Second Acts February 25, 2010, 5:00PM EST

Reinventing Your Working Self

Working Identity author Herminia Ibarra holds forth on career reinvention in difficult times

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INSEAD professor and author Ibarra researches work identity issues Roberto Frankenberg

You can read lots of career books and plot myriad strategies with a coach, but the key to reinvention is this: stop agonizing and do something. That's the view of Herminia Ibarra, professor of organizational behavior at international business school INSEAD and author of Working Identity. In Ibarra's view, people reinvent through trial and error. But does that messy path to change, seen in sunnier times, still work in these days of financial uncertainty? Amy Feldman spoke with Ibarra, who is working on a second book about leadership and identity. Excerpts from their conversation are below.

What distinguishes those who succeed at reinvention from those who fail?
Networks have a lot to do with it. Some people live in a very insular world where they live, eat, and breathe with people who are like them. They are lawyers in the company of other lawyers. It's really hard to figure out what you want in that context because you have no fresh ideas coming in, and everybody reinforces the value of staying in that career. [Those who succeed are] people who are curious and open to reaching out to others. That gives them glimpses of other possibilities. People can clearly identify what they don't want to do and what doesn't fit them. They have a harder time saying, this is what I want to do.

So it's about sorting through an amorphous sense of wanting to change?
Exactly. Once you have leads, you can network into them. You can figure out who you know, or what conferences to attend, or what courses to take. Much harder is to actually get the idea [of what you want to do]. My impression is that [this process] is still very much the same, but it can take longer in this downturn because there are fewer jobs to be had.

Unemployment statistics for older workers are grim. What would you say to older workers out of a job?
I have a sense that a lot of people in that age bracket start their own businesses to leverage their experience. That tends to be more successful than getting hired elsewhere, because that means getting hired at a lower salary—and getting hired, period, is very hard now. There's a lot of opportunity for people who have entrepreneurial skill because organizations are running lean and doing things off payroll. People also often end up having bridge careers that help them pay the bills until they can get back on their feet and explore more appealing avenues.

Is there a window during which people can reinvent careers? And if you don't act within that time, it closes?
There is something to that. People who go back to school midcareer hope to reinvent themselves. But the job offers made to them at the end are often disappointingly close to what they had before. There's a danger period because you have [new] credentials, but if you go back to the same thing, what will be the bridge to the new? When you lose your job, it's a longer process because it's a loss of identity, and there's a need for real repair.

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