Pivoting Your Career
The secret to successfully changing industries or roles
I’ve had multiple careers over the course of my professional life—startup marketer, university CIO, industry analyst, partner programs leader, just to name a few.
At least once a month someone reaches out to me to talk about pivoting their career, especially those looking to move from higher education to a corporate role.
There is no secret sauce to making a career transition.
I remind people that I didn’t start my career in higher education, which made it easier to navigate out of it. I’ve had multiple roles in multiple industries, which has helped to demonstrate my agility and adaptability in taking on the next challenge.
The path to a pivot
You’ll be most successful changing industries and roles when you can:
Demonstrate versatility. You may not have had the rambling career path I’ve had, but identify the ways you’ve shown your agility and ability to learn and take on new challenges within your own journey—professional or personal.
Speak the language of your intended industry. For example, folks who interviewed in higher education and talked about “the customer” rarely got hired.
Translate your experience. Get crisp about how your experience directly applies to the requirements of the role. You can’t assume the recruiter and hiring manager will see the connection—you’ve got to paint a clear picture for them.
Be willing to make a lateral move, or even take a small step back. Sometimes you have to go backwards to move forward. This isn’t universally true, however, so look carefully at what the opportunity presents you, both now and in the future.
Don’t try to do it all at once. It’s hard to change both industry and role at the same time. Be patient. If you want to make a full transition, you’ll likely have to make it a two-step process—one change first, then the other over time.
Recognize that change takes time, and luck. Changing careers requires patience, a network of people who will vouch for you, and a little bit (or perhaps a lot) of luck. It can be a marathon, not a sprint—so settle in and enjoy the scenery along the way.
Your three best options
For those who are ready to get moving, I’ve found that the three easiest pathways to make a career transition are:
Same function, different industry. Many (although not all) jobs can be performed in a different environment, and these transitions are often be the easiest. If you’re a project manager, making the move to a project management role in another industry can be a fairly seamless transition, particularly if you have industry standard certifications like PMP or Agile Scrum Master. You can even find roles that are seemingly industry-specific, like a learning designer or instructor, in larger companies that do training and certification for their staff or customers.
Industry-adjacent company. If you want to get out of your current role or you’re in a role that isn’t found in other industries, look for companies that serve or sell to the industry you’re coming from. In higher education, these are generally ed tech companies. Moving to an industry-adjacent company can be a great way to leverage your industry expertise while expanding your skillset in a new function or role. In these companies, roles that focus on sales, consulting, customer success, marketing, or product management are often where your industry experience will bring the most value.
Non-industry related company with an industry team. Larger companies, particularly those in technology, often have teams focused on specific industries. This is similar to moving to an industry-adjacent company in that your industry experience is what’s valuable to them, but can be more challenging because the company as a whole may not know, understand, or be structured to best serve the industry you’re coming from and hired to advocate for (and ultimately, sell to). In these companies, industry-focused teams may include sales and customer success roles, as well as an industry go-to-market or thought-leader type of role.
Whether you’re considering your first or your fifteenth pivot, you’ve got this! Your career is uniquely your own—celebrate it, and enjoy the ride to the next stop on your journey.
Have you made a pivot at some point in your career? Leave a comment and share the key(s) to your success, and anything you learned along the way.
Bonus reads: Turns out I write a lot about career change. If you’re exploring what to do next in your career, you might find these useful:
