As the new year settles in, it's not unusual to take stock of your life — including whether it's finally time to make a change at work.
The idea of switching careers can be exciting and daunting, often at the same time. It usually comes with a familiar set of questions: How do you make it work financially, how do you know what career to move into, and do you actually hate your job — or just your boss?
If you're thinking about changing careers, experts say it's worth slowing down before making any big decisions.
Jane Jackson, a career coach and author of Navigating Career Crossroads, says interest in meaningful, values-led work surged after the pandemic, but the current economic climate has made many people more cautious.
"2025 was the tightest job market I've experienced in all my years of coaching," Jackson said.
"There was a little bit of fear about making a change in case they couldn't land the roles that they desired."
Because of a thinner job market and higher levels of redundancy, Jackson says career changes in 2026 need to be more strategic and targeted.
Data released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics this week show in November 2025, Australia's total job vacancies were 326,700.
This represented a decrease of 0.2 per cent from August 2025, while over the 12 months to November 2025, there were 17,800 fewer job vacancies — a fall of 5.2 per cent.
Think sideways first, not from scratch
Before making any big decisions, Jackson says it's important to slow down and identify what's actually driving your dissatisfaction at work.
Is it your manager? The company culture? The pay? Or something else entirely?
"What is it that you don't like about your job? You really have to assess that," she said.
"It might not be the job at all — it might be the manager, the culture, or the way you're treated.
"People lump it all into one, which is a mistake."
In some cases, those problems can be solved without leaving your role. In others, a change in employer, industry or position may be enough — without needing to retrain or start again from scratch.
Before leaping into a dramatic career pivot, Jackson encourages smaller, "lilypad" moves, such as moving laterally into adjacent industries or similar roles.
"In order to get from A to Z, you're going to be making some detours," she says.
"Careers are not linear — it's very much like a matrix."
Explore, talk to people, experiment
Jackson similarly encourages career changers to identify skills where they have both high competence and high enjoyment, and to leverage those transferable skills to move into tangentially related roles or industries.
Part of that process might involve investigative work, such as looking up people on LinkedIn who already have the career you want and examining how they got there.
"Very few careers are linear," Jackson says. "There are so many other roles that people don't even know exist."
"When you start to see people's career journeys, you realise they've leveraged transferable skills to get their foot in the door.
"Have a look at how other people got there — you'll see common threads."
Kate Richardson, a career coach, says exploration doesn't have to involve quitting your job or making a major financial commitment straight away.
"Exploring really comes down to two things: expanding your connections and finding ways to experiment," she says.
That might include short courses, side projects, volunteering, contract work or informal conversations with people already working in the field.
"Anything that gives you more hands-on or tangible experience of a pathway without necessarily making a big commitment."
Identify your values
Values alignment plays a major role in long-term career satisfaction, Jackson says, and she encourages anyone considering a change to get clear on what they need from work.
"You've got to make values-based decisions, because otherwise it doesn't feel right," she says.
One way to do that is by identifying your top five values and ranking them in order of importance. This can help clarify whether the issue is your role, your workplace, or whether a larger shift is needed.
"If your values are being compromised, then you'll know whether staying is acceptable or not," Jackson says.
But keep the market in mind
Richardson says it's also important to balance values-driven work with an understanding of current market realities.
"It's got to encompass all of that — values, strengths, lifestyle and what's happening in the market," she says.
"You do have to cast an eye across the market and understand the changes that are going on.
"There are trends that impact employability or opportunity, and it's important to know that."
Job ads for nursing and construction roles saw the most growth year-on-year, according to December data from SEEK. Source: SBS News
Meanwhile, a December report from job site Seek identified strong year-on-year growth in job ads for nursing roles — particularly theatre, recovery and high-acuity nursing — alongside ongoing demand for general practitioners, aged and disability support workers, and management roles in construction.
Acknowledge fear, but don't let it make the decision
Taking the leap into a career change is difficult at the best of times, and financial logistics can make it even harder.
Richardson says concerns about money, study and risk are often what stop people from moving forward — but those fears don't always reflect reality.
"No matter your age, your brain will always kick in with all the reasons why it's not going to work," she says. "That's just your brain kicking into risk management mode."
She says the exploration process can help people separate genuine practical constraints from assumptions that haven't yet been tested — whether that's researching salary progression, understanding long-term opportunities, or mapping out what a short-term step back might realistically look like.
Richardson says many people delay career change not because they lack options, but because they feel pressure to have a clear answer before they begin.
"As long as it feels fuzzy and you're lacking confidence, it's very easy to stick with the status quo," Richardson says.
Rather than trying to land on a perfect end goal, she encourages people to focus on identifying possibilities.
"One of the best ways to get started is to forget the answer just for a minute and instead think about a few possibilities," she says.
"When you let go of the answer and you identify possibilities, you can take small steps to actively explore those possibilities further."
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