Stuart Lawton-Davies (document en anglais)

Stuart Lawton-Davies has switched industries three times since being made redundant from oil and gas business Trafalgar House, and he has never looked back.

"It depends on your expertise, but I'd say people are more prepared to switch industries now. You have to take the bull by the horns and be prepared to look at other areas and get on with your life," says the 37-year-old internal communications specialist.

Since that first redundancy in 1999, Mr Lawton-Davies has landed jobs in the travel industry and, since February, with chemist chain Moss Pharmacy. "The fact that I had done it once gave me confidence to think I could do it again. And I have a good grounding in communications skills that can be transferred across," he adds.

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A generation ago it was almost unheard of, and almost certainly frowned upon, to leap about from industry to industry. Once you'd got your skill or found your niche you stuck with it. Not any more. The end of the job for life and the increasing transferability of many skills means that the type of career path pursued by the likes of Mr Lawton-Davies is becoming much more common.

With the employment market still hugely volatile - the CBI has estimated there will be 86,000 jobs cut in the first half of this year - people are also increasingly finding they have to switch industries just to stay in work.

A study by employment consultancy Drake Beam Morin (DBM) published last month found that 75% of people it polled from its current list of job seekers had already changed industry in 2002. The most common industries in which this happened were technology and finance. The public sector, flush with extra investment from central government, had conversely seen an influx of workers, particularly people coming in from the private sector.

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"Individuals are saying, in order to find fulfilling work I need to look outside my industry or sector," says Jon Lidington, regional operations director at DBM in the UK.

Redundancy is a common catalyst, but the stigma of shifting industry has gone as well. Employers increasingly welcome the fresh thinking that someone coming in from another sector can bring, argues Victoria Gill, an adviser with the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.

The institute will next month publish a study showing how having experience in another sector can help you get up the career ladder more quickly. "People are being much more flexible in general in looking at working in different regions, abroad or in other industries," says Ms Gill.

The trend towards work-life balance is also encouraging people to look again at their careers and whether they want to switch to something more fulfilling, Mr Lidington suggests. "It's not just about finding rewards, but about emotional rewards too, about lifestyle

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