Keep up to date on articles and news and subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Thinking about a career makeover?
As he climbed the corporate ladder through a series of advertising and marketing jobs, Brian Sprinkle could never let go of the idea that what he really wanted to do was coach youth sports.
A former college soccer goaltender at Longwood College, now Longwood University, in Farmville, Va., Sprinkle coached youth soccer teams for 20 years.
But weeknight practices and games were becoming increasingly hard to mesh with a demanding job at MBNA Corp., where overseeing a team that put together credit card marketing materials meant long hours at the office.
“There were an awful lot of days when I was out the door at the last minute, hoping I wouldn’t be stuck in traffic on the way to the game,” says Sprinkle, 44.
Last year, married with two sons, ages 1 and 3, Sprinkle left MBNA to become the boys’ soccer coach and athletic director at Pencader Charter High School in New Castle, which opened last year.
The move meant an 80 percent cut in pay. Savings — along with the willingness of Sprinkle’s wife, a human resources manager for a petrochemical company, to be the primary breadwinner — made his dream job possible.
Well, not exactly a dream job.
Sprinkle’s team lost all 13 games in its inaugural season, but he has no thoughts of returning to the corporate world.
“I love the kids,” he says. “I love being around sports all day.”
The typical U.S. worker will change careers several times in a lifetime, a prospect the 2,100 workers at DaimlerChrsyler AG’s Newark automobile assembly plant will likely face as the automaker eliminates one shift this year and closes the facility in 2009.
Some workers may try to hook on at General Motors Corp.’s Boxwood Road assembly plant, and others may try for jobs at auto plants around the country. But with Chrysler, GM and Ford all shedding workers, many of these workers may find themselves pursuing an entirely different career.
Career changers are motivated by a variety of factors, says John A. Challenger, chief executive officer of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a global outplacement consulting firm.
Some lose their jobs. Others, like Sprinkle, make the switch for greater personal satisfaction.
“They become passionate about something and decide to chase that dream,” Challenger says.
Dr. Janice Tildon-Burton, a Glasgow obstetrician and gynecologist, knew from the time she was 7 that she wanted to be a doctor. She was a pre-med major at the University of Delaware, but when it was time to apply to medical school, she decided against it.
“I just didn’t think I was ready to do it, says Tildon-Burton, 61, who is now president of the Medical Society of Delaware.
Instead, she became a schoolteacher. But even after six years in the classroom, the dream of becoming a physician just wouldn’t let go.
She remembers thinking: Let’s take stock here. What do I really want to do with my life?
She talked things over with her husband, who supported her decision to go back to school.
“I don’t want you to be 50 years old and wish you had,” he told her.
In her early 30s, Tildon-Burton applied to several Philadelphia medical schools and was rejected at each one. She remembers an admissions officer at one school telling her that as a woman, she was too old and “should look into doing something less rigorous.”
The rejection only toughened Tildon-Burton’s resolve.
“It was like throwing down the gauntlet,” she says.
Tildon-Burton applied again the following year, this time to Temple University’s medical school, where she was accepted.
When she started at Temple, she was 32 and the mother of a 10-year-old daughter. Juggling motherhood, marriage and medical school wasn’t easy, Tildon-Burton says. “But we managed to pull through.”
She says becoming a doctor later in life has helped make her more understanding of her patients and given her the patience to take the time to explain things.
Liz Hadley took the opposite career path.
When she worked as an administrative assistant for a Wilmington investment company, Hadley wondered why she didn’t feel the same sense of enthusiasm for the job as her co-workers. She liked them and the company she worked for, but the work left Hadley unfulfilled.
“I wasn’t getting the same sense of satisfaction, and I knew I needed to do something else,” says Hadley, 31.
Hadley, who graduated from the University of Delaware with a degree in mass communications, liked working with children but didn’t know what exactly she wanted to do. She spoke with a career counselor and took a battery of aptitude tests after which she decided to go back to school at Wilmington College. It took a hefty loan and two years of going to school at night and on weekends to get her master’s degree in education, but Hadley, who is in her third year of teaching language arts at Hanby Middle School in Brandywine Hundred, says she found the satisfaction she was looking for.
“I know I made the right decision,” she says. “I feel good at the end of the day — exhausted, but good.”
Sometimes, one career can be good preparation for another.
Gretchen Temeles works as a technology specialist in the Wilmington office of Fish & Richardson, an intellectual property law firm.
With a doctorate in molecular and cell biology from Yale University, Temeles worked for pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co. as a cancer researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, and for a start-up biotech company before joining Fish & Richardson, where she helps prepare high-tech patent applications for clients.
“I see this as a logical evolution, rather than a revolution,” says Temeles, who is also a second-year law student at Temple University’s law school.
For Rabbi Michael Beals, however, the path to the rabbinate couldn’t have been any more unusual.
Beals heads Congregation Beth Shalom in Wilmington. He came to the congregation of 450 families in 2004, after being the rabbi at a synagogue in Los Angeles.
“I was built for this,” says Beals, 43. “I always liked helping people and the rabbinical degree gives me far more access to people.”
He was aiming for career in the U.S. State Department when he spent a year in Israel studying Israeli politics.
The experience had a profound effect on him, Beals says.
“For the first time, I met Jewish people who were really committed to their Judaism,” he says. He began following Jewish dietary laws and observing the Sabbath.
Still, when he returned home to California, Beals didn’t even think of rabbinical school. He got a job working for the city of Los Angeles in a program to promote the advancement of women and minorities in city government. Then he worked for the library system, where he tracked the progress of the construction of branch libraries.
For a person who longed to make a direct impact on people’s lives, it was far from a perfect fit.
“I’m an extrovert,” Beals says. “So sitting in front of a computer all day wasn’t good for me.”
At age 30, Beals enrolled in rabbinical school in Los Angeles. He was one of the oldest students.
After six years of studies, he was ordained.
The effort was well worth it, he says. “I was meant to do this. I feel so lucky to have a second chance.”
Contact Gary Haber at 324-2878 or ghaber@delawareonline.com.
CHANGING CAREERS
Al Mercatante, a career and life coach in Newark, uses an eight-pronged approach developed by The Highlands Co. in guiding his clients through a career change:
1. Consider your natural talents.
2. Understand what skills you have and whether you want a job in which you can use them.
3. Think about your interests and passions.
4. Consider your personality. Are you a people person? Do you prefer working alone?
5. What are your personal values? What’s worth getting up for in the morning?
6. Think about the influence of family. What messages have you gotten from your family about acceptable jobs?
7. What are your personal goals? Is there something you’ve always wanted to do?
8. Where are you in your career development? What are your financial and educational resources? What constraints, such as family obligations, make a career change difficult?