Want to change career but can't identify anything else? Here's what to do about it.

Picture the scene: You want to change career, and have been researching different options. But you can’t find anything that attracts you. After a lot of research, you’ve ended up with two categories. Firstly, a few options which are variations of your current job (which certainly don’t get you excited). And a second list of things which caught your eye, but when you thought about it were obviously unsuitable. What’s going on?

One theory which explains this rather nicely is Phil Hodkinson's Careership theory. It takes its inspiration from French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu's concepts of habitus and social capital. These describe how we’re generally most comfortable in a certain social group. We identify with this group by the way we act, dress, talk and the beliefs and ideas we hold. If you pass a group of people walking down a street, you can probably make a pretty good guess at whether they’re from a similar social group to us.

Applying this to careers: there are careers that we consider suitable and realistic for “people like us”. And others we don't.

Hodkinson describes how career thinking is limited by the possibilities of what we can “see” (known as “horizons for action”). This is a combination of us as a person and the communities we're part of. Whilst we may like to think of ourselves as completely rational, free agents, actually our decisions are shaped by the networks around us.

To give an example: say your parents are both accountants, you attend a school which prioritises academic achievement and your friends’ parents all work in professions such as law, consultancy and banking. Although you might have a talent for art, you are unlikely to even consider this as a career as there’s no-one to show you that this is a realistic option. We tend to place a lot of emphasis on what Hodgkinson calls “hot sources” – people close to us whose views we trust. And in the absence of artistic "hot sources" you may well swiftly discount this option. In this case, your decision to study business and management at university could be seen as the product of the forces of family, school and friends.

Broadening this out, it’s the reason why universities such as Oxbridge, or certain professions such as law, can struggle to encourage working class applicants who feel that it’s not for them, or alienated by unfamiliar cultures. Or why careers sometimes run in families. It’s not necessarily that parents are encouraging their children to pursue the same path, but also that children see these jobs as possible and realistic options.

Hodkinson developed his theory in response to what he calls the “folk theories” of career guidance. You may have come across some of these. For example, careers and career choices are linear and rational. That you just need to make a decision once, and if you make a “good” decision then your career progression is generally straightforward. But actually, they argue, we make pragmatic decisions which are a product of the external forces which have shaped us.

However, this doesn’t mean that our future is set in stone. Our horizons for action can and do change as our situation changes.

What does this mean in practice? Well, if you’re struggling to identify areas of interest, you may be being bounded by your horizons for action. A good career coach will help you to consider and challenge your perceptions. They can also help you to think about ways that you can shift and expand what you see as possible. Because we’re so influenced by our environment, finding new networks is a powerful tool. By mixing in new networks with different norms, different options will seem possible and realistic.

Secondly, you can minimise influence from your existing networks. It could be said that for any job there are two interviews. The first, formal one. And the second with friends and family where we receive their opinion about the suitability of the job for us. “Oooh, a director already!” vs. “That sounds… interesting. So what will you actually do?” If you’re at an early stage of planning, it’s easy for the tender seedlings of your ideas to wither under doubt. An anodyne statement such as “I’m keeping my options open” can be helpful whilst you are building confidence.