Mid life career change quiz: 10 questions on direction, pay and timing

Grab a pen. Answer each question in a sentence or two, on paper, not in your head.

If one stops you cold, circle it. The circled ones matter most.

1. Which part of your current work would you keep doing even if nobody thanked you for it?
2. Which part do you keep putting off, even though you do it well?
3. When did a working week last feel short? What were you doing that week?
4. Are you tired of the field itself, or of the setting: the boss, the hours, the commute, the size of the company?
5. How much would you need to bring home each month to cover rent, food and bills?
6. How many months of expenses do you have saved?
7. Who else depends on your paycheck, and have you talked with them about this?
8. Does the work you want need a license, a degree or a certificate you do not have yet?
9. Could you try that work on the side for three months before you leave your job?
10. If nothing changes, how will you feel about this job five years from now?

Now look at what you circled. If you got stuck on questions 1 to 4, you have a direction problem: you know something is wrong but not where to go. Stuck on 5 to 7 means a money problem, and 8 to 10 means a timing problem.

Most people past 40 believe they lack courage. Far more often, one of these three is what keeps them in place, and each one has its own fix.

• Direction. Your answers alone will not name the next field. Take a test of how you work, then talk with people who already do the work it points to.
• Money. Divide your savings by your monthly costs to get your runway in months. If it is under six, line up bridge income first, such as part-time or contract work in your old field.
• Timing. Run a 90-day side trial: a small paid project, a night course or volunteer shifts in the new work. If the field needs a license, look up the program length and next start date before you pick a quit date.

Why a midlife quiz works differently than a career test at 20

At 20, a career test can only work with your likes and your school subjects, because that is about all you have to go on. At 45, you know far more.

You know which bosses brought out your best work, which projects you raised your hand for, and which tasks you still dread after fifteen years of doing them well. A quiz built for this stage should use that record.

It should also ask about risk. At 22, a bad first pick usually means a few lost months and a fresh start.

A wrong move at 50 can cost savings, a pension match, or a partner's trust. So a good quiz for this stage weighs what you can afford to lose next to what you want.

And it should count what you bring with you. Managing a budget, handling a customer complaint, coaching a new hire and keeping a project on schedule all work in many fields.

A quiz that ignores them sends you back to the start, and most people changing careers at this age do not need to start over. Our guide to using transferable skills in a career change shows how to put them into words.

Changing careers at 45 or 50: what gets harder and what gets easier

You are not too old. If you are 45 and plan to work into your mid 60s, you have about twenty working years left. That is longer than many whole careers were a generation ago.

You would not be alone, either. A Bureau of Labor Statistics study followed people born from 1957 to 1964. Of the jobs they started between 45 and 54, more than half ended within five years.

Many people start their own business at this age too. The Kauffman Foundation found that just over 88% of new business owners aged 55 to 64 started by choice, not out of need.

Some things do get harder. Entry-level pay is hard to live on with a mortgage. Going back to school takes time you feel short of.

And some hiring managers do favor younger applicants, even though the federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act forbids age discrimination against people 40 and older. The law helps, but it does not remove the bias, so plan for it.

Other things get easier. You know your working habits. You have a network of people who have seen your work.

You can point to results instead of promise. For more on why this stage favors you, read our piece on changing careers later in life.

The ten questions above are a self-check, and a self-check has a limit. Your answers depend on your memory and your mood that day.

To find a direction, you need something that measures how you work instead of how you describe yourself. Pigment’s career test, the one this page links to, does that part.

Here is a sample pair. One statement says “I like to finish one thing before I start the next.” The other says “I like having several things moving at once.” Both are fine. You pick whichever describes your usual week.

This matters more at midlife than at any other age. After twenty years in one kind of job, you know the answer your job wants.

Ask a project manager to rate “I am organized” and the score will be high whether or not order comes naturally to them. When both choices are fine ways to work, the habit your job trained into you has less pull on the answer.

Your answers are scored as traits, each on its own scale, so the result shows degrees. Someone who sits in the middle on a trait shows up in the middle.

The traits cover how you weigh a choice, how you master a skill, how you act in a group, and how much steady routine you want in a day. That last part is often the missing piece for people at midlife: you can be very good at work that does not suit your pace.

It builds on decades of research into why one workplace drains a person while another suits them, and how the demands of a job add up. Researchers have begun a formal study of this test, and they have not reported results yet. The report goes to you alone, to use for your own choices.

Three kinds of midlife move and their timelines

It depends on how far you move. These are rough ranges, not promises, and your own answers to questions 8 and 9 matter more than any average.

• Same skills, new setting. A finance manager moves from a bank to a hospital. This is mostly a job search, often a few months.
• New field, skills that carry over. A teacher moves into corporate training. Expect several months to a year or more, including a side project that proves your skill.
• New field that needs a license. An accountant becomes a nurse. Plan on the length of the program, often one to four years, plus the job search after it.

The slow part is rarely the training. It is the months spent unsure which way to go. A clear direction first is the quickest way to shorten the whole change.

Most free quizzes on this topic end with a label, such as “the explorer” or “the cautious optimist.” A label may feel accurate, yet you still have no idea what to apply for on Monday.

The Pigment report is written to be used. It opens on what you do best, with practical ways to do more of it. It explains how you think through problems, which types of work draw on you most, and your working style.

It also covers teamwork with people unlike you, which matters if your next job puts you on a new team. Then it turns to careers: a list of roles, where the note beside a role like project coordinator might say it rewards your habit of finishing one task before starting the next, and a part on work you would likely do well. It ends with the traits that are uncommon in you among all the people who have taken the test.

Read the note before the job title. Say your results lean toward the Pragmatist pattern: you cut a messy problem down to what will work, and you decide from experience. At 50 that might steer you away from a strategy role full of long debates and toward operations work, where your judgment saves time every day.

If the note sounds like you, research the role. If it does not, cross it off. Either way you know more than you did.

If a suggestion surprises you, ask a colleague who has worked beside you for years whether it fits. People who watch you work often see a pattern before you do.

Then talk with three people who hold that role today. Ask each one what a hard Tuesday looks like and what they wish they had known before they started.

Put the report next to your answers to the ten questions. The report gives you a direction.

Your own answers on money and timing tell you how fast you can move toward it. Together they work as a career change assessment at midlife: a direction, plus a plan you can afford.

Taking a pay cut at 50: when it happens and how to avoid it

A pay cut is likely when you start over in a field that does not value what you already know. It is much less likely when you carry your skills into a new setting, or switch roles within your current employer first.

It is also less common than many people fear. In the same AIER survey, half of those whose change worked out earned more afterward, and 31% took a cut, as Money Talks News reported.

Three moves keep more of your pay. Aim at roles where your past work counts as experience, not just background. Bridge the gap with part-time or contract work in your old field.

And negotiate on the results you can prove, not on years in the new field. Our guide to a career change without losing salary walks through each route.

Career change, encore career or portfolio career: three different moves

A career change means new paid work, usually full time, with a long stretch still ahead of it. An encore career puts purpose first.

It is paid work in your later years, often in teaching, health or nonprofit jobs, and often for less money. A portfolio career mixes two or three smaller jobs, such as consulting, teaching a class and part-time work.

Which one you need depends on your answers above. If money questions 5 to 7 were easy and question 10 felt heavy, an encore career may fit.

If you need a full income for fifteen more years, a full career change is the move. Our explainer on what an encore career means covers that route in depth.

Three people who take this quiz most often

Each of these readers gets something different from the ten questions and from a deeper test.

The burned-out professional. You do your job well, and you are tired of it.

Before you quit, you want to know if the problem is the work or the workload. The burnout section further down this page is for you.

The empty nester or returning parent. The kids are grown or the caregiving years are ending, and you finally have room to choose. You may be rusty on job titles but clear on what you want your days to feel like.

The early retiree or the person after a buyout. You have some money behind you and time ahead.

The risk is drifting into whatever offer comes first. A direction keeps you from that.

Whatever your age, the ten questions stay the same. Their weights change: at 40 the money questions often come first, and at 55 the timing ones do.

If you are under 30 with little work history, try O*NET Interest Profiler first. It costs nothing and asks only about the activities you like.

You have less of a record for a deeper test to work with. Our list of free career tests for adults over 50 compares the no-cost options for older readers too.

Before you trust any quiz with a decision this big, check its questions against five tests.

• Can you see the questions? If a page will not show you what it asks, you cannot judge what it measures.
• Does it ask about your past work? At midlife your record is your best evidence. A quiz that only asks about your hobbies and likes was made for students.
• Does it ask about money? A quiz that skips income and savings is answering a different question from yours.
• Could you get any result you wanted? If every question has an obvious good answer, the result tells you what you hoped to hear.
• Who made it, and what do they sell? Many free quizzes come from schools or course sellers. That is fine, but read the result with it in mind.

The free self-assessments from CareerOneStop, a site the Labor Department sponsors, pass most of these tests. To measure what you could learn to do, read our page on the midlife career change aptitude test.

Burnout or the wrong career? Check this before you quit

Burnout can look like a career problem. The World Health Organization counts it as a work problem, not a medical condition.

It names three signs: exhaustion, a growing distance from the job, and a sense that your work has slipped. A new career will not fix those signs if the cause is the load.

Try this. Picture the same work with half the hours, a fair boss and no late emails. If that version sounds fine, you most likely need to fix the load, and a new job in the same field may be enough.

If the work itself still sounds wrong, even at half the hours, the problem is direction. A test of how you work is your next step. To score the burnout side first, take our am I burnout quiz.

If you came out of the ten questions with a direction problem, that is the one a test can solve.

See which kind of work suits you at 45, 50 or 60

Find which way to go before you hand in notice. See the work that fits the habits twenty years have built, so your experience comes with you.

Find my direction