What Does it Mean to Pivot in Your Career?

A career pivot refers to making a significant shift or change in your professional direction, often involving a move to a new industry, role, or career path. It can involve acquiring new skills, knowledge, and experience and building new networks and relationships. For anyone looking to reinvent their career or considering a midlife career change, understanding the essence of a career pivot is the first step.

So, what’s an example of a career pivot?

A career pivot could mean starting over by pursuing a new role in a new industry. It could also mean thinking outside your “normal” career structure. Instead of working 9-5 for a single employer, you could pivot into a few freelancer or contractor roles.

A career pivot could also mean changing your job function or role with your current employer. Whether you’re contemplating a career change or simply exploring options to switch careers, the opportunities are endless.

But no matter what direction you go, career pivoting in a post-pandemic world is more common than ever.

This is the time if you want something new, more challenging, or different. You have permission to start exploring what excites you, piques your interest, and motivates you to engage in your work.

Choosing to leave a job of 14 years as an account to pursue entrepreneurship is normal.

Resigning as a welder, firefighter, or entrepreneur after five years, four, or seven to become a UX designer or coder is entirely reasonable.

Leaving your job as a teacher to go to culinary school because you dream of opening your own bakery or running your own restaurant is incredible—and normal.

Every single person I’ve known—from clients to friends to myself—that is no longer motivated in their career (they’re burned out, tired of working 40 hours a week to accomplish someone else’s dream, they no longer love what they’re doing, etc.) all began thinking and asking themselves similar things right before they took the plunge to pivot:

•  I should just be grateful that I have a job.
• I’ve worked hard for my skill set. I shouldn’t throw that all away by diving into something new.
• If I change my career, I’ll have to start at the bottom, and I’m not willing to have a pay cut.
• I don’t even know what I would love to do.
• Sure, my passion is xxx, but I can’t make a living doing that.
• Wanting more out of my career is indulgent.

• I know it’s time for a change, but I need to figure out what direction I want or how to go about it.

Do any of these sound familiar?

Give Yourself Permission to Pivot Your Career

To begin taking steps to pivot, let’s squash any fears getting in your way.

Your brain is hardwired to resist change and will come up with any excuse to prevent change. To pursue our goals DESPITE the fear, we need to reframe what our brain tells us – so that we can get out of our own way and start taking proactive steps to lead us to our goals. 

“I should be grateful I have a job.”

Ah, the gratitude trap! Gratitude is essential, but when you are no longer fulfilled by what you do, it’s a tough road to go down when you’re beating yourself up for not feeling ‘grateful.’ 

What good are you to yourself, your health, your family, and your relationships by staying in a job that makes you miserable? 

In the famous words of Ferris Bueller: Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t look around every once in a while, you could miss it.” 

‘I’ve worked hard on my skillset – I shouldn’t throw it all away to dive into something new.”

When you career pivot right, you won’t throw anything away. No time is wasted because it got you to the point you’re at now. And those skills you worked so hard to earn? 

Not only are many of your skills transferable to ANY industry and role, but you can effectively package them up, so they are universally engaging and eye-candy to ANY new employer. 

Skills transfer, and when you pivot, you become more of an asset, thanks to your well-rounded, seasoned experience, expertise, and diverse skill set. 

“If I change careers, I’ll have to start at the bottom, and I’m not willing to have a pay decrease.”

By pursuing more exciting roles aligned with what you WANT and marketing yourself effectively, you can make MORE money than you ever did doing something you didn’t love. 

“Wanting more out of my career is indulgent.”

Most of us spend one-third of our entire lives at WORK. AT WORK alone. 

With as much time as you spend on the job, don’t you deserve to think a little ‘indulgent’ and selfishly? Don’t you deserve to have what you want in your career and wake up excited on Monday morning? 

Yes, but it’s up to you to take action to move the needle. 

Now that we’ve got some excuses out of the way, let’s launch into HOW you can pivot your career into a new role or industry, using proven strategies that set you up for success – and throw you into a fully aligned, higher-paying, step-into-your-power role.

5 Successful Strategies to Pivot Your Career

Whether you want to make a slight or signifigant career pivot, real change starts with action!

If you’re looking to pivot your career, these five steps (designed to be worked out in this particular order) will help you successfully navigate your journey.

Step 1: Get Mental

To pivot your career successfully, the first step is to have a clear intention into what it is you’d like to do—or what direction you’d like to go, what lights you up inside, what image or thought or idea makes you think: now that’s something that would be worth my time.

To determine what that is, ask yourself:

• What brings me joy?
• What lights me up?
• What are others doing that I experience a twinge of jealousy and wish I was doing?
• If I could do anything, what would it be?

This technique is wholly rooted in building clarity around your passion.

If you’re looking to pivot in your career, you already know that you’ve outgrown what you’re currently doing, but launching into a role that will challenge you and light that fire inside will bring motivation, engagement, and excitement to you in your career…you need some clarity on what excites you.

To find out what that is, take out a sheet of paper.

Draw a line down the middle. On the left column, write ‘Passions,’ and on the right side, write ‘strengths.’

The idea is to create a list that spells out all of your passions (which are things that light you up inside and bring you joy) while listing out your strengths (skill sets and natural talents for those aspects of your career that you have experience doing and are naturally gifted at).

Refrain from thinking analytically about what should fall under both of these lists. The idea is to tap into your passions—especially those you have forgotten about.

List them without censoring yourself.

If you get stuck (because, let’s face it, we’ve all been trained to have careers based on what our brain or our environment has told us is acceptable), think back to your childhood. What did you love to do at six years old?

At ten? At 12 years old? Chances are, what you loved then you still find joy doing now—but perhaps you abandoned it.

It’s time to get it back and consider those aspects as a possible career pivot.

You’ll want to list your strengths in the same way. What are you good at? What comes naturally to you?

• Do you think big picture or strategically?
• Do you find working with numbers easy, or are you obsessed with data?
• Are you a prolific writer or organizer?
• Are you awesome at making other people feel heard and understood?

Look at your lists and create a mock-up job description that incorporates your passions and natural strengths. What would the role be if you were a hiring manager looking at that job description?

Create 3-5 ‘roles’ for this description.

Do your passions and strengths sound like you’d make an incredible speechwriter, the next Chief Revenue Officer for an enterprise SaaS company, or a business owner that provides social media marketing to women-owned businesses?

You not only have permission to pivot in your career, but you have permission to create a job description that fits your passions, strengths, and skill sets.

Next up, moving on to step two.

Step 2: Reverse Engineer Your Career Pivot with Research

Once you know what role(s) you’re interested in, you can pivot your career by researching those already in the seat you want to sit.

LinkedIn is the perfect platform to do this, so head over and start looking for people who already have the roles and titles you want.

Take note of the titles, the responsibilities, and the skills and experience required to succeed in that role. Do you have those skills? Can you incorporate them into your experience and skill sets?

You’ll also want to start joining LinkedIn groups, which can be chock full of like-minded people and networking connections. It’s the easiest way to start building your new network.

Finally, look at your current network and see who can open doors for you. You may not even be aware of your current network of connections and how they can help you.

Sometimes a random connection from an industry or interest you’ve pursued in the past can end up being the golden ticket that opens the door for you.

Step 3: Expand Your Skills and Knowledge

Sometimes you’ll need additional training, certifications, or educational courses to ensure you are fully equipped and up to date with the skills you’ll need for the role you’re interested in.

Pivoting your career may also mean taking online courses to get certifications, learning new technologies, or even pursuing a degree or higher education in a field you’re interested in. This will further ensure you stand out from the pack when applying for jobs.

Step 4: Take Inventory of Your Skills

Once you know what skills future hiring managers are on the hunt for (based on your diligent people search via LinkedIn!), it’s time to take a self-inventory of all those unique skills you inherently possess. 

We often become so focused on our day-to-day, only actually using a tiny percentage of our comprehensive skill set, that we need to remember how truly talented, as a whole, and in demand we are. 

Make a list of every skill, talent, and strength. 

Don’t be timid.

Go all out with everything you can think that you possess. 

Things like:

• ‘UX designer,’
• ‘make people feel seen and heard,’
• ‘awesome at reading analytics,’
• ‘love sharing stories on Instagram,’
• ‘hyper-focused,’
• ‘agile learner’
• ‘a scrappy thinker who comes up with cheap solutions for hard problems’
• ‘high level, etc. 

Step 5: Optimize your Resume and LinkedIn Profile

This is where the power of your messaging comes into play. 

The good news? You get to control which direction you want to go!

However, getting there is so much easier when you focus on understanding these two things:

It’s not enough to apply for a job with a resume and cover letter – even if it’s perfect. Instead, getting hired comes down to your ability to meet job opportunities where they are (and this approach is a lot easier.

Even if you lack the experience, the right messaging can influence how hiring managers react, respond, and perceive your worth! 

I believe everyone can pivot their career without struggle – but launching where you want to land is about these high-converting assets to take you to the finish line.  (BLOCK QUOTE)

Your Linkedin profile.

Recruiters and hiring managers LIVE on LinkedIn. It’s where they post jobs, find candidates, and, most importantly, HIRE those candidates.

So, how do you get seen in a sea of more qualified, experienced competition? Through the power of keywords.

By optimizing your Linkedin profile with the right keywords and some kick-ass brand messaging, the opportunity is yours for a swift landing in your new dream role. 

Your resume.

Once your profile is optimized, and as a result, you’re pulling up on their candidate searches,

Your RESUME is their next touchpoint.

This is where the language you use to describe yourself is VITAL to scoring the interview. 

Avoid overused words like ‘attention to detail,’ ‘team player,’ or ‘results-driven.’

These words are SO OVERUSED that, from a recruiter’s perspective, they don’t stand out.

Instead, use quantitative language that describes your ULTIMATE OUTCOME.

For example, “Building AI That Boosted User Retention by 798%” shows them your value immediately. 

Most interviewees never take the time to practice what they want to say before the interview, but by perfecting your elevator pitch, you’ll dramatically increase your chances of moving along in the interview process, landing the offer, and even hold a major power card for salary negotiations. 

Want to position yourself for a successful career pivot into any role or industry? Book a call to move through a career change easily!