Byline: Sally Raikes

DISILLUSIONED: CAREER COACH

Heading back to work after the Christmas break can be as compelling a prospect as defrosting the freezer. The days are short, the weather miserable and the weeks until your next decent holiday seem interminable. Of course, this feeling is intensified if your job fills you with dread, whatever the season. So rather than settle back

into a sluggish routine, where the highlight of

the working day is its end, why not rethink your

career strategy?

In these competitive times, the majority of school leavers or university graduates hastily take the first job offer they get, and suffer the consequences of an ill-considered decision years later.

But the realisation that the job is the wrong one is not unusual, and neither is the urge to do something wildly different - like go riding bareback through the Andes, own a cocktail bar in the South Pacific or run a sexy lingerie company from home - or even something just a little different, like using the same work skills in a different industry.

Harry Freedman, chief executive of Career Energy, a career coaching service that began in March 2002, believes that our approach to securing a job in the workplace has changed radically. He says Britain's pre- and post-war generation of workers never stopped to question whether or not their job was fulfilling - it was simply one to knuckle down and get on with. Today's generation, however, is less accepting of their fate.

"The fundamental change we've seen is that people these days, particularly those under 35, really feel they have the right to take control of their career," says Freedman. "It is, in many ways, a product of Thatcherism and consumerism: we are entitled to be selfish about what we want out of life - and there's nothing wrong with that." Although that selfishness does not, of course, translate directly into a desire for a high salary. Freedman is just as happy helping high-flyers downsize to something less stressful but more rewarding; as in the case of Jane, who left her job as a City accountant to become an aromatherapist.

Unfortunately, for every person who turns to a career adviser voluntarily, there may be another who has suffered redundancy, a phenomenon that has made job-swapping rather more difficult lately. But it need not spell disaster for those intent on fulfilling their dreams.

Judith Chencinski, an American who spent

20 years in sales and marketing in the high-tech electronics industry, came to Career Energy redundant, miserable and convinced she wanted to turn to teaching.

After one-on-one sessions with a consultant, however, she has taken a job at the Wimbledon School of Art in London - also in the sales and marketing department, using transferable skills for a lifestyle she much prefers.

"I spent four years thinking about changing careers, but once I'd made the change there was no going back," she says. "I've taken a significant cut in salary, but I'm completely satisfied. The pace of...