the job you do like. Remember why you accepted the position in the first place.
Step Outside the Box: If you are passionate about work that isn’t in your job description, take the initiative to do work that is interesting to you (in addition to your assigned work) -- even if it’s beyond your regular responsibilities.
Reach Out to Others: Try to establish relationships with people in other departments and convey your interest in what they do to them.
Leverage Your Skills: Use your knowledge and skill sets from your previous or current jobs to show others how your contributions are indispensable. Polyloquent was able to use a background in the Web to offer some innovative and insightful marketing strategies. The current job allows polyloquent to tap into both passions: the Web and marketing.

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