How to Change Career When You Don’t Know What Comes Next

You can be highly capable in your work and still struggle to decide what should come next. Years of experience give you evidence of what you can do, but they do not automatically show you where that experience could take you. When a role ends, or your working life no longer fits, you are suddenly being asked to make decisions about a future you cannot yet see clearly.

The instinct is to get busy. Update the CV, look through vacancies, contact a recruiter and search for something resembling the job you already understand. Those are reasonable actions, particularly when income is under pressure. But they can leave a more fundamental question unanswered: what kind of work should you actually be pursuing?

Why I wrote this guide

I wrote this guide with experienced automotive engineers in mind, particularly those facing redundancy or uncertainty in the UK and Germany. Both countries have helped shape global vehicle design and engineering for generations. Today, changes in technology, global competition and trade are putting pressure on established businesses and the people within them. Behind every restructuring announcement are professionals trying to decide what comes next, often after many years of committed service.^[1]

I know something of what that feels like. After 29 years, I was made redundant despite a strong performance record and deliberate moves to develop my career. The experience I had gained, including a broader business outlook, remained valuable. With the support of my network, I went on to secure a Chief Engineer position at Penso.

That experience is part of why I wanted to write this guide. When a familiar career path is disrupted, it can be difficult to see where your capabilities might take you. I want to help you recognise what you have built, explore where it could be useful and make informed decisions about your next move. For some people that will mean another opportunity in automotive; for others, it will mean taking their experience into a different field. If your own role has already ended in the sector, there is a companion guide on career change after automotive redundancy.

1. Define what you need from your next career move

Before deciding where to go, establish what your next role needs to do for you. If you have been made redundant, immediate income and stability may take priority. If you are still employed, the question may concern the work itself, the organisation, the demands being placed on you or the direction in which your career is heading. Your starting conditions matter because they determine which options you can sensibly explore.

Consider two engineering managers doing broadly similar jobs. One still enjoys the technical problems and leading people, but is exhausted by the culture of the business. The other works in a reasonable organisation but has lost interest in the activity itself. They may both say they need a career change, yet they are describing different problems. The first might find a better fit with another employer. The second may need to investigate a different kind of contribution.

Be equally clear about what you want to retain. That might include the satisfaction of solving difficult problems, working with capable colleagues, financial security, flexibility or responsibility for developing people. An unhappy period can make it tempting to reject everything associated with a role. Taking a little time to separate the useful parts from the damaging ones gives you a better brief for the next decision.

Then make your preferences concrete. If you want more meaningful work, describe who would benefit and what you would actually be doing. If you want better balance, describe an acceptable working week. If progression matters, identify the scope of responsibility you want to acquire.

Put this into a short written brief: what must change, what you want to preserve, and what the next stage of your working life needs to provide. You can revise it as you learn. Its immediate purpose is to give your exploration some direction. The Career Diagnosis stage of Career OS™ works through the same questions in a structured order.

2. Explore careers beyond what you already know

Careershifters’ State of Career Change Report 2026 found that 49% of respondents identified figuring out what to do next as their biggest obstacle. The findings came from 11,567 UK respondents to its online Career Change Test, with responses collected between October 2025 and January 2026. This was a self-selected group considering career change, rather than a representative sample of all UK workers, but the finding captures a difficulty that deserves attention: wanting change and knowing its destination are different things.^[2]

Reflection has a useful place here. Looking back can reveal the work you have enjoyed, situations in which you have contributed most, and conditions under which you perform well. What it cannot reliably provide is detailed knowledge of work you have never encountered. At some point, your questions require information from outside your own experience.

Suppose you are attracted to sustainability. That interest could lead towards product development, energy systems, manufacturing improvement, procurement, policy or education. The label tells you very little about the tasks, working conditions or entry requirements of any particular role. You need to discover which activities interest you and where your existing capabilities could contribute.

Natasha Stanley makes a related argument in the Careershifters material: reflection becomes limiting when it delays practical exploration. Her advice is to combine questions about yourself with conversations and experiences that introduce something new.^[3] I find that useful because it gives reflection a job to do. You form an initial view, investigate it, and return with information that allows you to refine it.

You might discover that the work behind an attractive title is less appealing than you expected. You might also find a role you had never considered, where a familiar capability is valuable. Both are useful discoveries. They improve the quality of your choices.

Before your next evening of research, identify the question you want answered. Are you trying to understand the work, assess an entry route or establish whether a particular employer uses your skills? A clear question gives you a reason to stop searching once you have enough information to take the next step.

3. Separate practical constraints from assumptions

Career change has consequences, and responsible planning starts by recognising them. You may need a particular income, have caring commitments, be unable to relocate or require a qualification for the work you want to enter. These are matters to understand properly and build into your decisions.

Alongside them, however, there may be assumptions you have never tested. You might believe another sector will not value your experience, that every move requires extensive retraining, or that a different career must begin at the lowest level. Those statements may contain some truth in a particular context. They need examining against actual roles and entry routes before you allow them to define the boundary of your search.

There are also preferences that deserve an honest discussion. A title can represent years of effort. The status associated with a profession can matter to you and to the people around you. Recognising that attachment helps you assess a possible trade-off: whether you would accept a less familiar title in exchange for work, responsibility or conditions that better suit your life.

Write down what you know, what you assume and how you could check the difference. If a role requires a particular qualification, establish whether it is mandatory or simply preferred. If you believe your skills are too specialised, ask someone working in the target area which parts of your experience would be useful and which gaps would matter. The Career Decision Matrix is a straightforward way to compare possible moves once you have that information.

The size of an exploration should reflect your circumstances. Keeping your current income may be essential, while a short conversation or a modest practical exercise remains possible. Health, disability, discrimination and caring responsibilities can restrict the options available; they should be taken seriously. The purpose of examining assumptions is to find room for action within your situation, with a clearer understanding of what you can and cannot change.

4. Identify and demonstrate your transferable skills

One difficulty with a long career in a particular industry is that you become fluent in its shorthand. A job title, programme name or technical acronym can communicate a great deal to someone inside the business. Outside it, the same language may reveal very little about your contribution.

Start by describing the problems you have helped solve. Perhaps you brought several teams together around a delivery problem, made a difficult decision with incomplete information, recovered a supplier issue or turned a promising technical concept into something that could be manufactured. Explain what you owned, what you did and what changed as a result. That gives another organisation something meaningful to assess.

There is a difference between saying you are a strong leader and showing how you led. The useful evidence might concern a decision you clarified, an interface you made workable, a team you developed or a risk you brought under control. Where reliable measures exist, use them. Where they do not, describe the observable outcome accurately. A clear account is more convincing than a number you cannot defend. If you want a method for this, the guide on how to demonstrate your career impact sets out fifty ways to quantify contribution.

Moving towards promotion, then losing the role

I wanted to become Chief Engineer of the department, and I made two role moves with that ambition in mind. One brought me a promotion to Senior Manager. The other took me into business and product planning, broadening my experience, but also making me the new person in a different department. When the restructuring came, I lost my job.

After 29 years of service, I was unemployed. For almost all that time, I had been a top performer, with strong bonuses and salary increases reflecting that performance. It was a difficult position to reconcile: I had delivered, developed and made deliberate moves to progress, yet I was now leaving the business. My performance record had not protected me from organisational change.

What became important was the breadth I had acquired before that happened. Business and product planning had changed the way I looked at engineering decisions. Alongside my MBA, it had given me a much wider understanding of how a business operates: finance, strategy, operations, organisational behaviour and the commercial decisions surrounding a product. I could see more of the relationship between an engineering programme and the business it needed to serve.

That experience stayed with me when the role ended. The move had exposed me to redundancy, but it had also developed capabilities I could take elsewhere. Looking back, I can recognise both consequences without pretending the setback was welcome or that I had planned the outcome.

The question I would encourage someone in that position to ask is what they have gained through the work they are leaving. Which decisions can they now make? What do they understand that they did not understand before? A role can end while the experience it has given you becomes central to your next opportunity.

Make the value visible

Choose three examples from your own career and write them in language someone outside your organisation could follow. For each, explain the problem, your responsibility, the action you took and the outcome. Then ask which capability the example demonstrates and who might need it.

Keep ownership precise. A team result should remain a team result, with your contribution made clear. Likewise, a capability may transfer while the context still requires learning. Experience managing suppliers in one industry does not establish knowledge of every standard, product or commercial arrangement in another. It gives you a foundation from which to assess the gaps.

This exercise also helps you recognise experience you have overlooked because it became routine. Decisions that felt ordinary to you may have involved considerable judgement. Ask a trusted colleague where they saw you make the greatest difference, and compare their answer with your own account. You are looking for credible evidence of value that can support a conversation about what comes next.

5. Test a career idea before committing to it

Once an option interests you, decide what you need to learn before investing more in it. A useful experiment has a clear question, a manageable action and a point at which you review the result. Its value comes from what it helps you understand, including the possibility that you should change direction.

Consider a hypothetical example. An experienced engineer is interested in technical training because they enjoy helping colleagues understand difficult subjects. Before pursuing a qualification or a new job, they could arrange to prepare and deliver a short session in an appropriate setting. They could also speak with someone whose regular work involves technical education.

The question is specific: do I enjoy the preparation and delivery enough to explore this direction further? That is something a small exercise can begin to answer. The engineer would agree the setting and material, limit the preparation time, and ask for feedback about the clarity and usefulness of the session.

Afterwards, the review should cover more than whether the presentation went well. Did preparing the material hold their interest? How did they respond when people needed a different explanation? Did they enjoy the teaching itself, or mainly the familiarity of discussing a subject they already knew? The practitioner conversation could then reveal how much of the wider role involves administration, assessment, course development or commercial activity.

One successful session would not establish that technical training offers the right career or income. It could provide a reason to undertake a second, more demanding test. An unconvincing experience could point towards mentoring as part of an engineering role, or suggest that another direction deserves attention.

The same logic can apply to other interests: observing work where access is available, attending a practical workshop, taking on an agreed internal assignment or completing a small piece of relevant work. Keep the commitment proportionate to what you are trying to discover. You should be able to explain what you expect to learn and how that learning will affect your decision.

Also leave room to be surprised. If every exercise is designed only to confirm your original idea, you may overlook information that would help you choose better. A finding that rules something out can save considerable time. What matters is that your picture of the work becomes more accurate as your involvement grows.

6. Use your network to understand unfamiliar work

Talking to people becomes easier when you know why you want the conversation. Start with something specific you are exploring and a question the other person is well placed to answer. You might want to understand the problems their team handles, the experience that matters when hiring or the aspects of a role that outsiders tend to misunderstand.

Existing contacts can provide a starting point. Former colleagues, suppliers, professional associations and people you have met through projects may know someone working in an area that interests you. Explain what you are trying to learn clearly enough for them to recognise a useful connection. Asking whether they know anyone in a particular type of work is easier to respond to than asking them to solve your entire career direction. A simple record helps here; you can organise your networking conversations so that follow-up does not depend on memory.

Keep the request modest and give the person a reason to understand your interest. For example: “I’m exploring whether my experience leading engineering programmes could be useful in technical training. Would you be willing to tell me how people enter that work and what they need to demonstrate?” Adapt the question to the person and the context. It should sound like you.

Listen carefully to the answer, including anything that challenges your expectations. One person’s experience will not represent a whole profession, but it can improve your questions and introduce perspectives you would have struggled to find alone.^[4]

Using my network to reach the Chief Engineer role at Penso

When I was made redundant, I leaned into my network. The relationships I had built over the years became an important part of finding my next opportunity, and I secured a Chief Engineer position at Penso. It was a step up in responsibility: I reached the level I had been working towards, although it happened in a different organisation and through circumstances I had not intended.

I brought my engineering experience with me, together with the business outlook developed through my MBA and the move into business and product planning. At Penso, my role as Chief Programme Engineer spanned aerospace and automotive work. The setting was different, but there was a clear place for experience that connected engineering decisions with programme delivery and commercial realities.

For me, those two parts of the story belong together. Moving roles had broadened what I could offer. My network then helped me secure a position in which I could use that experience at Chief Engineer level. The opportunity came after the loss of the role, but the capabilities and relationships that supported it had been built beforehand.

That is why I encourage people to consider both their evidence and their relationships when deciding what comes next. My route to Penso was particular to my circumstances, but it showed me that the next stage of a career can draw on much more than the title of the job that has just ended.

Some conversations will provide information, some encouragement, and some a possible introduction. Respect those different contributions. Thank people for their time, follow through on what you agree, and let them know when their advice has helped. Maintaining a relationship matters beyond the immediate request.

7. Make time for career exploration

A career change has to fit within the life you are actually living. If you are already stretched, a demanding new schedule may last a week and leave you feeling further behind. Choose a commitment you can sustain: one conversation, one clearly defined piece of research or part of a practical exercise in a protected period of time.

Be specific about the action. “Work on my career” leaves you deciding what to do each time you sit down. “Contact a former colleague about how their team recruits programme managers” gives you a starting point and a recognisable outcome. Small actions are useful when they connect to a question you are investigating.

Sometimes the first task is to create capacity. That may mean discussing responsibilities at home, protecting time from optional commitments or considering what can change within your current work. Rest also matters. There is little value in treating every available hour as another opportunity to push yourself when exhaustion is part of the problem.

A stepping-stone role can be worth considering where the existing situation leaves insufficient room to explore. Assess what it would actually provide: acceptable income, more predictable hours, relevant exposure or enough energy to make progress. Include a review point so you can assess whether it is serving its purpose. A temporary move still needs to work within your commitments.^[5]

Keep useful goals and dates, but connect them to actions you can influence. You cannot determine when another organisation will make an offer. You can decide which questions to investigate, who to approach and when to review the evidence. A repeatable rhythm gives those decisions a place in your week, while leaving enough flexibility to respond when circumstances or opportunities change.

8. Use what you learn to choose the next move

Confidence becomes more useful when it is attached to something specific. You have approached someone new, explained your experience clearly, tried an unfamiliar activity or discovered that part of your capability is relevant elsewhere. Those experiences give you a firmer basis for the next action.

In his Careershifters article on confidence, Richard Alderson describes a sequence of commitment, courage, capability and confidence, drawing on Dan Sullivan’s approach.^[6] It is a helpful coaching perspective: taking a manageable action can give you experience from which confidence develops. You do not have to resolve every doubt before doing something that will help you learn.

At the same time, activity needs reflection. Set a review point after a suitable period, perhaps two weeks of modest exploration. Ask what you have discovered about the work, what you have discovered about yourself, and which assumptions have become more or less credible. Consider what attracted you in practice and what became less appealing. Identify any requirement that still needs checking before you commit further.

Then make a decision at the scale the evidence supports. You might continue with the same direction, adjust the type of role you are considering, investigate a skill gap or set the option aside. If access has been difficult, you may need another way to learn about the work. A single unanswered message tells you very little about your suitability for a profession.

Your criteria may also change. Early on, you might have believed you wanted a completely different industry, then discovered that the main issue was the environment in which you worked. Alternatively, you might find that a familiar capability interests you more when applied to a different problem. Allow those discoveries to influence the plan.

Eventually, exploration should help you assess an actual opportunity: the work, people, expectations, income and practical conditions. Ask how it compares with the brief you wrote at the beginning and what remains uncertain. Some uncertainty will accompany any move; the purpose is to understand it sufficiently to make a considered choice.

A change in role can also take time to absorb personally. You may be experienced in some areas and learning in others. Give yourself room to build familiarity while recognising the contribution you already bring. The next stage does not have to reproduce every feature of the career you are leaving to be worthwhile.

Common questions about changing career

Choose the next useful piece of evidence

You may not yet know the title of your next role or the organisation in which you will find it. What you can establish is the question that most needs answering and an action that would help you answer it.

Choose one possibility, one question and one manageable step. Give that step a place in your week, then review what you learn. Speak to someone who understands the work. Examine an example of your own contribution. Try an activity that reveals more than another hour of speculation.

My own career did not follow the route I had intended. The breadth I developed and the relationships I maintained helped me find a way forward when circumstances changed. Your route will be your own, but you can begin with the experience you already have and build a clearer view of where it could take you next.

If you would like help turning your experience and possible directions into a clearer next step, book a Career Diagnosis with Eich Dyn. If you would prefer to continue on your own for now, read about structured support for mid-career change before deciding whether it would help.

Sources and further reading

1. Context: Destatis, automotive employment release, 20 November 2025; UK parliamentary discussion of automotive restructuring, 27 November 2024; Volkswagen Group Annual Report 2025, market and trade risks.

   • Destatis, automotive employment release, 20 November 2025
   • UK Parliament, Commons debate on automotive restructuring, 27 November 2024
   • Volkswagen Group Annual Report 2025, risks and opportunities from the macroeconomy, sector, markets and sales

   Return to reference 1 in the text

2. Careershifters (2026), The State of Career Change Report 2026. Responses were collected from 22 October 2025 to 19 January 2026. The survey describes reported barriers; it does not establish the effectiveness of the exercises in this guide.

   • State of Career Change Report 2026 (Careershifters)

   Return to reference 2 in the text

3. Natasha Stanley, Careershifters.

   • 3 Career Change Questions You’re Taught To Ask That Are Keeping You Stuck (And What To Ask Instead)
   • Now What? 11 Practical Ways To Turn Your Vague Ideas Into Clearer Paths For Your Next Career

   Return to reference 3 in the text

4. Natasha Stanley, Careershifters.

   • 10 Ways To Find People Who Can Open Doors In Your Career Change
   • How to Network Into a New Career (Without the Cringe)

   Return to reference 4 in the text

5. Natasha Stanley, Careershifters.

   • How To Use A Stepping-Stone Role To Make Time And Space For Your Career Change
   • Too Busy To Change Career? Not With These Techniques…
   • 4 Reasons Setting Goals Won’t Help Your Career Change (And What You Should Be Doing Instead)

   Return to reference 5 in the text

6. Richard Alderson, Careershifters.

   • How To Build The Confidence You Need For Your Career Change

   Return to reference 6 in the text