Health Issues Affecting My Career Path

by: Cherry 

It is always tough when health issues arise which challenge the career path you may have so carefully planned. It can often feel like you have to go right back to the drawing board and start again. So what to do?

Review the impact of your health condition

Obviously, the starting point is to take a careful look at the restrictions your health issue will pose. You say you cannot work on a computer for a long time – what exactly does that mean? Only a few minutes at a time? Up to an hour? Longer with regular breaks?

If the issue is with keyboard use, how can you use voice activated software to help? This will also help if you have a visual impairment as will using a screen reader (like Thunder http://www.screenreader.net) or similar.

You need to be clear in your own mind what you can and cannot do and what equipment would help you, so that you can present your situation positively to a potential employer.

Exploring other jobs

I understand that a job like programming would be challenging for you now, so you need to look for something with a lower level of computer use. It sounds like you were not happy in your job as a programmer anyway, so take a bit of time to reflect on what was good and what was bad about the job. Make a list of things that fall into each category.

If you could turn the bad things round what would they become? For example if you said a bad thing about the job was that you worked too much on your own, then you need to look for something with more opportunity to interact with others.

This exercise will give you a better sense of what you do want from a job

There are more exercises you might find useful on the What Do I Want page of the How To Change Careers website.

It may be useful brainstorming jobs that involve less regular computer use, but I don’t think it is necessarily helpful to start from what you cannot do. Just because a job does not involve computers does not guarantee that you will be well suited.

Better to begin your research with what you do want to do and what would take advantage of the natural skills and abilities you have.

The O*Net website allows you to search occupations by lots of different criteria so I recommend you take a look.

Bottom line, start by exploring what options will allow you to work with your skills and interests and only then begin to refine your choices in the light of your health condition.