How to Find Work You Love with Absolutely No Experience

How do you have multiple successful career changes in one lifetime?

I’m grateful that I was able to have a ‘virtual’ sit down with Dr Giles P Croft because his work in career change is super relevant right now when job security is at an all-time low.

This is a small part of an hour-long interview where we talk about the two things that will help you find work you love.

Giles is such an appropriate guest as he has been able to explore a number of career paths since leaving his work as an NHS surgeon, including health informatics, cycling journalism, public speaking and high street retail with his wife.

Could you tell us a little bit more about your journey?

I went to medical school, took a year out to do a psychology degree and then once I qualified, I didn’t really know what I wanted to be because — and this is the story of my life — I pretty much enjoyed everything that I did. Every specialty that I did, I really, I really enjoyed. I think eventually I made a decision that I wanted to be a radiologist and then when I started doing my surgical training, I fell in love with that and ended up wanting to be a surgeon. I did [orthopaedics] as a job, and I was like, “this is amazing!” and so I started my specialist training.

And then I left. It wasn’t something I planned — it just seemed to happen. A set of circumstances came to pass, and the next thing I know, I left medicine, and I went into health informatics (health information management) because I was really passionate about it. I used to get really fed up in clinics, where we’d see the same patient, week after week with an injury and the notes hadn’t been typed up because they were still on a Dictaphone or the x-rays had been lost. I just thought there must be a better way.

An opportunity arose for a job in health informatics and I just leapt at it and before I knew it, I was doing that, and I wasn’t doing surgery anymore.

Although the informatics work was intense, because I wasn’t doing weekends and nights that job gave me space and allowed me to really develop my outside interests, from a career perspective… and my biggest outside interest was cycling.

I ended up working for Cycling Plus magazine for seven years, being sent all over Europe to ride my bike and take pictures and get paid for it — it was absolutely wonderful. A dream come true. And I was kind of doing that on the side with the health informatics. And also at the same time, I was speaking about career change. I got invited to speak at a conference back in 2007 about the process of career change and ended up doing that regularly, for a decade.

Then a couple of years ago it felt like it was time for a change again and this time I decided to go all in — I quit the informatics work entirely and started working one to one with people. So I went off and got myself a coaching qualification. And then took a really deep dive into the psychology of change and how our minds work.

It all kind of happened in stages, like when the timing was right. I don’t think I could have jumped straight in with two feet into what I’m doing now. It’s definitely been a journey.

What would you say, has been the quality that has helped you be successful in changing career so many times.

I always say with career change that you only really need two things: and that’s curiosity and enthusiasm. If you’re enthusiastic about something, that creates the tension that pulls you forwards. And then curiosity, just asking people questions. All of those different changes that I went through. None of them happened in that kind of like standard made up medical way of “right, get that box ticked and then get that box ticked”.

I always say with career change that you only really need two things: and that’s curiosity and enthusiasm.

I got into health informatics with no health informatics qualification. It was curiosity and enthusiasm. I was interested in it. And I was enthusiastic. And I pestered people silly until someone gave me a job.

The cycling journalism, again it’s not something I ever planned. I was super, super, super enthusiastic about it. I lived and breathed cycling all the time and I was racing bikes as well. And I loved writing. And again, it was just curiosity and enthusiasm.

I just got in touch with the people at the magazine, asked, “How does one get into this kind of work, then?” and the next thing I know I’m in that world and they gave me a job.

Don’t do things that you don’t want to do. Just constantly do a little bit more of what you like and a little bit less of what you don’t like.

Don’t do things that you don’t want to do. Just constantly do a little bit more of what you like and a little bit less of what you don’t like. And eventually, you know, you’ll find yourself somewhere that is beyond what you could have imagined. That’s what’s kept me going all these years.

For people who say “I’ve been trying different things but I keep getting rejections”, what would your advice be to them?

Rejection is all part of the journey, but it’s all just learning. So, for example, trying to get into health informatics was really painful because there’s no clear way into it. It’s such a weird and wonderful kind of subject matter with no real career structure. I got knocked back constantly. Every single conversation I asked, “how does a junior doctor get into this work?” They were just like, “what are you talking about?”

And so, when I was getting all those knockbacks. It was always… well that’s not the way then, is it? That’s a dead end. That’s a dead end. That’s a dead end. But if you have a genuine enthusiasm for it, and curiosity, you keep asking and keep asking and then completely out of the blue, something will happen.

But if you have a genuine enthusiasm for it, and curiosity, you keep asking and keep asking and then completely out of the blue, something will happen.

It will be a conversation that you have with somebody, where you weren’t even thinking about career change. And they’ll say, “Oh, I know someone” or “have you read this?”

For health informatics, it was an email that landed in my inbox. I replied to a comment on an academic article that I didn’t even understand. It was about health informatics, and one of the commenters mentioned that “as a junior doctor who moved into health informatics”, and I literally just replied to that, and said, “I want to do that, how did you do it?” And the next thing I know, I’m being invited to an interview for a position that had been created at the Royal College of Physicians.

I’d say, just don’t give up, you know if it makes sense to be drawn towards whatever it is you’re being drawn towards, then just keep an open mind. Listen to all the no’s and then ignore all of it. I’ve always seen a career as sort of whittling away all of the ways I don’t want to do it anyway because there’s only my way of doing something, really, that’s going to be right for me. I can’t do it the same way that someone else has done. So all those noes, are whittling away to what it will eventually look like.

If you enjoyed this be sure to check out the rest of the interview on my YouTube channel here.