707: How to Make a Career Pivot Without Starting Over: Switch Industries, Use Transferable Skills, and Land a Better Job

[00:00:00] Scott Anthony Barlow: Think about the answer to this question, "How good are you at your job?" My guess is you're actually very good at it, and it's probably why you've been promoted, probably why you're trusted, and probably why you're the person that people come to when things get complicated. I'm also gonna guess that if you're listening to this now, then somewhere along the way, the work stopped fitting.

[00:00:20] Maybe you started to outgrow it. So I'm gonna guess that you've probably already started to pull up job postings and you're looking around, and probably one of two things happens. Either nothing really excites you that you're seeing, or maybe something does, but you talk yourself out of it because it seems like they want 47 years of experience in some obscure area.

[00:00:40] Either way, no good, right? If you're like most people we talk to, you're probably also doing the math, and you're thinking, "Hey, yeah, if I'm earning, you know, 150 or 200 or $300,000 a year, starting over doesn't sound like a great idea. It sounds terrible." And you would be right. The good news is you don't actually have to start over.

[00:00:59] This is Happen To Your Career. Most people let their career happen to them, falling into jobs by accident, staying longer than they should, and wondering if this is really all there is. But a few people decide to stop settling and do something different. This podcast is for you to take control, get intentional, and design your career to fit the life that you want to build. Real stories, real research so that you can stop waiting and start making it happen. I'm Scott Anthony Barlow.

[00:01:26] Is there's really two big challenges when people feel stuck in the wrong industry? Either they don't resonate with what the industry does or who it serves or, you know, the contribution that it's making in the world, or it could be some version of values misalignment overall.

[00:01:42] We see it all the time. For example, you know, somebody in tech who knows that they're well paid in tech, but can't shake the feeling that the work doesn't mean anything to them. Someone who works in the government who keeps telling themselves, "Hey, I can't walk away from these really wonderful government benefits."

[00:01:57] The golden handcuffs here can be real, but so is the cost of staying. I think the interesting thing here is that the people who are making these changes successfully they're not the ones who had the perfect timing or the clearest path. They're the ones who get very honest about what they actually want. Someone who understood this better than most is Glenn.

[00:02:15] Glenn Strecker: You know, you only have X amount of working years left. Let's make darn sure that you're doing something again that is very well aligned with your mission, with your vision in life, and your values.

[00:02:28] Scott Anthony Barlow: Glenn spent almost 20 years in healthcare sales, very successful by any external measure. And then in 2020, he got diagnosed with a rare spinal cord tumor, which completely changed the way that he was looking at work.

[00:02:40] Glenn, he didn't actually need to make a complete industry change. What he needed was to move into an environment where his values and the company values actually aligned. So he pivoted, landing a role as a regional director at a company that very much restored his energy and gave him purpose that he hadn't felt in years because it was in alignment with what he figured out.

[00:03:03] What Glenn understood here is that the industry is not the asset. You are. When most people think about switching industries, it seems logical that your industry knowledge is your biggest asset. As I mentioned before, it's not. The experience that you have is not only industry specific as well, but what you built in healthcare sales doesn't only count in healthcare sales.

[00:03:25] What you build in finance doesn't only count in finance. We feel like the moment we step outside that context where we earn the skills, that we go back to zero. That's not true at all. So far from the truth. But it is the thing that keeps more people stuck than many other beliefs that we see here at HTYC. It stops people from even getting started.

[00:03:45] What is actually true is that industries are not where your value and contribution lives. Yes, it's a part of it, absolutely, but it's only a part. Industries are just the environment that your value has been demonstrated in so far. Think about what Glenn actually built over nearly a 20-year period.

[00:04:02] He built the ability to represent complex product to sophisticated buyers in a high-stakes environment. He built the skill set and abilities to navigate organizations, to manage relationships, to perform at an executive level, to navigate through ambiguity and uncertainty. He built credibility and judgment and an entire track record of results.

[00:04:25] None of those things that I just mentioned are healthcare sales experience. They all transfer outside of that. Their executive leadership experience, their complex sales experience, the relationship management, their, yeah, high-performance experience. Healthcare sales is just where he happened to practice.

[00:04:42] I want you to stop thinking, "How do I get experience in a new industry?" And instead, begin thinking a far more useful question. I want you to start asking, "What groups or organizations already need exactly what I can contribute?" But notice what's going on here with these couple of different ways of thinking and these questions.

[00:05:01] With the first question, you're treating yourself as a beginner who needs to qualify. That's not how the real world works. When you ask the second question, you're treating yourself as a professional whose context is changing. Much healthier way to think about it, and more useful for your goals.

[00:05:16] Let's spend a moment talking about how do you actually make this move. I wanna give you three examples of steps that we often use with our clients when they're navigating a career pivot like what we've talked about.

[00:05:28] Step one. I want you to take inventory of your skills and experiences at a function level, not an industry level. Many people tend to write and communicate about their experience in industry language.

[00:05:41] "I managed compliance for a tier one financial institution," or things like, "I managed a caseload of 32 patients across multiple care settings with a focus on interdisciplinary collaboration and evidence-based interventions to improve ADL outcomes." That's not only a mouthful, those sentences don't mean anything outside a specific industry. They're going to land flat.

[00:06:05] Your job is to translate. One of the ways that you can start is by beginning to ask yourself, "What is the underlying thing I actually do? What is the underlying thing that I'm actually responsible for at a function or skill-based level, not an industry specific level?" Not the industry context.

[00:06:23] For Glenn, well, he sold clinical solutions to health plans for 20 years. That's a little bit jargony. Not the worst. But we can translate that into build and manage high-trust, high-stakes relationships with executive-level buyers in complex regulated environments. And, you know, it starts to sound much more relevant in other places.

[00:06:46] When I begin to explain it that way, it can translate beyond healthcare. It can land in, you know, certain elements of tech. It can land in financial services. It can land anywhere that requires enterprise sales, executive relationships, ability to perform under pressure. Yeah, regulated environments. All of those absolutely are in many, many spaces.

[00:07:06] One way that you can start doing this is take your last three roles, and for each one, I want you to write out what you did in industry-neutral language. Just take a crack at this at first. It's okay if it doesn't go perfectly the first time around. What problem did you solve? For whom? With what outcome? Strip out every piece of jargon that only makes sense inside your current field.

[00:07:26] Let's go on to another step, though. This is where I want you to find the functional overlap in your target industry. Now that we've begun to translate our inventory, skill set inventory, experience inventory, it's time for you to start looking for roles where the underlying function is the same.

[00:07:41] Notice I said roles, not job titles. The important piece here is that we're looking a little bit more broadly at the function first. This is actually gonna help you out later. For example, Glenn, he wasn't looking for a posting that said, "20-year healthcare sales veteran needed." Instead, he was looking for organizations with the right mission and values where his skill sets, you know, high-performance sales over an elongated time period, executive relationships, navigating through high-regulated environments, all of those things were exactly what was needed.

[00:08:14] Glenn Strecker: In the right sales environment, representing the right product at the right company with the right mission, vision, values, which again, like I didn't realize how critical that was.

[00:08:27] Scott Anthony Barlow: That's the functional overlap question, not, "Does this title match what I've been doing?" But, "Does this role need the underlying experiences or skills or the thing that I actually do?" When you look at it through that lens, you'll almost always find more overlap than you expected.

[00:08:44] Step three is build your story. Think about this as a short narrative. We're just talking about one or two verbal paragraphs that connects where you've been to where you're going in a way that makes that connection feel inevitable, not desperate.

[00:08:58] As a guide, it has to answer three questions. You know, what have I done in the past? What experiences do I have? And in a very functional, not industry-specific set of terms. Also, why this, you know, industry, company, organization, situation specifically? A real reason. Not just, "I wanted a change," but instead genuinely what is pulling you there.

[00:09:19] We have to be able to make that connection. And then also, and this one's actually key, is why does your outside experience and perspective make you more valuable, not less valuable? Big shift.

[00:09:30] The difference between sounding like someone who's leaving something and sounding like someone who's moving towards something is how you can reposition yourself.

[00:09:37] Taj made multiple pivots across entirely different industries– athletics, music, coaching. Each time, he carried a same core set of skills into that new environment. There was no starting over. He was simply repositioning himself each time. Glenn's story we heard earlier, very much the same. But here's the thing that Taj told us directly.

[00:09:58] Taj Dashaun: I always say it's important to think more about how you want to live versus what you wanna do, and then try to fit what you're doing into how you wanna live.

[00:10:06] Scott Anthony Barlow: Now, that's the reframe. Not, "What industry do I belong in?" But, "What kind of work lets me live in the way I actually want to live?" And then finding where that work exists, whatever industry actually needs it.

[00:10:16] Remember, in our line of thinking here, the industry is the container. The work is how you're contributing. Your experiences, your skills, all of those are about how you can contribute, and it can fit into many containers. The sooner you stop asking, "How do I qualify for this new industry?" and start asking, "What place in the world actually needs what I have already done and what I can contribute?", the sooner everything actually changes for you.

[00:10:41] I wanna give you one other thing that can probably help, though. If you're at that place where you know something needs to change, but you're just not sure how to get from where you are to work that is meaningful but also well-paid, then I would encourage you to check out our career change guide.

[00:10:55] It actually walks you through specific examples of how people discover their ideal career, how they make the move, without throwing away everything that they've built. And you can get it for free, completely free, by clicking into the links inside the show notes and description here. We make it super easy.

[00:11:10] It'll take you to the website. You can download it by PDF if you want, or you can simply read it on the site. I think you'll love it, though, because if you've already spent enough years feeling stuck in your career, then this is going to help you think about it very differently. Until next time, I'm Scott Anthony Barlow, and this is Happen To Your Career. Adios. I'm out.