“Some people are lucky enough to find their calling in college, progressing straight up the career ladder their whole working lives. For most of us, the career path looks more like a zigzag than a straight arrow, and finding work that feels like a good fit can be a lifelong journey,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Given that, we wondered which jobs people are most likely to leave in the course of their careers, and where they tend to go next. Is career-switching fairly common, or do we mostly jump around in one relatively finite area? Working with the data science team at LinkedIn, we have identified career progression for more than 300 job titles–finding the top three roles that workers transitioned to, with the total number who made the switch.”
“By and large, job-changers stayed in the same general field, for example, moving from salesperson to marketing specialist. In some cases, large numbers migrated to a different career entirely–check out all the theater performers who become software developers.”
A few trends emerge from the data:
- Sales is the most common career transition. “Because nearly every business requires a sales function, there are many instances of members transitioning into sales from a wide variety of careers. As such, ‘salesperson’ is the largest dot on our graph. The same is true for careers like project managers and marketing specialists.”
- Be all that you can be. “Members who were in the ‘soldier / military officer’ career category experienced the most distinct career transitions, becoming police officers, business owners, corporate strategists, and more. Other careers that offer a lot of transition opportunities include ‘community outreach coordinator’ and ‘program analyst.’”
- The specialist’s dilemma. “What do web developers, paralegals, and physicians have in common? All of them transition to only one career on our graph (software engineers, lawyers, and university professors, respectively). This is a classic sign of specialization. But that’s not to say careers in tech, law, and medicine aren’t valuable. After all, they are generally in demand.”