Dear Rachel,
I'm thinking about making the switch from national TV buying into out-of-home buying. Would you consider this a wise career choice? What are the pros and cons?--Wondering Buyer

Dear Wondering,
If you want to be an out-of-home buyer, then by all means make the switch. There are many pros, and yes, there are negatives as well. 

But if negotiating OOH deals motivates and stimulates you, then you should explore what opportunities are out there.

As in all things career-related, you need to know the relative merits of a particular move. But far more important in the long run is whether you're going to find your new field rewarding in a deeper sense, that you're going to be challenged and engaged and fulfilled.

You also have to be willing to take some risks. You need to trust your gut and go with what it tells you.

When you meet people who are unhappy in their work, it's seldom the case that they took a flyer and realized too late that they had made the wrong choice. Invariably those people stuck with what they knew, held back by fear from pursuing what really mattered, only to live in regret.

If possible, make the move from television to out of home internally. Your agency knows you and your work, so in theory it will take less selling than if you were attempting to make the move by going outside.

And if you do find you don't like out of home as much as you thought, it will make it a lot easier to move back.

As an experienced TV buyer, you'll come to your new area with considerable advantages, chiefly the negotiating skills you've honed over time.

But you'll also be facing a steep learning curve. If you imagine how much someone making the change from OOH to network would need to know, you have an idea of the effort and energy you will be required to invest.

On the plus side, out of home is a fast-changing, growing and exciting area of media. It may be the oldest medium, as people like to say, but it's also the newest, thanks to all sorts of innovations, many of them technological, and also the increasing amounts of research.

But keep in mind at the same time that OOH remains a specialized field, and that means comparatively fewer opportunities to bound up the career ladder. You'll be limited in terms of where you can move and the sorts of places you can work, either at agencies that specialize in OOH or agencies large enough to have dedicated OOH teams.

Your salary expectations will also be lower.

“Be aware that, in general, OOH doesn't pay as much as its national broadcast counterparts," advises Kurt O’Hare, president of the Manhattan headhunting firm O’Hare and Associates.

“It's true that people start out making about the same in whatever department they join, but you will see people in network earning more than their OOH counterparts in just a few years,” O’Hare cautions.

The salary spread will continue to widen.

“Over time, this income gap will grow larger and larger, and whereas it's not unusual for senior agency network executives to earn $300,000 and more, only very rarely is even the most senior OOH specialist making more than a fraction of their network counterparts.”

In making your move from broadcast to OOH, you'll not get a raise and you'll be lucky to keep your existing salary. You may even have to take a cut. Consider it your investment, and the agency's investment, in training you and getting you up to speed.

The questions you must answer for yourself are, can you afford to take a cut? And if you can, are you willing to? Are you willing to accept a lower income in the coming years?

Those answers may well tell you whether the move is worth it. If you still want to do it, then go for it.