My favorite career advice for the career pivot

Here we are, episode 10 of work(ish) by jacob. It’s August, the humidity is humiditying, the lake is lakeing, the beach is beaching, and my air conditioning is air conditioninging.

This week I want to talk about a favorite piece of advice I like to give when chatting with people about potentially making a career pivot. I made a pivot five years ago, when I went from working in higher education to working in tech.

It was a transition, let me tell you. While I was always doing community-adjacent work, making that career change was a big one. It wasn’t about the work necessarily; it was about making a change into a completely different industry. Corporate America too. I was ready for it though.

I remember in the early days of my career pivot I was flooded with requests to meet and chat about the experience, because at the time, so many people in highered wanted to make the same move. This was pandemic year 1, so think about how we were feeling in those days. Everyone was scrambling, in one way or another, to try and figure many things out, career included.

So many people would tell me: “But I’m worried about not being technical enough.” Fair point, totally valid. I thought that too. But I was wrong.

What I began to tell people was to imagine the job description for the role you have now. Throw it out the window. If you had to re-write that JD explaining your job to someone who wanted to apply, what would you say? I tried this exercise and it forced me to think deeply about the work of the role, getting into the nitty gritty. But it also forced me to think about how I communicated my job on my resume.

I advised folks to think about the ‘everydayness’ of their job.

The everydayness is:

• The platforms and software you used

• The metrics you tracked and were accountable for

• The people you collaborated with

• The departments across the company you partnered with (your stakeholders)

• The crises you managed (and resolved)

• The programs you built and managed (and the impacts they had)

• The ‘in the weeds’-ness of the work.

What that does is it gets you to think beyond just what the JD says.

It gets you into the numbers of it all. It gets you to think about the software and technology (wink wink) that you used in your day to day. The thing is, you are familiar with technology, because you had to use it for your job; it’s pretty much a non-negotiable nowadays. Sure, the platform might have been specific to your role, but you still had to learn it! And you used it everyday. And it was part of your reporting and metrics.

The point of all this? Software can be learned. Your passion, curiosity, ambition, and role-up-your-sleeves attitude cannot. That has to come from you, authentically.

And in addition to that, the tech space has so many non-technical roles. Even saying that is kinda odd, because you’re still immersed in some kind of platform/software/technical experience. But I think you get it; I’m referring to basically non-engineering/technical PM roles:

• Operations

• Design

• Brand

• Marketing

• Community

• Program/Project Management

• Customer Experience

• Talent Acquisition

• …there’s more, trust me.

Hey, so if you’re out there and looking to move into tech from a non-tech industry role, you can do it! Just do yourself a favor and zone in on the everydayness of your work. Put all of those details (and the work’s impact/results) on your resume. Get in the weeds of your job. It’s easy to forget some of our work responsibilities and accomplishments.

Go through in your head (or map out on paper) a typical day in the life in that job; perhaps that might help you think of more details you can include in your resume to boost that value you bring as a candidate to a tech role.

Just because you don’t check every box, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t apply. I’d rather know I was declined from a job than regret not applying in the first place.

If they want you, they want you. So much is teachable. And if you’re not trained properly, then that’s on the employer, not you.

Be you, do you, and get that application in!

Thanks for reading and for being here. I don’t take for granted that you care what I have to say. Or even if you don’t care, and you’re still here; thanks for being a fan anyway. ❣️

Let’s connect!