雅思课外读物：How to make a dramatic career change？

2016年03月25日15:14 来源：小站整理

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雅思考试，除了我们所说的题海战术啊，还有从各路前辈那边学来的备考复习计划，个人觉得还是需要读一些英文素材的。不仅仅是应对雅思考试，对我们的英文水平提高也是很有帮助的！那本文这里主要是和大家分享一篇关于当下热点--工作有关的文章。文中附有批注，文末有涉及到的一些雅思词汇，包括雅思考试真题的相关内容，希望大家认真学习。祝大家都能取得好成绩！

For London-based Michelle Brideau, 10 years in the travel industry felt like an eternity(永恒). What started as low pay and high stress — but great perks(外快) — had evolved(进化) into low pay, high stress, no perks and lots of competition from the internet. (开始的时候收入低，压力大，但是有不少外快，后来演变成了收入低，压力大，却没有了外快，而且还要面临来自因特网的巨大竞争。)

Brideau was ready for a change. She considered running a mobile coffee cart for commuters(定期上下班的人)in her neighborhood but the idea of London winters spent outside quickly nixed(对……说不;否决)those plans. (她考虑针对定期上下班的人搞一个咖啡推车，但是想到要在外面度过伦敦的冬天，她很快就否决了这些计划。)She decided on a career in technology.

The problem: no experience.

At some point in almost everyone’s career comes the desire to change fields and try something completely different. But one of the most common stumbling blocks(绊脚石)to making a dramatic career change is a lack of experience in the new field. Gaining that experience often means taking what can feel like a giant step backwards in your career, whether it’s by re-entering the student world or signing on for an internship(见习). (为了获得经验，你要没有重新进入学生的世界，或者报名参加实习，这都会让你感觉自己的事业往后退了一大步。)Choices like these can be financially draining(耗尽的) in the short term, but the long-term hope is that they will pay off before too long.

Back to basics

Brideau needed to learn to code if she was going to launch a career in technology. But she’d been under the impression it would take years of schoolwork to learn what she needed to in order to make the switch, she said in an email. Then she heard about the Makers Academy, a highly selective coding program in London that teaches web development. The intensive(密集的，高强度的) 10-week program, (it now costs £7200 and is three months long) meant Brideau was studying code whenever she “wasn’t eating or sleeping.”

With the coding experience under her belt, Brideau spent two months looking for the right job or internship. “I made sure to get out into the developer community as much as possible: meet ups, events, conferences, job fairs and such,” she said. “I also went to interviews, was invited to do code exercises as part of the job application process and I continued to study at home.”

Eventually, through the connections she made, Brideau landed a six-month paid code-writing internship at London-based Enternships, which places students and recent graduates in positions with starts ups(刚成立的公司) and small businesses. Once her internship is over, she hopes to find a position as a junior coder.

“The hardest part was taking the leap to doing something so completely different than I have ever done previously,” said Brideau. She likened(将……比作)it to the move she had made from Canada to the UK. “You keep moving forward with a lot of unanswered questions not knowing how it will all turn out until one day you find yourself at home in your new surroundings.”(你一直往前走，心里有很多无解的问题，也不知道终点在哪里，直到有一天，你发现自己熟悉了新的环境。)

Internships represent one of the best ways to gain experience and get a foot in the door(加入，进入) in today’s project-based economy, said Larry Stybel, a principal at Stybel Peabody & Associates Inc, a leadership coaching and senior outplacement firm in Waltham, Massachusetts.

It’s important to define your “compensation”(补偿) before starting an internship, according to Stybel. It can be more than monetary(金钱的). “It could be a title for your resume or a commitment for a good reference,” he said. If you don’t ask for what you want, at some point you are going to “feel like you’re being taken advantage of.

Get experience in less time-intensive ways

Obviously, not everyone can afford to pay thousands of dollars or euros for a three-month class — or take the time off for coursework or a full-time internship. But you can still get valuable experience. Many jobs have become more project-oriented in recent years, said Stybel. So, for example, helping out or learning the ropes(找窍门，熟悉情况) by working on the company’s website, therefore, can be done during off hours or on the weekends and from home.

Work shadowing(跟学) and volunteer positions are other ways to build up experience without leaving your current position, according to Sab Byrne, online editor of Careershifters.org, a London-based career-change advice website. If someone in your organisation is working at a role that interests you, ask if you can shadow them for a few hours or offer to help out on a short-term project. You can also reach out to people in your networks or your university alumni association(校友会) for recommendations of people who might be willing to have you shadow them.