Midlife career changes take a good plan

Matthew Cook had some big adjustments to make back in July 2009 when his machine-operator job at Sealed Air Corp.'s Cryovac food packaging plant in Cedar Rapids, where he'd worked for 22 years, was eliminated as part of a plant closing.

Cook had a high school education, a plan and Trade Adjustment Act assistance that provided educational benefits because his job had been sent to Mexico.

It might seem that the government's financial help would be Cook's lucky card. But it turned out that his good fortune was in making a strong career transition plan.

Cook's plan was to become a computer network administrator, through a degree program at Kirkwood Community College and certificate programs at New Horizons Computer Learning Center. Some of his colleagues went back into factory work, but Cook decided he wanted his next career to be more stable.

At 42, Cook not only hadn't seen the inside of a classroom for years but was less technologically savvy than the younger traditional students who surrounded him.

“The first semester I considered dropping out,” Cook said. “It was overwhelming making that jump.

“But it's like walking up a mountain into a headwind, and all of the sudden the wind starts to die down and the ground flattens out, and you realize you can make it.”

Cook said his wife and other family members provided the encouragement he needed to believe in himself. Receiving a C average during his first semester motivated him by making him angry, he said.

Identifying a plausible new career path and building a plan around it are key to making a successful career transition, according to Morris Pounds, a professor and Kirkwood Community College career counselor who has worked with hundreds of students.

Pounds recommends that career changers start at one of Kirkwood's free Career Directions workshops. The workshop includes I Have A Plan Iowa, a battery of assessments that cover interests, basic skills, transferrable skills and other attributes, then matches them up against a database of more than 670 occupations for possible fits.

The college also administers the Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator, a questionnaire designed to measure psychological preferences in the ways people view the world and make decisions.

Career changers should meet with a career counselor to interpret the information, Pounds said. It is likely that the counselor will give them one piece of very sound advice - to thoroughly research the career matches that interest them.

Even if a career is a good fit on paper, Pounds noted it still might not work for the test-taker because the career could provide insufficient income for their needs, could not provide enough job opportunities or stability, or even because of extreme physical or psychological demands.

The cost and time requirements to meet the educational requirements also can nix many a career option.

If a career change is going to fail, Pounds said the research phase is one of the more likely places for that to happen.

“We always say ‘research' is a word nobody ever likes to hear,” Pounds said.

He advises career-switchers to seek out people in the occupation they're considering to interview them about the demands and opportunities.

Once a career is selected, the focus shifts to education - finding the right educational institution, financing and scheduling. For many, it's necessary to fit in classwork around an existing work schedule. That can focus the search on universities that cater to non-traditional students with evening and weekend classes, such as Upper Iowa University, Mount Mercy University, Kirkwood or Kaplan University.

A good resource for career changes is the IowaWORKS Center on the lower level of Lindale Mall in Cedar Rapids. Karla Andorf, operations director at the center, says financial assistance is often available to dislocated workers or adult workers whose incomes are not high enough to support the basic personal or family necessities.

Individuals who've lost their jobs through business closings and layoffs outside their control are considered dislocated workers.

The vast majority of the people the IowaWORKS Center sees - 71 percent - are at the younger end of midlife, from 24 to 54 years of age.

Andorf said the amount of time and money that people want to invest in re-education or retraining for a new career varies with their stage in life.

Younger job seekers may see themselves in it for the long haul and be willing to develop a multiyear transition plan into a new career. In the nursing field, for example, they might start out with the relatively short process of obtaining a certified nursing assistant certification - then, once employed, continue their education to obtain higher-paying nursing degrees and certifications.

Older workers within 10 years of retirement are often less able or willing to invest in re-education.

“I only have 10 years left to retirement, and I just need something to make it through until then,” is a fairly common perspective.

After the educational transition, finding a job is the final big step. Age can be a big psychological barrier in the job search.

For Cook, his instructors pointed out his 22 years of stable employment history would speak volumes about his employability.

Cook said he also was encouraged by the example of his father, Jerry Cook, who had gone to Kirkwood to learn how to become a computerized-numeric-control machine operator after losing his job when Farmstead Foods closed in Cedar Rapids decades earlier.

The big break for Matthew came when a Kirkwood instructor recommended him to Tektivity, a fast-growing Cedar Rapids technology company. Tektiviity President and founder Doug Flugum serves on an advisory board to Kirkwood's information technology programs and relies heavily on Kirkwood's recommendations when considering applicants.

Cook was hired onto Tektivity's customer service center group, which does everything from set up personal computers for customers to troubleshooting software and login problems. Now 44, he's old enough to be the father of some of his colleagues.

“Mark has a different perspective than a younger person coming out of Kirkwood - some perceived stability that age brings that you don't get with the younger graduates,” Flugum said.

He said older hires give Tektivity a better mix of qualities.

That Cook went the two-year distance to obtain an associate degree and several certifications in areas such as security and network administration “took a lot of guts,” Flugum said.

Cook said he barely had time to take holidays during the two-year educational process, but after joining Tektivity last month he feels much more confident about his future.

“I feel pretty happy with the choices I made,” Cook said. “A lot of the guys went back into the factory environment.

“I didn't want to play that game anymore - once bitten, twice shy. I can do this anyplace in the country.”