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Look Before You Leap into Career Changes

David Boulos went from repairing computer hardware to planting radishes.

After six years repairing computers for a Monroeville company, he now tills the fields on a tractor at Blackberry Meadows Organic Farm in Fawn.

Boulos, 32, says a lots of people ask: Weren’t you scared about losing the security of a paycheck and health care?

Not really, he says, reached by cell phone at the 10-acre farm, where he’s repairing a pump for their irrigation system.

Nearly every worker has wondered if the grass was greener in another job. The median number of years that wage and salary workers had been with their current employer as of January 2008 was 4.1 years, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics employee report released in September 2008. The Bureau also tracked the number of jobs held by Baby Boomers born between 1957 and 1964. They held, on average, 10.8 jobs from from age 18 to 42.

Some may want to spend more time with their family and are willing to trade a well-paying job for one with less hours and lower pay. Others may decide to switch careers because their job is threatened by the recession, the onslaught of the iIternet or globalization.

And of course, there are that enviable few: the bond trader who chucks it all to follow his dream of starting his own winery, or the housewife who starts her own public relations firm after her children leave home.

Either way, it takes planning, research and patience to make a career change, experts say.

Boulos’ transition wasn’t as radical as one might expect. He co-owns his farm with his brother, Greg; his sister-in-law, Jennifer Montgomery; and friend Heath Gamache.

“It translates quite well for what I did before, to what I do now,” Boulos says. “Everything’s really mechanical. Things are pretty logical. It’s all troubleshooting and problem-solving. Both of them had that aspect, which really appeals to me.”

Boulos says he liked his computer job, which he left at the beginning of 2007. But owning his own business was more fulfilling.

“In our world, we live longer than our grandparents did,” says Martha Mangelsdorf, a former senior editor for Inc. magazine and author of “Strategies for Successful Career Change: Finding Your Very Best Next Work Life” (Ten Speed Press, $16.99).

“We work longer,” she says. “We have lives that mix work and family in different ways than in the past. As a result, there are a lot people who need to change careers at different times in our lives.”

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