Time to make a change?

When the niggling voice of longing grows louder and ever louder, it's time to lean in and listen to what it's trying to tell you

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This idea of change coming naturally after a break is nothing new to BBC journalist turned career coach Rachel Schofield. Following a 20-year career with the BBC, which fell naturally into 'chapters' broken up by events such as the arrival of her two children, she decided to become a career coach to help others working though their own work-based challenges.

'I started my career-change coaching journey with women returning to work after having a baby,' she explains. 'It's a natural point of reflection, but there are other points in people's lives, too: when they start a new relationship, when they get divorced, when they're hitting a big birthday. There are moments in our lives when we naturally become quite reflective, asking "Does this still work for who I am now?"

'I think we're realising that the idea of getting into a career and sticking with it for life is shifting, and people are stopping much more regularly, now, to think about what it is they actually want,' says Schofield. And that's only been amplified by the pandemic. For many people at that time, work was stripped back to the bare bones. They didn't have the paraphernalia of their job any more: the colleagues and the office and the journey and the different setting - all the things that can lighten the load or make work more interesting were stripped away. So people were left, possibly in a spare room, sitting on a bed - or trying to juggle work with children - and that focused the mind. People were forced to ask themselves: "Do I really like the actual work that I'm doing? And can I see myself doing it for the next five, or 10, or 15 years, particularly if the parameters of it have changed, if it's now going to be home-based, or hybrid?""