Career change, shift, pivot. Whatever you call it, after 23 years in corporate America, I wanted out.
I didn’t know what I wanted to do next, but I was sure it wasn’t what I was doing now.
Luckily, the US job market is more stable now than it’s been since before 2020. But changing careers is more than finding a new boss or moving to a different company.
During one marathon search session, I stumbled upon Careershifters and paid $1,175 for its eight-week Career Change Launch Pad course.
Now that I’ve successfully pivoted, here are the best tips I took away from the course.
Step back and assess where you’re at
We started the course by taking a quiz that was supposed to help us determine what stage of the pivoting process we were in (questioner, browser, explorer, pathfinder, and shifter).
These kinds of assessments can sometimes feel gimmicky, but it was helpful to zoom out a bit and reflect on where I was at.
The categories stretched from questioner (wondering whether you need to make a change) to shifter (successfully finding more fulfilling work), and the assessment told me I was an explorer (ready to change but not sure what to do).
Look for people, not jobs
Building my network was exponentially more helpful than skimming through endless job descriptions.
I recommend talking to everyone about your shift — family, friends, former colleagues, yoga teachers, LinkedIn connections. You never know what or who they know.
I met a McDonald’s Happy Meal toy designer through a former boss, and my chiropractor connected me with a lifestyle magazine.
Don’t try to do everything alone
Surrounding myself with a community of other people going through a career change made all the difference in my process.
My program included coaches who had changed careers and about 65 fellow participants from around the world — including a programmer in the UK, a writer in Greece, and an accountant in Brooklyn.
They all understood what it was like to feel stuck and overwhelmed, and we shared ideas, work experiences, and networks.
Even if you don’t want to do a course, there are career-change coaches, podcasts, books, and so many other resources out there to help.
Career shifts don’t happen overnight
We’re asked what we want to be when we grow up all the time as kids, but I hadn’t had the opportunity to explore that question as an adult.
Deciding to pivot allowed me to take the time to discover more about myself, explore my options, and experiment with different possibilities.
Changing careers is a process — don’t rush it. I was eight months into my career shift before I felt confident about what I wanted.
Don’t start with updating your résumé
A résumé is all about where you’ve been. But a career shift is about what you want in the future.
Instead of rushing to update résumés or spruce up my portfolio, I tried to trust the process and focus on figuring out what I wanted.
My career experience up to that point had been something like, “You’re perfect. You’re hired. Now change.”
But after a career-shift coach told me she gets paid to be herself, that became my new mission.
Physically try new things that get you out of your head
It’s going to be really hard to find fulfilling work if you’re just sitting behind your desk all day looking for opportunities online.
Instead of endlessly searching job boards, I did an informational interview with an author, ran promotions for a high-school musical, and went behind the scenes at a local bakery.
Even if I wasn’t necessarily interested in those fields, physically getting myself out there and trying new things helped me along in my process.
Expand your reality bubble
Everyone has what I like to call a “reality bubble,” and they’re full of different ideas, perspectives, people, and experiences.
Simply expanding that bubble a little bit opened my mind to new possibilities for my career shift.
When I pushed myself to have new and different conversations, I met a gift concierge who helped me identify small businesses that needed marketing help and a Disney travel planner who ended up being my first client when I started working as a career-change consultant.
Take your ideas for a low-risk test drive
Attending workshops and testing things out with friends are great, low-risk ways to experiment with different career possibilities.
I did pro-bono marketing for a doggie day care, took an hourlong course on book publishing, and designed a line of 1980s-themed scented markers — along with 25 other short-lived experiments.
Through all these different experiences, I figured out what gives me energy, what I could get good at, and what I might actually be able to get paid for.
Holding one salaried job isn’t the only way to work
When I started this process, I knew I didn’t want to do one thing in one place with one company anymore.
Just because having a single source of income is the norm doesn’t mean that’s where you have to wind up. Eventually, I was able to create a hodgepodged career that met my goal of feeling like I was getting paid to be myself.
Now I work with a variety of people and companies as a freelance writer, career-change consultant, and small-business marketing strategist.
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