If you’re slogging away your days in an uninspiring job that fills you with nothing but a thick, gooey absence of joy, then you might be considering a career change. If you’re not, perhaps it’s time you rethought that position.
Maybe you’re thinking about taking your passions to the next level. Could you actually turn them into a career, and would you be able to support yourself on the income? Well, it all depends on what exactly we’re talking about.
For example, if you like to sit on your ass and play video games, there’s a number of ways you can turn that into a job. You could start streaming and build an audience via Twitch and YouTube, or if you’re a decent writer, you could become a games journalist.
Of course, there’s a lot of in-between that happens when switching careers and it all hinges on the transferrable skills you have, but if you’re really passionate about it, you won’t mind putting in the hard yards.
But let’s dive into one example that I think a lot of us can relate to – travelling. There’s plenty of ways to turn your wanderlust into a career, but before you can do that, you’ve gotta ask yourself a few questions.
What existing jobs could you do?
Unless you plan on firing up your own business, you’ll need to convince someone else to hire you. If that’s the case, then you need to know what jobs are floating around that you could slip into.
There’s a ton of jobs in the travel industry, so think about what best suits your skills and personality. If you’re the first person your friends flock to when they need advice on what to see or do abroad, or you enjoy meeting new people, you’d probably love being a travel agent. In fact, Flight Centre is on the lookout for travel agents to join their team right now – check them out here.
It’s always good to suss out the job market to see what’s going and if any of those positions tickle your fancy.
Do you love it enough to do it everyday?
To get incredibly cliche for a moment, I’m gonna go right ahead and pull out the old saying, ‘if you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life’, which is, for the most part, pretty accurate.
In terms of travelling, almost everyone will recall the good times without giving much thought to the negatives. What I’m getting at here is, you need to bloody love travelling if you wanna enjoy working in the industry.
If you don’t mind living out of a suitcase, finding your own way around in a foreign country, and long flights, by all means, proceed.
Do you genuinely have the skills needed?
Take a look at the job you do now and list the skills you use, then compare them to the jobs you’d like to do. For example, customer service would fit right in with a travel agent position, as you’d be dealing with customers daily.
If you’ve got some gaps to fill, don’t sweat it. A lot of the times a short course will get you what you need to meet the requirements. Flight Centre Travel Academy actually offer diplomas in conjunction with Torrens University Australia.
There’s always a way to get the skills you need and if you do have to go out of your way, employers will admire your passion and determination in doing so.
Will you get sick of it after a short time?
At the end of the day, work is always work, and with that comes times where you might be frustrated or just plain bored. Put it this way – I love playing video games, but if my job was to play them for 8 hours every weekday, there’s gonna be times where I might be a little over it.
What I’m saying is, you might have to be prepared to love it a little less from time to time. If you’re ok with that, full steam ahead, mate.
On the other side of the coin, there’s plenty of perks to keep you frothing on your passion. Whether it’s discounted travel or even free trips to suss out new locations, if you genuinely love travelling, there’ll be far more positives than negatives. You can check out the benefits here.
FYI, Flight Centre’s hiring right now if you’re ready to make the leap. Check out the jobs on offer right here.
