Category: Self-development

Customer service skills – are they underrated?

Posted on by Milica Berić

I’m sure you’ve all turned to customer support at least once for help – whether it’s a search for information, a complaint, an internet problem, or something else. What experience have you had in those situations? Did the person on the other side understand your problem, solve it, and be patient and pleasant? That feeling you had during and after your contact with customer service is important!

People who work in customer support should have well-developed so-called customer service skills. If they are nurtured and developed, you will feel that the person on the other side is patient with you, listens to and understands you, and even if your problem is not solved, you will feel good

Although we meet with customer support very often, sometimes even several times during the day, we are often not aware of the skills and knowledge of the people on the other end of the phone, chat, or e-mail.

Customer service is the practice of supporting customers before, during, and after the purchase of a service or product. A customer support person helps the consumer/user to find out how to use the product or service and resolve any errors or defects that may occur. Customer service is the backbone of any company. It is a service, which means genuine human interactions are of the greatest importance.

Customer service skills are traits and practices that equip you to address customer needs and foster a positive experience. In general, customer service skills rely heavily on problem-solving and interpersonal skills. Customer service is often considered a “soft skill,” including traits like active listening and communication. Some of the skills are clear communication, critical thinking, creativity, adaptability, negotiation skills, time management, etc.

However, do you feel that the mentioned skills are desirable, even necessary, outside of customer service positions? For example, sales positions, jobs in the hospitality and service industry in general, or in a marketing agency. For example, if you’re a graphic designer meeting with your client about their latest project understanding what good customer service takes can help you.

On the other hand, if you don’t have an outward-facing job, then you might not think it’s important to improve your customer service skills. Well, think again. Throughout your career, you’re likely to experience numerous professional situations that require good customer service skills. For example, you might have to fill in for a colleague who usually handles customer inquiries. Your boss could ask you to participate in a meeting with a client, which means you should be able to field questions and provide information or even to propose a solution to a problem.

Therefore, whether you formally work in customer service or not, you need to have a basic understanding of customer service skills. Whatever your department, seniority or industry may be, you’re responsible for the experience your customers have with your company, which is why you should be concerned with your customer service skills. In addition, sometimes the users are actually your colleagues – and then you also need to have an understanding of their needs, to be able to hear their opinion, and criticism, help them better understand a topic and successfully solve a problem.

How can customer service skills be improved?

Anyone can benefit from improving their customer service skills. Being a good communicator, having empathy, and actively listening, for example, will help you be a better employee and colleague overall.

Let’s mention some of the customer service skills that can be useful for different professions:

Empathy
Empathy is the ability to understand another person’s emotions and perspective. Have you ever been on the phone with customer service and wanted to shout ‘Put Yourself In My Position!’? You were asking the other person for empathy. When you empathize with another person, you try to imagine how you would feel if you were them. Empathy is a powerful tool you can benefit from in contact with others. It changes relationships for the better, even short-term relationships such as when you are dealing with upset, embarrassed, or angry end-users or other customers. Customer service is more than just solving technical problems. It’s also about building good relationships with customers and co-workers.

Patience
Great customer service requires patience in communication when helping others meet their needs. The ability to stay calm and keep from taking things personally will help diffuse tense situations with angry customers, clients, or co-workers.

Active listening
Active listening can help you better understand what your customer feels, wants, and needs. To practice active listening, pay close attention to what the customer is saying, and take note of their body language and tone. Ask follow-up questions to make sure you understand the other side. Paraphrase – repeat what you heard in your own words, to confirm that you understand the other party well. Wait until they’re done speaking to come up with your response.

Clear communication
Ensure you convey to customers exactly what you mean. The ability to communicate clearly when working with customers is a key skill because miscommunication can result in disappointment and frustration. The best customer service professionals know how to keep their communications with customers simple and leave nothing to doubt.
Whenever you are dealing with people frequently on the job, verbal and written communication skills become very important. Being able to effectively communicate your ideas, a company policy or a resolution to an issue helps the customer feel like they are being cared for well and you have their best interest in mind.

Knowledge
Best customer service professionals have a deep knowledge of how their companies’ products work. After all, without knowing your product from front to back, you won’t know how to help when customers run into problems.

Time management
In both customer service and life skills, the ability to manage time efficiently affects productivity at work and can mean the difference between a satisfied customer excited for their next visit or an unsatisfied client waiting to speak to management. Things take time — usually more time than we realize. In order to become an effective team member, it’s important to learn to estimate how much time a solution will take, how much it will cost, and how many other things you have to deal with.

Anyone may develop customer service skills and build customer loyalty as well as foster strong relationships among employees and teams. It is likely you already possess some of these skills or simply need a little practice to sharpen them.

With focus and determination, you can work to enhance the skills you need to be effective at customer service. Problem-solving abilities, communication skills, and optimistic thinking are traits that, when consistently practiced, can help you be an efficient attendant and a great co-worker. Consider the following suggestions to improve your customer service job skills.

  • Ask for feedback from colleagues and listen closely, as they can provide insight you may have missed in a self-evaluation.
  • Also, ask for feedback from customers or clients. Keep track of your feedback, and reflect on it with each new round to get an idea of your improvement.
  • You can practice skills like active listening and patience with everyone on and off the job, including colleagues and customers. You may also find that improving your knowledge of the service or product your employer offers improves your ability to resolve issues with customers.
  • Look for ways to practice your skills outside of work by volunteering or seeking continuing education courses or training.
  • Don’t forget that every new experience with people can be a field where you can develop and improve these skills.

How do HR recruiters screen customer service skills?

So, since these skills are widely applicable and desirable in various professions, recruiters attach great importance to them. It is not always necessary that these skills are stated in the job requirement, but the fact is that they are desirable. Also, service delivery skills can be an indicator of the ability to successfully establish relationships with people and professionalism in performing work.

Recruiters, therefore, pay attention to these skills during the entire process of recruiting and selecting candidates. They are quite noticeable already at the first contact when the candidate responds to an email or phone call. Then, during the interview, we can notice how attentive and active the candidate is as a listener, in what way and how clearly he communicates, and even how he shows empathy. Also, based on certain situational questions, the way a person solves a problem or manages challenging situations with clients can come to the front.

To sum up everything

During our careers, it is almost impossible to avoid interacting with people. In addition to handling customers and clients, we must also be able to work as a team. You will be dealing with all kinds of people with different personalities. With a heterogeneous group of individuals, there are bound to be differences. Having customer service skills allows you to troubleshoot and resolve issues in a professional manner. This holds especially true for high-tension situations.

The effort to develop your customer service skills can only become your relationship strength and a great asset in any business context you find yourself in.

How can you know that you’ve made the right decision after the job interview: cognitive biases

Posted on by Katarina Jeremic

Nowadays, we are constantly exposed to various streams of information and expected to quickly adjust and respond to it. Being faced with such a challenging task, our cognitive system is often pressured to make shortcuts, without even consulting us. For example, you’ve probably had a colleague that just seemed a bit off at first glance and you could never grow to like them, although you never knew exactly why. Or maybe, you’ve interviewed a candidate and pretty early on realized no further conversation is necessary – the candidate is so much like you and your colleagues and would fit in the team perfectly. Or perhaps, you were being interviewed and the interviewer seemed incompetent right away, although when you now stop and think about it, they did their job fairly.

Surely, there are many examples, both in our personal and professional lives, when we made quick decisions and were certain in our judgment, although we couldn’t properly pinpoint where this certainty comes from. These situations occur due to a well-studied phenomenon – cognitive biases.

A cognitive bias is a systematic error in thinking, which occurs while we’re interpreting information and can lead us to faulty judgment. It is normal, and sometimes quite economical, to experience cognitive biases since they speed up our decision-making process and save our energy. 

However, there is one area where biased thinking can have severe consequences: the selection process.

In this blog, we’ll try to summarize the most common biases that can occur in the selection process, both from the interviewer’s and from the candidate’s perspective, and try to give you some tips on how to avoid them. Even if you are not a hiring professional or considering entering a selection process soon, this list can still help you identify some of the biases you may hold since they may appear in any aspect of your life.

Let’s review the interviewer’s biases first:

1.Halo effect

Perhaps the most famous cognitive bias, often mentioned in various contexts, the Halo effect, occurs when the first impression influences the rest of the communication. For example, if the candidate answers some of the first questions particularly well, in a way that the interviewer finds fitting, the interviewer is likely to overlook some ’’red flags’’ later on or to interpret them in the light of the first, positive impression.

Similarly, if the first impression is negative, the interviewer may become nit-picky and interpret the rest of the conversation in this light. The interviewer may even go as far as to interpret genuine answers, which they would typically appreciate, as a dishonest attempt to appear as a desirable employee. First impressions are often very difficult to disprove!

2. Affinity bias

Everyone (including Hiring professionals, no matter how experienced they are) tends to gravitate toward people with similar backgrounds, interests, values, and outlooks on life. This tendency is labeled as Affinity bias. For example, a Hiring Manager may have a ‘’gut feeling’’ about a candidate who went to the same University and had a similar career start as they did. 

To some extent, Affinity bias may be useful in hiring – we are likely to function well with people who are similar to us. However, apart from the obvious moral and discriminatory issue, this bias may lead to several practical consequences. Just because the candidate is similar to the interviewer in some aspects, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they will fit in the role as successfully as the interviewer did. Similarly, the interviewer may overlook candidates that would be more fitting or qualified, ie. pass over the more deserving ones. In addition, creating a uniform team of like-minded individuals can ‘’block’’ the team long term, preventing the influx of new and different ideas. It is in the clash of views that most innovations are made.

3. Anchoring bias

Anchoring occurs when an arbitrary benchmark is used as a reference point in future evaluations. For example, if you first see sneakers that cost $1,000, the next ones you encounter that cost $ 500 may seem cheap, even though you’d find the second pair too expensive if you didn’t see the more expensive ones first. Buying $ 500 sneakers may even feel like saving, after being struck by the initial price.

Anchoring bias is long studied in the field of behavioral finance since it plays an important role in sales and salary negotiations. If the candidate enters the negotiation with high demands, they may appear more valuable than the candidate with similar qualifications and skill sets with lower demands. On top of that, once the negotiation starts and the demands are a bit adjusted, the negotiator from the company side may feel like they got ’’lucky’’ to obtain such a candidate at such a salary range, overlooking the fact that the agreed range is still higher than it was initially planned. Of course, it is sometimes necessary to readjust the range to obtain truly valuable employees, but it is also important to keep the anchoring bias in mind and differentiate between deserving individuals and confident negotiators. Similarly, before the negotiation, there may have been another negotiation process with a candidate that demanded ’’ too much’’, making the current candidate’s expectations (even though they may as well exceed the range) seem more reasonable.

4. Attentional bias

Attentional bias overlaps with the Halo effect in the sense that it entails a narrow attentional focus. However, while in Halo effect our attention is focused on the first piece of information we receive from the candidate, in attentional bias, any type of information can become our focus. Certain interviewers exhibit positive attentional bias, focusing only on the pieces of information that they find appealing about the candidate, overlooking all the potential cues on negative aspects. The reverse is also likely, some interviewers focus solely on aspects they find negative about the candidate, ignoring all the cues why such a candidate may be a good fit for the role.

As we’ve previously said, the interviewers are not the only ones falling into traps of these biases. Hence, we’ve also listed two of the most common biases that can influence a candidate’s behavior in selection:

1. Self-serving bias

A self-serving bias is a type of bias that enhances a positive perception of one’s personality and actions. When affected by this bias, individuals tend to describe their achievements as products of their efforts and abilities, while they describe their failures as products of situational factors. For example, a candidate may describe his team’s success as a product of his efforts, while he describes failures in terms of faulty organizational structure or nonproductive colleagues. Of course, from the interviewer’s perspective, it is hard to evaluate whether the candidate truly was a ‘’pearl thrown to swine’’ or just not up to the task level. 

2. Availability bias

This bias refers to our tendency to base our decisions on the information that most easily comes to mind (often the most recent, or most memorable). For example, people often overestimate the number of terrorist attacks or plane crashes that happen yearly – because of the intensity of such events, they are easily recalled from memory and people feel like there must be many more examples. The likelihood of a car crash or drowning in your tub is much higher than the likelihood of a plane crash or terrorist attack, yet, people are afraid of planes and terrorists and not of bubble baths and cars. Shocking events are more memorable and therefore easier to recall, but that doesn’t make them more likely to occur in the future again.

The selection process is not free of this bias – a candidate may have a bad previous experience with interviewers ( eg. an interviewer that didn’t understand the position fully, was too assertive, rude… ) and may enter the new process with a ’’prophecy’’ that the interviewer will be uninformed or interrogative – because they all must be. Previous negative and memorable experiences with interviewers can truly start a cycle of miscommunication between the current interviewer and the candidate. Just because it is easy to recall an uninformed or interrogative interviewer, doesn’t mean that they all are.

After listing these selection biases, objectivity and effective communication during the interviewing process may seem almost impossible to achieve. However, in reality, there are always things you can do as an HR professional to prevent yourself from falling victim to these biases.

1. Include multiple people in the selection process – but truly

Although most selection processes include several professionals, there are still processes that heavily depend on one person’s decision. Make your hiring team members feel comfortable to share their genuine opinions – it shouldn’t be a collective effort just on paper. Although the experience reduces the effect of biases, everyone can still ’slip’ from time to time and form biased opinions. Therefore, it is important to compare the opinions of different team members and to form alternative interpretations of candidates’ behavior and answers.

2. Structure your interview

During the preparation stage, agree with your team on relevant questions that you should ask each candidate. Certain professionals hold fully structured interviews to avoid all biases, while others believe this approach to be too mechanical and prefer having the flexibility to elaborate on topics that emerge spontaneously during the conversation and to chit-chat a bit so they can relax the atmosphere. Whatever your preference is, it is good for interviews to be at least semi-structured. Don’t skip any of the key questions with any of the candidates so the comparison can be as fair and as objective as possible.

3. Acknowledge the biases

To avoid and confront just about anything, you must first acknowledge its existence. It is useful to carefully reflect on your decision-making process or maybe discuss your experience with other hiring professionals. This is particularly important when it seems that you have reached the conclusion quite quickly or when the conclusions seem too extreme – hasty, extreme decisions are often products of biased thinking. In time, you’ll realize which biases you are more prone to, and soon you’ll be able to identify them with much less effort.

 

Staying objective and making ’’the right’’ decisions when it comes to hiring is an extremely complex task. The interviewer often has to juggle the expectations of numerous stakeholders, sometimes overlooking that the ’’trickiest’’ stakeholder can be our own cognition. We hope that this short list can help you in future processes and that it will pop into your mind the next time you get ’’the gut feeling’’ about the candidate.

Types of employment contracts and their impact on employee well-being

Posted on by Milica Berić

By signing any contract, people commit themselves to respect a certain agreement. In many cases, signing a contract seems to be stressful for employees. No matter the company, it is important to understand the rights and obligations that we have by the Law. All the laws and regulations may seem confusing at first, so we decided to give a brief overview of all contract types that exist on the market and help you gain a better understanding of them. Alongside the contract types, we also outlined the main psychological stressors that occur due to different types of employment. Let’s get you ready for your next job interview!

In the beginning, let’s take a look at all types of contracts defined by the Labor Law.

The Labor Law of the Republic of Serbia, among other things, regulates the establishment of an employment relationship between an employee and an employer, as well as the employment contract and all its forms. An employment contract is a document that is valid from the moment the employer and the employee sign it, and it regulates the rights and obligations of both parties.

The employment contract can be concluded for a specified or permanent period. When the duration of the contract is not indicated in the document, it means that the contract is permanent.

Fixed-term contract

A fixed-term contract is concluded when it is justified by the employer’s need to complete the work within a certain period (up to 24 months at the most). In specific cases this period can be prolonged, such as replacing an employee who is temporarily absent, due to work on a project, with foreign residents until the expiration of the work permit, ect.

Part-time work

The employment relationship can be based on part-time for an indefinite or fixed time with the same conditions as for full-time employees performing the same job. This type of contract allows the employee to perform another job with another employer.

In addition to “classic” employment contracts, the employment can also be established through other types of contracts – a contract for temporary and occasional jobs, a service contract, a contract for professional training and development, or a contract for additional work. Contracts concluded in this form imply work outside employment.

Contract for temporary and occasional jobs

 The contract for temporary and occasional jobs is concluded to perform jobs that do not last longer than 120 working days during the calendar year(eg.  agricultural seasonal work is often defined by this contract).

Service contract

The employer can conclude a service contract for the purpose of performing tasks that are outside the employer’s activities, and which have as their subject the independent production or repair of a certain thing, the independent execution of a certain physical or intellectual work. Therefore, in order to conclude a contract with a person outside the employment relationship, the employer must not perform that work as a primary or secondary activity. For example, freelancers can enter into a service contract with the client.

Contract for professional training and development

As a condition for independent work in certain professions, the student has the obligation to perform an internship with a certain employer. Therefore, it is precisely the contract for professional training and development that defines this type of work outside the employment relationship for people who establish employment for the first time.

Contract on supplementary work

An employee who works full-time for an employer, but needs additional income, can conclude a contract with another employer on supplementary work, but up to one-third of full-time work at the most.

What do the studies say?

Numerous studies show that people react uniquely to different employment conditions. Therefore, people prone to anxiety prefer permanent contracts, while fixed-term contracts evoke uncertainty and cause stress. On the other hand, freelance and fixed-term contracts are more suitable for stable people for whom flexibility is important.

Also, it is important to point out that the latest research by the Institute of Statistics shows that the largest number of employees in Serbia has a permanent contract (out of the total number of 2,192,400, there are 421,700 employees with a fixed-term contract[1]). Although at first glance it seems that the portion of employees with permanent contracts is high, It is still significantly lower than the European Union average.

Bearing in mind that certainly a large number of employees in our country, as well as in Europe, are under fixed-term contracts, it is important to point out how such a situation can affect the stress and well-being of employees.

If you have ever found yourself in a situation where you have a contract for a fixed-term contract, you may be familiar with the feeling of anxiety before the contract expires and the fear of whether it will be extended, no matter how well it seemed to you that you performed during the period. This is exactly what some findings are talking about.

  • Some earlier research shows that employees on fixed-term contracts or temporary workers often fear that they will not get enough tasks or working hours at work and that this will lead to contract termination. Furthermore, employees with fixed-term contracts or freelancers often work overtime and do not turn down jobs out of fear of losing potential opportunities in the future[2].
  • With employees who work on temporary and occasional jobs or on a fixed basis, if the responsibilities are not clearly defined, there may be a conflict of roles, while it has been shown that this is not usually the case with freelancers if they have control over the work process[3]. Conflict of roles occurs when there are contradictions between different roles that a person assumes or performs, in this case, on a professional level. Usually, the conflict is the result of conflicting obligations that result in a conflict of interest.
  • Then, when it comes to the integration of employees into the organization and social interaction, employees who do not have a permanent contract often feel marginalized, especially if they are a minority within the organization.
  • Especially important, the way an employee with a fixed-term contract or a contract for temporary and occasional jobs will feel, and even perceive its position within the company, depends a lot on the person’s personality characteristics and belief in its skills and abilities. Hence, Greenhalgh and Rosenblatt [4]note that business insecurity is a complex subjective feeling, and in a study by Sill, Sora, and Gracia[5], which establishes the existence of a connection between business insecurity and health consequences, they state that business insecurity depends on the development of the skills that employees have and the desire to work.

In the end, it is important to remember that there is not one type of contract or employment that is ideal for everyone. Numerous factors affect the way you perceive employment conditions.

Hope that this review will help you understand the differences the next time you change jobs, but also think about your preferences and choose your work environment accordingly.

 

References:

[1] https://publikacije.stat.gov.rs/G2022/Pdf/G20225682.pdf

[2] https://www.jstor.org/stable/3379109

[3] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/247569840_Health_and_Well-Being_in_the_Workplace_A_Review_and_Synthesis_of_the_Literature

[4] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228079587_Job_Insecurity_Toward_Conceptual_Clarity

[5] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/46545619_Job_insecurity_and_employees’_attitudes_The_moderating_role_of_fairness

Burnout – a modern employee disease

Posted on by Eta Sateles
Too high expectations, short deadlines and consequently high pressure are more than ever part of our business everyday life in the 21st century, and at the same time, those are the most common causes of the burnout syndrome. If you have a job where you are chronically under stress and you do not have adequate mechanisms to manage stress levels, unfortunately you can easily experience a burnout.

This expression was first used by a psychologist Herbert Freudenberger more than forty years ago, and he described it as a condition of mental and physical exhaustion caused by professional life. The subject of Freudenberger’s analysis were ‘helping’ professions – such as nurses and doctors because they directly work with people where those relationships can sometimes be extremely difficult and often emotionally demanding (the spiritual suffering of a patient or death).  Models by which we live today and do business, as well as challenges that are placed before employees are harder than ever, so the burnout syndrome is carried over to all other professions.

Recently burnout was recognized as a syndrome from the medical point of view (by the World Health Organization) since a growing number of employees, especially young people, suffer from it. Burnout is accompanied by physical and psychological symptoms, and it differs from simple fatigue and exhaustion.

Burnout is a body’s reaction to a long-term exposure to stress that can be caused by work tasks (more precisely by the amount of work that is almost impossible to complete within the predetermined deadlines and overtime as its result), but also relations between colleagues and neglecting our own needs. The culture ‘24/7 availability’ to our colleagues and clients, as well as the habit of eating lunch at the working desk while we fill in tables or respond to emails, contributed to the feeling of burnout that majority of employees claim to have experienced at least once during their working life. Gallup study shows that two-thirds of currently full-time employed Americans have experienced burnout, mostly by people in their twenties and thirties.

Due to swift pace of life in big cities that are more and more numerous each day and due to different values than fifty years ago, a growing number of people are participating in the race where we push ourselves to achieve better results, which resulted in this modern-day disease being more and more frequent.

The symptoms of burnout seem to be easily noticeable – it is characterized by a lack of enthusiasm and motivation for work. Activities that you once performed devotedly and with ease, can become strenuous both mentally (tension, feeling helpless, irritation) and physical (fatigue, malaise, pain) as a result of burnout. However, similar symptoms can occur in some other mental conditions (e.g. depression), so you should be careful and seek professional help and support.

Frustration and exhaustion caused by the burnout can severely endanger your work, personal relationships, as well as your health. This condition leads to a decrease in immunity, high blood pressure and diabetes.

It may sound trivial, but experts say that taking a break from work is the key to overcoming this syndrome. Besides, you need to change your life and business habits, so here are some ways to prevent burnout:

  1. Identify and set your physical and mental boundaries and learn to say ‘no’. Assertively set realistic goals that will be satisfactory for both you and your employer. Be free to express your opinion even in stressful situations and thus take a stand for yourself. Avoid multitasking, practice completing task by task instead (‘to-do’ lists can be of great help to you) – that way, work quality will be much higher, and stress will be lower.
  2. Restore the work-life balance – Make sure you do not check emails and make business calls outside of business hours and fill your out-of-office hours with people and activities you like.
  3. In your free time, as well as during your working hours, set aside some time for some exercises (a little stretching in the fresh air has a beneficial effect on reducing stress) and non-work-related mental activities (like reading novels). Five-minute breaks for chatting with colleagues or taking a short walk to the store can reduce stress and improve your work performance. Spend your lunch break in the canteen, instead of in front of your computer, and make sure you create a meaningful relationship with your colleagues.
  4. Do not work in a toxic work environment – make a positive impact on the relationships with coworkers as much as possible.
  5. Do not skip vacation – our body and mind need at least two weeks off at once, or longer if you can, to take a break from everyday tasks and obligations in order to return refreshed and achieve results more efficiently later.
  6. Work on yourself and develop your stress defense mechanisms.

However, if you feel burned out by overwork, it is best to seek professional help, and remember that even people who love their job a lot and enjoy it immensely experience burnout.

Throughout life, our priorities change, but to be successful in all fields and to be generally satisfied in life, our physical and mental health must always come first.

Some companies apply the Employees Assistance Program through which the burnout theme can be covered through professional support. See here which kinds of counseling such a program can support.

Have you thought about a change in your career path?

Posted on by Eta Sateles

Nowadays, it is quite common for people to make a complete change in a career direction and make a shift to a new occupation. The speed under which so many new job roles are opened and the availability of jobs on a remote basis globally have inspired people for a change. Usually, this happens in situations where we encounter difficulties in finding a new position in our area, or we feel that our job is repetitive or without challenges. In these situations, people look for solutions that sometimes involve complete retraining. Whether you decided to change your career direction entirely, or you wish to gain additional skills and knowledge to get a better job, it is good to keep in mind that during the selection process for a new position you will often be asked to explain your decision and explain why you chose to make such a step.

Changing your career path can be a confusing decision for the person interviewing you if you choose not to explain your reasons for doing so. If the interviewer is looking at your CV where you have been in a particular field for five years and then progressed and later decided to completely refocus to another area, a very logical question to ask is: What are the reasons for a career change?

Do your best to be honest and open and give reasons for making this decision. Some of the most common reasons are greater interest in a new field, financial stability, greater opportunities for promotion, easier opportunity to find a job, etc. Any reason can be relevant and good if you explain it well.

During the selection process, you can probably expect to be asked for more detailed information about your current (old) job. Also, they could ask you to talk in more detail about the reasons why you decided to change your career path. Do not be surprised about it and do not think an interviewer is judging whether your reasons are good enough. His role is to understand them, not to condemn you.

The best way to increase your chances for getting a new job in a new area is to gain some practical experience in the field which you can get through projects conducted on your own or for someone pro bono. Make sure to mention these experiences in your CV so your proactivity and motivation for a new job could be seen.

A decision to make a change in the career direction is never easy. However, do not let this discourage you and prevent you from fulfilling your wishes. Good preparation and persistence are often enough to drive the change you want to make. 😊

If you need support during the career change process, take a look at our service Career Transition.