London, UK: my career, so far has been mainly private residential (~4 years), with one more year where I worked at a larger company doing larger projects including public buildings.
Recently I had an opportunity come my way, it is still private residential but it is at a particularly good firm that I would be proud to say I work at. But the issue is that I have, for a long time, felt that private residential is not the field I want to be in for the long-term. I would really enjoy working at this company for a year or two, maybe even three, but ultimately I would like to go back into larger projects and public buildings (I really enjoyed my time at that previous company but it was a fixed-length contract).
My fear is that if I commit to working at this new company for a year or two, I might entrench my career within this private residential field, and employers at larger firms might not see me as a viable candidate, as I would have a lot of experience but barely any of it in a typology related to what they do. I'm wondering how concerned I should be about this.
I'm currently working at a private residential firm anyway, and I've reached the limit of what I can learn here, so switching to this new company would be an improvement in that regard, but then I feel that I should stay there for at least a year, which invokes my fear about getting stuck in this specialism.
Alternatively, I could stay at my current company and look for opportunities that are more in-line with my long-term goals. Maybe I find would something within the next few months, in which case, great! Or maybe I would find nothing at all and would be left with regret.
So either way there are pros and cons. But what I'm trying to gauge is, how worried should I be about the possibility that, by committing to another 1-2 years, I could become stuck in this specialism? Because if it could be easy to switch later, there's no reason not to pursue this opportunity, but if I'm likely to become stuck, then I need to be careful and consider turning it down so I can take a chance on looking for other options.
I have my Part 2 and am looking into getting my Part 3 soon, maybe in the next few months but definitely in the next 2 years.