For someone like Tuck, and for anyone who knows that she or he needs a dramatic change but has no idea what to do next, trying to create a 12-step plan for finding the perfect job is probably a bad idea. "For me," Tuck says, "the change was not going to be about having a plan, researching every opportunity in the world, and focusing in until I found the job that fit me best. Back then, I hadn't discovered some of the strengths and traits that I have. And how would I have found out about what I do now? If I had tried to plan such a career move, I wouldn't have gotten to where I am now."
Bill Schaffer, 64, a European business-development manager at Sun Microsystems Inc. and author of "High-Tech Careers for Low-Tech People" (Ten Speed Press, 1999), is struck by how many people in traditional industries plan themselves right out of a move into the digital world. "Most people give up on such an idea so easily," he says. "We're programmed to be self-critical, and we assume we don't have the knowledge or the contacts to make a change from low tech to high tech. Some of that is lack of confidence, which comes from fear of uncharted territory. That hesitancy to change also comes from ego, from not wanting to deal with the possibility of rejection. But some of that is simply the result of being ignorant."
Ignorant of what? "People assume that if they have no computer-science background, they can't get a job in technology," Schaffer says. "That just isn't true. When I came to Sun, I got more curious about this, and I got into the habit of asking people about their backgrounds. I met someone with a theology degree, someone who was an urban planner, and a person with a background in comparative literature. And these were not just people in HR or PR, but people working in product management, in sales, and in other highly technical jobs."
By the early 1990s, Bob Presman had achieved about all he could as a radio announcer in Rockford, Illinois. He had served as news director of the station with the highest ratings and had won several awards. His on-air alter ego, dubbed "Mr. Baseball," was popular with listeners, who would try to stump him with trivia questions. He was the play-by-play announcer for the Rockford Lightning of the Continental Basketball Association, which serves as an unofficial minor league for the NBA.
"With many careers, at some point it becomes hard to imagine pursuing them forever," says Presman, now 52, reflecting on his days as an announcer. "Psychologically, I was ready for a new challenge." But what could he attempt next, given that at the time he was 44 years old and had an 11-year-old son to support? He wasn't exactly sure, but he didn't lose much sleep over it, either. "Looking for a new career can be like searching for a spouse," says his wife, Mary Ann. "The harder you look, the less likely you are to find anything."
That was true for Presman, who found his next calling through a blind date. "Out of nowhere, someone from Smith Barney called to tell me that the company was looking for people like me to be financial consultants," he says. "We had lunch, and it turns out that Smith Barney was particularly interested in people who had been successful in another field." Once Presman, who had always been an avid investor, got this bolt from the blue, he considered the field more carefully -- and eventually signed on.
In 1998, after a few years of navigating the bureaucracy at Cincinnati Bell, Nancy Koors was also ready for a change. "I was working with new products, like Internet service and DSL, but to make any strategic move at all, I'd have to remake my case five times," says Koors, who is now 30, describing the trouble with working for that vestige of the old Bell system. "It was physically draining. I would literally work night and day, and I got nowhere."
At the time, the only radical change Koors wanted in her next job was a shift in culture. "I wanted to create and lead a project that involved marketing and the Internet, for a company that moved more quickly," she says. That reflected uncommonly clear thinking. "People think they need to throw out the baby with the bathwater when they attempt to reinvent themselves," says Betsy Collard, 59, director of program and innovation at the Career Action Center in Cupertino, California. "But just because you want to change the context in which you work doesn't mean you have to change the content of what you do."
Headhunters around town, however, informed Koors that most companies weren't quite ready to hire in-house Internet strategists. Still, one day an ad appeared in the local paper that caught her eye. An unnamed manufacturer was looking for someone to help the company with online marketing. So she dashed off a letter.
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