You are not behind. You haven’t wasted your time.

It’s easy to think that you made a mistake somewhere along the line.

Studying for a PhD was a wrong turn.

Most people have their career figured out by the time they are 30.

You should have learned these career research skills when you were younger.

You should have thought more about summer jobs, internships, and other opportunities to gain experience.

You should have really researched the academic labour market before embarking on that PhD.

You might be going through this confusion and self-doubt in your 30s instead of your 20s, but everyone goes through it.

These days, a lot of people go through it several times.

• Companies go bankrupt.
• Technology changes, changing the nature of the work. Some jobs disappear. Other jobs appear.
• Jobs exist today that didn’t exist 10 or 20 years ago, and people have decided to take them up mid-career.
• Your life partner gets a really good job offer somewhere else and you change career so you can move with your family.
• You have kids and decide to make parenting your primary career for a while. Everything’s changed by the time you are ready to go back out there.

All of those situations and more make career exploration, networking, developing skills, updating your resume, information interviewing, and applying for jobs things that you do throughout your life.

This also means that the thing you choose to do next doesn’t have to be something you can see yourself doing for the rest of your life.

The important things to consider are the opportunities a position offers.

Opportunities for learning new skills.

Opportunities to develop your skills and gain more experience.

Opportunities to build your network.

Opportunities to move on to something even more interesting or promising.

This post was updated July 13, 2015.