For those of you in Recovery - You haven't missed your chance to build a career
For a lot of people in recovery, the word career can feel like it belongs to somebody else.
You may have worked plenty of jobs. You’ve cooked food, stocked shelves, driven trucks, worked construction, waited tables, answered phones, sold things or done whatever you needed to do to pay the bills. But a career feels different. It suggests that somewhere along the way you were supposed to figure out what you were good at, understand what opportunities existed, develop the right skills, and intentionally build toward something. A lot of people in recovery were never taught how to do that.
And when much of your life has been about getting through today, planning what you might want to be doing five or ten years from now probably felt ridiculous. I know a lot of you are still in that same boat. I sit next to you in meetings. I see your FB posts. Some of you just gave me the proverbial eye roll - I get those a lot!
Here's the point...it’s okay, you haven’t missed your chance at something meaningful. A new set of professional opportunities. A new life.
A job and a career aren’t the same thing
When someone is rebuilding their life, getting a job can be incredibly important. Income, structure, and being able to support yourself matter. Sometimes the job that’s available right now is exactly the job you need. But it doesn’t have to become the ceiling for the rest of your working life.
Thinking about a career doesn’t mean you need to suddenly know what you want to do forever. It starts by understanding yourself a little better - what you’re good at, what interests you, what kind of life you want to build - and then learning enough about the working world to see where those things might fit. If you’ve never thought about work that way before, you’re not behind. You’re starting. And there may be no better time to start than right now!
The world of work is changing for everybody
The traditional idea of a career is being disrupted. Artificial intelligence, automation and new technologies are changing what people do at work and which skills employers need. People who spent 10, 15 or 20 years building successful careers are suddenly having to reconsider what they know, what they can do and where they might go next.
Recent research from LHH followed more than 418,000 people after they lost their jobs. Fifty-eight percent moved into a different role or career. In the United States, it was 57%. Perhaps even more telling, LHH found that 53% of workers would like to change roles but don’t know how. In other words, not knowing what comes next isn’t unusual anymore.Millions of people across the planet are trying to figure it out.
For someone in recovery who believes everyone else got a head start and they somehow missed the opportunity to build a career, that matters. The workplace is changing so rapidly that people at every level are being asked to learn new skills, reconsider old assumptions and find new ways to contribute. There is uncertainty in that. There is also opportunity.
You’re bringing more with you than you think
Starting a career doesn’t mean starting your life over. Most people already possess abilities they’ve never learned to recognize or describe. Years spent on construction sites, in restaurants, warehouses, customer service, retail or other jobs develop real capabilities. People learn how to solve problems, work under pressure, deal with difficult situations, organize others, communicate, sell, fix things and get things done. Life experience develops capabilities too, particularly when someone has had to become resourceful and persistent just to keep moving forward.
The problem is that those capabilities don't always show up clearly on a résumé. A job title tells us where someone worked. It doesn’t necessarily tell us what they’re capable of. That’s why I don’t think the first question should be, “What career do you want?” If you’ve never really thought about a career - or never had the opportunity to explore what’s out there - how would you know? First, figure out what you’re working with. Then start exploring what’s possible.
Employers need to start thinking differently, too
There’s another side to this story. Employers need people.
Look at New England, for example. Healthcare, technology, advanced manufacturing, and the skilled trades and construction represent enormous parts of the region’s economy. These industries need workers with very different skills and educational backgrounds, from people entering apprenticeships and certificate programs to highly specialized technical roles. Massachusetts alone has set a goal of registering 100,000 new apprentices over the next decade.
At the same time, the demographics of the American workforce are changing. U.S. fertility remains well below the level required for one generation to replace itself without migration, births declined again in 2025, and population growth has slowed considerably. Technology is changing the work. Demographics are changing the workforce. Employers still need talent.
That creates an important question for employers: Are you looking everywhere talent might exist?
People in recovery should be part of that conversation. Not because hiring someone in recovery is an act of charity. Not because employers should lower their standards. And not because a history of addiction somehow qualifies someone for a job. Because there are capable people rebuilding their lives whose potential may not be obvious from the traditional ways we evaluate candidates.
Some have gaps in employment. Some have criminal records. Some have bounced between jobs. Some never went to college. Some never finished high school. Many have years of useful experience but no idea how to translate what they know into a relevant industry. If employers are going to solve tomorrow’s talent problems, they may need to become much better at recognizing potential, not simply filtering people by what they’ve already done.
You haven’t missed it
And then I think about how all of this ties together - this interesting collision happening in the workforce. People in recovery are rebuilding their lives at the same moment that the world of work itself is being rebuilt. That doesn’t erase the barriers. Starting over can be difficult. Changing industries requires work, persistence, and patience. Some careers require education, training, licenses or credentials. And figuring out where you fit takes time.
But you don’t need to have everything figured out today. If you’ve spent most of your life thinking about jobs rather than a career, that’s okay. If nobody ever taught you how to think about your strengths, interests and possibilities, you can learn now. If you’re 25, 35, 45 or 55 and wondering whether you waited too long, you didn’t. The working world is changing for everyone. You get to change with it.
Maybe the opportunity in front of you isn't simply finding the next place that will hire you. Maybe it's finally having the chance to understand what you're capable of, learn what's possible, and intentionally build something from there.
You don’t need to know exactly where you’re going yet. You just need to start looking.