How to change careers, and which moves are realistic
Key takeaways
- Across the 1,573 realistic career moves careertips has mapped between 350 Australian occupations, 63.3% need no more than a short course and only 10.9% require fully requalifying.
- Skill overlap on its own is a poor guide. An enrolled nurse moving to registered nurse has 89% skill overlap, the highest of any pairing checked, and still needs a full nursing degree and AHPRA registration.
- Some of the best-paying moves need almost no retraining at all. A claims assessor moving to mortgage broker needs minimal retraining and pays $74,200 a year more.
A career change can mean a short course or a full degree, and the job titles involved rarely tell you which. This article looks at what separates the two, using the career moves careertips has mapped between Australian occupations.
Career moves fall into four levels of effort, and the level that applies to your move is what decides how much study it takes.
- Minimal: your existing skills transfer directly, little to no retraining needed
- Short course: a certificate or short program closes the gap
- Reskill: a longer program, typically a diploma or equivalent
- Requalify: a full new degree, trade qualification or professional registration
What skill overlap does and doesn't tell you
Skill overlap measures how much of the day-to-day work two occupations have in common. It is useful for finding moves you might not have considered, but it says nothing about the qualification you would need to make the move, and the two can point in opposite directions.
An enrolled nurse moving to registered nurse has 89% skill overlap, the highest of any pairing checked in this dataset. The day-to-day work is genuinely close. It's still classed as a full requalify, because registered nursing requires a nursing degree and AHPRA registration that no amount of on-the-job overlap substitutes for.
The reverse happens as well. A personal trainer moving to exercise physiologist has only 19% skill overlap, the lowest of that role's listed moves, and it is also the highest-paying one available, at $18,100 a year more. It still needs a full allied health degree. So a low overlap figure isn't a reason to rule a move out, and a high one isn't evidence that the move will be quick.
Two moves from the same starting point
A teacher aide moving to early childhood educator has 79% skill overlap and needs no more than a short course, for $29,300 a year more. The same teacher aide moving to primary school teacher has a lower 70% skill overlap, pays $46,000 a year more, and needs a full Bachelor of Education.
Both moves keep you working with children in an education setting, so from the outside they can look like variations on the same next step. What separates them is the qualification behind each one: a short course in the first case, a multi-year degree in the second. The pay figures don't show that difference, which is why it helps to check the retraining level before settling on a direction. Where the retraining level comes back as a full degree, graduate employment rates and starting salaries by study area can help you weigh the time against the outcome.
Moves that pay well and don't require starting over
Some of the better-paid moves sit at the minimal end of the scale. A claims assessor moving to mortgage broker has 73% skill overlap, needs minimal retraining, and pays $74,200 a year more. A civil engineer moving to mining engineer has 62% skill overlap, also minimal retraining, and pays $67,600 a year more.
If a higher salary is the main thing you're after and a long program isn't practical for you right now, these are the moves worth looking at first. Which ones are open to you depends on the occupation you're starting from, so it's worth checking your own list rather than working from examples.
How to check your own move
Find your current occupation on careertips and open its Career moves section. It lists the roles you could realistically move into, ranked by pay change, with the skill overlap and the actual retraining level next to each one. Treat the retraining label as the real answer to "how hard is this", not the overlap percentage, for the reasons above. If you want help naming which of your own skills would carry across before you check the list, see transferable skills.
This article doesn't try to cover the reflection and research side of a career change. Workforce Australia's Job Switch tool matches your existing skills to vacancies you might not have considered. If you're starting from a blank page rather than a specific move in mind, the Your Career quiz can help narrow down a direction. Both are free Australian government services.
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