The Bravest Thing I Ever Did

Employer Human Resources

I recently made one of the biggest professional decisions of my life.

After nearly 20 years building a recruitment business I'm proud of, I stepped sideways into an entirely different industry. Real Estate. A new licence. New systems, new language, new everything. And while I can frame this as a tidy pivot that makes perfect sense on paper, the honest version is a little messier than that.

The honest version is rather typical for us women, I’ve second-guessed myself, I’ve had self-doubt, and I’ve sat with discomfort I hadn't felt professionally since my twenties, all that combined with a few moments of "what on earth am I doing?"

I'm sharing this because over the years I have worked with many people navigating career transitions, and I hear a particular kind of silence from women at a certain point in their careers. They want change. They can feel it. But something keeps them from moving. Something holds them back.

I think I now understand that a little better.

The practical stuff is the easy part.

There are real, practical considerations when you change careers, at any time, but perhaps more so later in your career (that’s a kind way of say as we get ‘older’!), and it’s prudent to understand what they are.

Financial security looks different when you're retraining or starting at the bottom of a new industry's pay scale. Your lifestyle has probably expanded to match what you've earned, and recalibrating that takes honest conversation, both with yourself and with the people around you.

Your network, which may have taken decades to build, may not transfer the way you hope. Reputation in one field does not automatically carry weight in another. You earn trust again, from scratch, and that takes time.

And practically speaking, change, while managing existing responsibilities, whether that's a business, a family, or both, is a lot.

None of this is a reason not to do it. But going in with understanding from the outset will prepare you for what’s ahead.

The emotional reality nobody mentions.

Speaking from my own experience in navigating this change, there are a couple of things that I didn't fully anticipate.

Firstly, how exposed it feels to be at the beginning again. When you've spent years being an expert in your field, the person that others come to for advice, starting over carries vulnerability. You don't just feel new to the role, you feel, at some level, as if you are standing at the end of a queue, you thought you'd already worked your way to the front of!

For women, I think this has an extra layer to it. We've often had to work harder to be taken seriously and to find out place in the business world. We've navigated gender dynamics in workplaces, built credibility methodically, and learned to hold our authority carefully. To voluntarily hand some of that back, even temporarily, even in service of something new and exciting, takes courage.

What helped me was this. I stopped waiting to feel ready. Readiness, I've come to understand, is not a feeling that arrives before the leap. It arrives after.

What the transition actually requires
Changing careers requires a few things that go beyond CV updates and networking coffees.

It requires genuine self-knowledge. Not the version of yourself that fits neatly on a LinkedIn profile, but the real one. What do you actually value? What are you moving towards, not just away from? The clearer you are on that, the more grounded you'll feel when things are uncertain.

It requires people around you who will be your support crew, honest, and supportive, and there for the tough days.

It requires patience with yourself at a time when our culture often celebrates only the polished version of the story. The messy middle, the learning curve, the moments of "I have no idea what I'm doing," those are not failures. They are the actual work.

And perhaps most importantly, it requires you to trust that what you have built over your career does not disappear when you change direction. Your judgment, your resilience, your understanding of people and organisations, whatever your unique skills and attributes are, these are not industry-specific. They travel with you.

He wāhine, he toa

There is a whakatauāki that has stayed with me through this transition: He aha te mea nui o te ao? He tāngata, he tāngata, he tāngata. What is the greatest thing in the world? It is people, it is people, it is people.
What I have carried from recruitment into real estate has been an understanding of people. How they make decisions. What they're afraid of. What they need to hear and when they need silence. That, it turns out, is the most valuable thing I own professionally, and it belongs to no single industry.

If you are sitting with the idea of a career change, and feeling the pull of it alongside the fear of it, I can tell you – the timing is never perfect, confidence rarely comes first, and starting over, at any point, is not a step backwards. It is, more often than not, the bravest thing you can do.

Kellie Hamlett
Director, Talent ID Recruitment Ltd