A recent poll conducted by the Middle East’s #1 job site Bayt.com, covering over 1,420 professionals, that asked how often candidates have changed career paths in the past saw a surprising degree of career mobility. Only 40% of respondents have NEVER changed careers. Approximately 33% of respondents had changed careers twice or more and 27% have changed careers once. With booming, rapidly restructuring regional economies and a plethora of new industry sectors competing for top talent in the Middle East, the region is likely to see far more professionals in career flux than we have seen in the past. Moreover, traditional norms pertaining to career flexibility and “loyalty” have given way to a more relaxed approach in assessing candidate suitability. Life employment and decades-long loyalty to a particular employer or function is no longer expected nor even viewed extremely favorably by many employers and career transitions are both common and in many cases encouraged and justified.
Today’s competency-driven professional assessments are just as likely to match someone from a different industry to a specific job function as they are to select someone from the very same industry. Employers realize that fresh talent brings in a new perspective, much needed diversity and novel approaches to solving old problems. Transferable skills, aptitude for learning, emotional intelligence, proven competencies, flexibility and overall “fit” in the team figure just as prominently as industry acumen in the minds of today’s HR practitioners as they determine the best candidate to fill a job. Sometimes in this light the best candidate comes from a different career/ industry altogether. Indicative of the booming times we live in, today’s HR literature overwhelmingly encourages professionals to seek out new work areas once their areas become defunct or they simply lose interest, motivation and the desire to develop and grow.
Professionals are increasingly looking for better work/life balance as well as the ability to reinvent themselves to take advantage of highly lucrative opportunities in newly emerging boom sectors, to make better use of their skills, to achieve greater life fulfillment or to respond to demands and needs placed on them outside the realm of the workplace. Career changers can be anyone from middle-aged professionals who have been asked to relocate one time too many, young corporate high flyers who are burning the midnight oil with no light at the end of the tunnel, skilled professionals who have missed their vocation or simply professionals whose functions no longer agree with their values, ambitions, skills, life demands and interests.
Whatever the case, career changes are far more common than they used to be and are likely to be more so as we adapt to the new demands and job titles of the future. Interestingly in a separate poll of 3,500 professionals run by Bayt.com that asked “If you could reinvent your role what industry would you ideally be in” the vast majority of respondents replied Banking and Finance (32%) followed by IT (29%) followed by Tourism and Hospitality (16%) and Medical and health Services (12%). As more booming industry sectors emerge in the Middle East and economies restructure at an increasingly accelerated pace, retraining and remobilizing across careers is a trend likely to be with us to stay.
