Beyond the murky middle: 5 career pivot tips

That itch to do something different? Don’t ignore it, says Laura Krantz McNeill.

After many years reporting, Krantz McNeill started looking for a change. She moved into product and is currently the senior editor for subscriber products at the Chronicle of Higher Education. Last week, she shared her advice on successfully making a career pivot as part of our Navigator Q&A series.

“This new work that I do in product is so fulfilling and interesting. I'm glad that I was a reporter, but I kind of feel like this is what I was always supposed to be doing,” she said.

“That wasn't clear in the murky middle part, where I was reading job descriptions and doing online courses and applying and getting rejected and struggling to figure out how to even make the case that somebody should hire me. But now it's clear.”

Below are five key takeaways from our conversation with Krantz McNeill. I love how she offers concrete, specific tips for discovering what types of jobs you want to pursue, using your existing network to support a shift and selling your experience and ability to the hiring manager.

Supporting subscribers, be sure to register for our upcoming Q&A chats to ask your career questions of other professionals. And remember, if you’re not currently getting paid, you don’t have to pay for access — message me at exploreyourriver@gmail.com.

• January: Leaping over the waterfall with Marita Pérez Díaz, web applications engineer at the American Press Institute, on leaving her journalism identity behind to move into tech.

• February: The man behind McCafé on finding your next move after achieving a longtime career goal. You may not know his name, but you know his work. Neil Golden was the Chief Marketing Officer of McDonald's USA for seven years, where he helped establish and maintain the dollar menu, launch McCafé and reenergize the Happy Meal, Big Mac and Quarter Pounder, all while overseeing a $1.2 billion budget.
  
  When he left, he expected he’d keep being an executive, but instead he found a new opportunity by looking closely at what work he wanted to do, and how. Bring your questions about developing and using broad principles to guide your professional decisions.

And now, on to highlights from our chat with Laura! You can view the full webinar recording here, passcode: 1De2i8%H.

1: Read tons of job descriptions.

Immerse yourself in the world you want to inhabit by looking at lots of job descriptions, even if you’re not looking for a new job right now. This research helped me see opportunities to do the kind of work I was interested in, find organizations hiring for that work and identify where I had skills and where I needed to develop skills.

2: Tell a great story.

Go out and interview one or two people who already have the job that you want, and ask them, What do you do all day? What tasks are on your calendar? What skills make you successful? What challenges are you trying to solve?

People will love to talk about their work and you can listen to the words that they use — the phrasing, the jargon, the positioning — and use them. Figure out how to frame your past experiences in the language of where you want to go, and make it easy for the hiring manager to see how you could fit in.

3: Find people to bridge the gaps.

I remember feeling like I was starting from scratch with my network. Really you just need to find one person who gets what you’re trying to do in the Venn diagram between where you are and where you want to go. Explain to them why you want to make a change, and ask them if there’s anyone else you should talk to. When you get into that new world, plug in any way you can and soon you’ll have a new network.

4: Take one step at a time.

It might not always be possible to get exactly where you want to go in one step. I wanted to work in product, but I found this role that was half product, and half of it was writing a newsletter. Sometimes it's a matter of compromising, finding the one thing that will get you in the door where you want to go. Like your network, it's not going to be that way forever. You're going to get back to where you were really quickly. And if it doesn’t work out, you can always go back.

5: Listen to yourself.

Pursuing a career pivot starts with listening to the voice that's calling to you to follow your curiosity. If you feel like there's other problems out there that you want to solve, other challenges you want to tackle, listen to that feeling. Be patient and take steps toward that. Ultimately, you'll get where you want to go and find out that you can do things that you didn't even know you're good at. I hope that is a message of encouragement for everyone.

Happy navigating,
Bridget