If you work in recreation long enough, there’s a good chance you’ll eventually find yourself switching gears.

Maybe you started your career at a summer camp in high school, then (after your first REC Net Conference) moved into resort recreation for summer employment. Maybe you left a municipal recreation department for nonprofit management or to start your own business, or took your many years of hospitality experience into higher education. Sometimes the move is intentional. Sometimes an opportunity comes along that is simply too good to pass up. And sometimes life, the economy, or your organization makes the decision for you.

Whatever gets you there, changing sectors can feel a little like starting over. The language is different. The priorities are different. The ways decisions are made, money is spent, and success is measured typically differ. But you aren't starting over. You’re bringing everything you learned in recreation with you.

New Setting, New Mindset 

Moving from one sector to another can mean learning a very different way of planning, coordinating, and evaluating recreation. In the private sector, revenue, competition, guest satisfaction, and repeat business drive most decisions. In the nonprofit sector, mission, community impact, fundraising, and partnerships tend to take center stage. And recreation professionals in the public sector can be found balancing community needs with political pressure, while prioritizing accessibility and maintaining accountability to taxpayers.

Even when the programs themselves look similar, the reasons behind them may be very different. A special event might generate revenue for a resort, advance the mission of a nonprofit, or provide a valued community service for a city. The experience you're creating may look remarkably similar to the participant, but behind the scenes, stark differences in goals, resources, stakeholders, and measures of success can be baffling to even the seasoned professional.

I learned this firsthand as I moved between sectors. When I managed a Girl Scout camp in the nonprofit sector, success meant “heads in beds.” A camper who registered, paid a deposit, and never arrived wasn't a success at all. Later, working in resort recreation, a cancellation or no-show meant we might keep the room deposit, but we had lost the guest and potentially their future business. Then, working for MWR Children and Youth Services on a military base, I discovered that if 20 children registered for my program and only seven showed up, all 20 would still count in our participation reporting because we were providing opportunities for military families. Same recreation professional. Three very different ways of looking at participation and success.  And yes, this baffled me at times.

Your Skills Come With You

While the intention, clientele, resources, and leadership structure may shift, much of what makes you good at making recreation happen travels with you.

You still need to understand the people you serve and create experiences they actually want. You still need to develop programs, lead staff, manage resources, communicate well, solve problems on the fly, and adjust when things don't go according to plan. And no matter who is paying the bills or what the organization calls the people walking through the door, you still want them to leave feeling like their time was well spent.

In fact, experience in another sector can become an advantage. A recreation professional coming from a nonprofit may bring a strong understanding of partnerships, volunteers, and doing more with limited resources. Someone from the private sector may bring a different perspective on revenue, customer service, or creating experiences that keep people coming back. A new public-sector employee may bring valuable experience in accessibility, community engagement, and a strong commitment to serving a wide range of people.

As a recreation professional, know that you aren't leaving your experience behind when you switch sectors. You're bringing a different set of tools to the table.

Be Willing to Be a Beginner Again

Bringing years of experience into a new sector doesn't mean you already know how everything works. In fact, one of the most valuable practices you can bring with you to any new position is a willingness to admit what you don't know.

Every sector has its own language, expectations, stakeholders, pressures, and unwritten rules. The way budgets are built, decisions are made, success is measured, or even how a great idea is approved may be completely unfamiliar. An approach that worked beautifully in your last position may not make sense at all in your new one. A board of directors may view an issue differently than a public constituency, which in turn may see things much differently than the owner of a teambuilding company.

That means asking questions. Listening to people who have been doing the work longer than you have. Figuring out why things are done the way they are before deciding they should be done differently. It means being comfortable saying, "I don't know yet," even with years of work experience.

You can be an experienced recreation professional and a beginner at the same time. The two are not mutually exclusive. Don't just be ready to be a learner. Be eager to be one.

Bring Something New to the Table

Once you begin to understand your new work environment, you may also start to notice opportunities that others don't.

Having worked in another economic sector gives you a different frame of reference. You have seen different approaches to funding programs, training staff, building partnerships, and creating experiences. An idea that seems completely ordinary in the sector you used to work in might be the spark – or even the game changer – that no one in your new workplace has considered before.

And heck, that doesn't mean everything from your previous experience will translate. Some ideas simply won't fit. But asking, "What if we tried this?" can open the door to new approaches, especially when that idea comes with an understanding of how it has worked somewhere else.

This kind of cross-pollination makes our profession stronger and shouldn't be undervalued. When recreation professionals move between sectors, we don't just move our careers. We move ideas, experiences, and new ways of thinking right along with us.

REC Net Switched Gears, Too

Our association began 45 years ago as the Resort and Commercial Recreation Association (RCRA), with a strong focus on professionals working in the private sector. From small teambuilding businesses to large, exclusive resorts, we were created to serve recreation professionals working throughout these industries. But just as careers don't always follow a straight line, over time, neither did RCRA.

Our members began taking on new positions at nonprofit community associations, city parks and recreation departments, campgrounds, and organizations throughout this broad, dynamic industry. Some even took their recreation, hospitality, and entertainment experience into higher education eager to prepare the next generation of professionals. Workplaces and job titles changed, but our members still greatly valued the relationships, ideas, and professional connections they had built through the association. So they stayed.

To serve our members best, the association evolved, too. Initially, we broadened the focus of our conference sessions and educational opportunities to reflect the evolving careers of our members and the many different places recreation professionals create experiences today. More recently, we evolved from RCRA into REC Net, a name that better represents the professional network we had become. Rather than defining our members by one sector or type of workplace, REC Net allows us to connect recreation professionals through the work we share: creating experiences for others.

In many ways, the same movement that makes our profession stronger has made our network stronger, too. We have more perspectives to learn from, more ideas to share, and more ways to support one another throughout our careers.

Your career doesn't have to stay in one lane, either.  Take what you know, be ready to learn what you don't know, and don't be afraid to see where a different road might lead.

When the time is right, you can switch gears, too.