Maybe you’ve spent your career working at the National Institutes of Health. Maybe you work for a federal contractor whose funding is at risk. The Trump administration’s sweeping cuts to the federal government might have you considering a career change.

That can be a scary prospect, especially for someone who is mid-career. The good news is that there are resources to help Marylanders evaluate their options and navigate that shift if they decide to try a new career path.

The first step in this process, experts say, is to understand the skills you have and how they could apply to another career. Step two is to build new skills, if needed, for the career you want. We’ve laid out some resources to help you get started.

Identify and analyze the skills you already have

Many federal workers have expansive skill sets that could translate into new careers, Maryland Secretary of Labor Portia Wu said. The key is to think broadly about the work you’ve done and how it could be useful in a different industry.

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“A lot of this is to help people understand and analyze what skills they have,” Wu said. “They may not just have expertise in atmospheric science or gene splicing, but also maybe they’ve led a team. Maybe they had to write grants to get support for that work.”

The state Department of Labor offers a workshop for federal workers that can help assess your skills and match them with new career options. More than 1,000 people have already used the virtual workshop, which lasts for three hours and includes time for questions.

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Where federal workers searching for new jobs should look in Maryland

The department’s Professional Outplacement Assistance Centers also offer one-on-one career guidance for free to Maryland residents.

The Department of Labor has also partnered with the DeBruce Foundation, a Missouri-based organization that helps job seekers broaden their career opportunities. The organization’s executive director, Leigh Anne Taylor Knight, said their offerings include tools that can help you identify your strongest skills and match them with jobs.

“We think linear,” Taylor Knight said. If you earned a degree in a specific field and started your career there, it can be hard to imagine a new way forward.

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“Spinning somebody out of that is difficult to do,” she said.

Build new skills for the career you want

If you need to develop new skills or want to pivot completely, there are also options to help you there. Local community colleges offer a wide range of retraining opportunities, said Sandra Kurtinitis, president of the Community College of Baltimore County.

“You have skills,” she said of federal workers. “We can help you sharpen them within your discipline and get you ready, in probably a relatively short time, to compete successfully in the workplace.”

That could mean earning a short-term credential in six to eight weeks or getting several months of training, depending on your goals.

CCBC’s offerings range from programs in information security to real estate and massage therapy, Kurtinitis said, and many students can attend tuition-free.

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Other colleges across Maryland are also offering resources for federal workers. Here are a few you can check out:

The state is also working with Maryland colleges to help retrain federal workers for a career in teaching. Maryland has more than 1,600 teacher vacancies across the state and offers several pathways to licensure.

“People in federal government often take on outsize responsibility, have great leadership skills, have to deal with a lot of uncertainty,” Wu said. “Hopefully they can bring that same resilience to this moment and should recognize the whole wealth of skills and experiences they’ve had.”