I DON’T know many people who’ve had one job their whole life. Today, most people change jobs more than once, and usually several times. Maybe they stay in their field, or perhaps they enter a related one. More rarely, they might do something totally different.

In moving to my current job, I made a 180-degree turn from what I had been doing, while still staying in the same field. I’m a criminal defense lawyer at the Bose Law Firm in Springfield, Va. Before that, I worked as an assistant commonwealth attorney in Virginia, similar to an assistant district attorney in some states. Today, I defend people I might formerly have prosecuted.

I have to look only at my family and friends for other examples of big career shifts. My brother used to work as an actuary for an insurance company, and now he’s a benefits manager for a school district. In his last job, he calculated the premiums for people buying retirement policies; now he selects benefit programs that suit the district’s needs.

A friend of mine went from working in counterintelligence for the military to working in the real estate field. In his last job, he checked government buildings for recording devices and worked long periods alone. As a real estate agent, he shows houses to prospective buyers and constantly interacts with the public.