Career Change 101: How to Pivot With Purpose

Lori Cole (00:03):

Alright, with that, let’s get started. I am Lori Cole. I’m a certified career coach and advisor here at iHire. And I want to welcome you to today’s session, Career Change 101: How to Pivot with Purpose. And we were just talking in the pregame here about how many people right now are in the market for a career change. Today’s session is sponsored by Northwestern University School of Professional Studies. Northwestern offers high quality and flexible and accessible master’s degree programs, bachelor’s degree programs, and certificate programs. And you’re going hear us talk about these certificate programs later that empower professionals to achieve their career goals. So highly encourage you to check that widget on your screen to check checkout Northwestern University and we thank them so much for being a sponsor of the webinar today. And with that, I’d like to tell you about some of the other widgets that you can see on your screen.

(01:13):

Two more. One widget. The widgets allow you to move and resize everything. In today’s presentation. There are resources related to today’s presentation, so check those out and you can also upload, get the uploaded slides from the presentation and be sure you find that. Ask a question widget, submit your questions at any time during the presentation. Only our producers will see those and will answer as many as we can after the webinars. And then if we don’t get to your question, really no worries because we’re going to be publishing an article that answers your questions anonymously. We’re not going to use your name or anything like that, but we’re going to publish an article in the next few days that will give the survey results and the questions. So you can look for that in our resource center in the next couple of days. And then you’re also going to receive an email about tomorrow about the recording of this webinar tomorrow. So lots of things to keep on the lookout for. With that, I’d like to welcome today’s presenter, Laura Nata. Laura is the manager of EDU Solutions here at iHire, and she joined during our merger with WorkInSports back in April of 2021. In addition to everything she does here at I hire, Laura is also an adjunct professor at Upper Iowa University where she develops and teaches a master level course in sports sales and I can’t imagine anybody better to do that. Thank you so much for being here, Laura.

Laura Nauta (02:53):

Thanks, Lori. Excited to be back.

Lori Cole (02:57):

Alright, so let’s get started with a poll. Which of these is the most challenging part about changing careers? Figuring out those transferable skills, gaining additional skills and qualifications for a new position, adjusting your resume and cover letter for different industries or building a professional network in your new field. So while we’re waiting for you to answer those survey questions, Laura, can you give us a little bit of a walkthrough about what we’ll be covering today?

Laura Nauta (03:27):

Absolutely, yeah. Let’s hop into the agenda. We’re going to have a lot of information to go over today. We’re going to start high level, but then really get down to the nitty gritty as well to make sure you can act on some of these things as you’re looking to shift for your career. So we’ll start out with reasons for changing your career and signs that it might be time for a change. We’ll take the next step, which is the first step every job seeker should take before making a career change. What do you need to do before you even begin the journey? Then we’ll start identifying your unique transferable skills and optimizing your resume with those skills. We’ll also prepare you for a successful career change. What does that look like? What steps I should take? All of those different things. We’ll go into my favorite thing, which is informational interviews. They are career change game changers. If you are looking to make a career shift, informational interviews are hugely important. We’ll go into that and then we will also dive into a few common career change mistakes that you should be avoiding if you’re looking to make a career change. And then of course, like Lori mentioned earlier, we’re going to have a little bit of time left over for q and a as well,

Lori Cole (04:54):

And this is one of the hardest things is to know when it’s time. You may have different feelings, different things that come up, but once you make that definitive decision, it always usually falls into a few things. So there’s major changes in your field or your industry, your role or the company in general that you’re working for. Sometimes it’s personal changes, right? Search such as relocating family obligations, work-life balance, different things like that can have a huge effect on time for career change. And there’s some really easy signs to know when you’re ready for something new, you wake up and you don’t want to go to work, right? You’re dreading going in. It’s not just a, oh, I’m in a lull right now, I’m not feeling it. But next week was better. It’s a consistent, you really are not looking forward to going to work.

(05:41):

You’ve already been looking at other options, you’ve been checking out. I hire and seeing what jobs are available. You’ve been kind of refreshing your resume and making sure that you have what you need to shift. So you’ve been checking out other things, right? You’ve been looking at what’s out there in the world. You feel stuck where you’re at, right? There’s no upward mobility, there’s nowhere to go. You feel kind of just like you plateaued where you’re at or things have been going downhill for a while. Just consistent domino effect of this is not where I’m supposed to be. So those are some of those ways that you can tell that it’s time to make a career change. And I personally, when I had to make my career change, honestly, a lot of these fell into my change. So it was personal industry, company and simply my feelings. So I hit all these buckets when I was looking. So you can have one or all of these apply for when you’re ready to go.

Lori Cole (06:44):

I love the way that you’re talking about the feelings because a lot of times your gut knows before you do. You’ve got to pay attention to those little nudges and just how you’re feeling about things.

Laura Nauta (06:58):

Absolutely.

Lori Cole (07:00):

So when we have made this decision, where should we get started?

Laura Nauta (07:07):

Yeah, step number one is finding your focus right? Before you can start even imagining doing something else, you have to figure out what that might be. So I remember taking the first thing would be completing a career assessment. I remember vividly taking one of these when I was in grade school when I was in high school, and it was simple personality assessment, walking you through, asking you tons of different questions, you go with your gut and then it presents you at the end with a bunch of different options that you could go into for your career that would align with what you’re good at. It’s kind of a similar idea. There’s a lot of them out there for you to do, but it really helps align with things that you’re already really good at, that you’re geared towards, and it will help you funnel them into different job opportunities and careers.

(07:57):

I mean, Myers-Briggs has one. There’s a ton of them out there. We highly recommend starting with that because it’s going to help you find your focus and then you can kind of determine your unique talents. A professor of mine at USF used to always say, what makes you unique? Your unicorn ness, right? What’s your one thing that nobody is going to be better at than you? Because what do I do best? What do I love to do? And also what am I not good at, right? It’s okay that you don’t have to be good at everything, but understanding what you’re not good at can help you determine what you’re doing next. And then it’s good to determine your passions. What motivates you? What demotivates you? What do you value in a job? What did you like about your previous jobs, right? There are probably things that you enjoyed about your previous roles that you want to continue, and what would you do if money wasn’t an issue?

(08:51):

And I love this one because it’s the same conversation I have with my max all the time. He absolutely loves his job. He works in golf, he gets to golf basically every day, but it’s his career and he is so happy every day when he gets up and he is ready to go to work, he loves to go to work, and of course he makes money. Everybody has to make money in this day and age, but it’s one of those ones where I wouldn’t want him to do anything else. Even if money was off the table, I would work harder to make sure that he could do that simply because he loves it and it’s his passion and it is nice that he gets to make money at the same time. But try to think about what you’re passionate about, what you would see yourself getting up every day excited to do, and then determine your why.

(09:37):

What is the impact I want to make? What do I want to solve? What does success look like to me? Who do I want to help with this job when I make this transition? What impact do I want to have in the world? That’s huge. When you’re deciding to find your focus, it also ties into your passions and then your talents. And Lori’s going to love this one. You can use AI for some of your inspiration and ideas by simply asking it some questions. You could even throw your resume in there and say, Hey, this is what I’ve been doing for the past 10 years. I want to make a shift to focus more on helping people in this field or helping whatever you want to do, whatever you like doing. Ask AI to help you. Like, Hey, this is what I like to do. This is the experience I have. How can I pivot to a different field? And what field would that be? So I highly recommend doing a very deep and then asking for some help.

Lori Cole (10:34):

Yeah, I totally agree with the career assessments. When I had an aha moment, I was probably midway through my career. I had my Myers-Briggs profile. So I know I am an ENFP, and if you know your Myers-Briggs, you know what your four letters are, but I wasn’t sure what to do with that. So I bought this book called Do What You Are, and it is based off of the Myers-Briggs personality types. When I started to read my chapter, it told me why I did the things I did, why I liked what I liked and why I was not good at some of the things that I’d always done, and I just didn’t like those parts of my job. That was really where I decided, okay, this is the direction that I need to go with the rest of my career. And it was right on. So yeah, it’s great to have these career assessments, but you also have to do something and analyze them. And again, you can put that in AI and say what your personality type is, and it’ll tell you what you should be leaning towards. All right, so once somebody has a direction, how do they figure out what skills will actually carry over into those new roles?

Laura Nauta (12:03):

Yeah, this is a great next step. So obviously you’ve done some self-assessment at this point. You’ve figured out what you want to do, what you’re good at, where you want to pivot, but now you need to be able to take the experiences and the skills that you’ve had in this other field or this other job or this other industry for years and completely shift it to work somewhere else, right? And I’m telling you from personal experience, skills are transferable, right? Because ultimately transferable skills or competencies that you’ve gained, one way that you can apply somewhere else. So the first thing you should do is wherever you decide to go next, wherever you want to focus your energies, you should research that target industry first. So what are the things that are missing in that field? What are you seeing that are being asked of a lot in inner?

(12:54):

Do some research. Figure out what that industry is wanting and skills because that’s what you should target as your transferable skills. That’s what you should highlight because there’s probably a lot of people that you’ve learned a lot of these skills in your current role and this other industry is looking for it. That’s what you should highlight when you start applying for jobs in that industry. So do a little research, figure out what your target industry is needing. Find those gaps in the market and fill ‘em right? And please, please consider your soft skills. This is something that there’s tons of, I read articles every day about how employers are hiring more and more for the essential skills. Technical skills are great, but they can be taught. So employers are investing in people that have the essential skills that are teachable. They can come in, they understand adaptability, time management, communication, all of those things you’ve learned in your professional careers at this point, and they will teach you coding and all of the technical side of things, but if you have those technical skills, you absolutely can transfer.

(14:06):

So it’s one of those ones where you need to consider both soft and hard skills when you’re looking at what’s transferable, because companies look for both, but your essential skills can be just as important. One thing too is you can use, I hires resources, you use, I hires Career Explorer tool to search for jobs, buy your specific skills and get focused alerts based on that. So that’s huge, huge, huge stuff for me, especially when I was looking, my background was in sales, but my background was in sports sales. So I did a lot of ticket sales. I worked for a few different teams. I managed a lot of ticketing operations, very business to consumer. It was a want versus a need product, and I had to make a pretty large shift when I came into the education side because it’s more of a need, not a want.

(14:53):

It’s not a luxury item. It is a needed item. But at the end of the day, all of the teachings and all of the skills I learned as a professional salesperson completely shifted to my new role. So all the trainings, all everything that I got, yes. Was it very focused on selling tickets to an event? Absolutely. But the things that I gained from those trainings I still use now, how I handle things with prospects, how I work the system, all of that completely translates. So going from sports to education definitely wasn’t an immediate like, oh, that totally matches. I had to pivot it, but all the things that I learned in the core of them transferred. So make sure to look and see what can transfer for you

Lori Cole (15:42):

And that Career Explorer tool on our site is a great way to get started. It will really help you understand those transferable skills. So what are the must-dos for somebody preparing to change careers?

Laura Nauta (16:03):

Yeah, this is a good one because it’s one of those ones where you can think it all you want, but you really do need to prepare. It’s going to take some time. It’s not going to happen overnight, and it’s going to take a lot of effort and you’re going to get a lot of nos and you’re going to get a lot of, you might get discouraged a few times, but you have to stick with it. So you need to make sure that you’re prepared. So you found your focus. You know what you want to do. Well, first of all, you know want to change, right? You’ve decided you want to make a career change, then you found your focus, then you found your transferable skills. Now it’s time to go do it right? Well, before you go do it, you need to prepare. One of the biggest things is you need to carefully consider your financial situation going from a different industry, going from a different job.

(16:48):

If you’re going to make a drastic pivot, you will likely have to start a little bit lower than your current position that you’re in now, because in order to get in another field, sometimes you have to start entry level or maybe a step or two below where you’re at now. But because of all your great experience, you’ll probably climb the ladder a little bit quicker. You’re already a more established professional, but you do need to consider that. You need to sit down and look at your financial situation and make sure, and you need to look, I mean, we have this on I hire where you can go look at the jobs that you’re looking for. It will tell you the salary range. It will tell you what the going salary is in your area for that role, so you can really sit down and think about it.

(17:29):

So make sure to think about everything in that realm as well. You also need to start expanding your network and your target industry. Start connecting with people on LinkedIn. Start going to conferences that are available in your area that focus on that field. Do some very wide, give yourself a wide ber of network. If you looked at my LinkedIn right now, half of it’s sports and half of it’s education. I’m connected with professors, but I’m also connected with people that are nitty gritty sports professionals. So make sure that your network is expanded to your new target industry. Update your online profiles and presence, right? Update. I started updating what I got alerts for. I signed up for newsletters and things that were more geared towards this field to stay in the know and to show up when things were happening in that field or in that industry.

(18:23):

So update your presence, what you go to, what you talk about, all of that different stuff. You better start preparing for job interviews and common questions right out of the gate because yes, it’s going to take you a little while to get there, but you definitely want to be prepared. What if the first job you apply for, you get an interview and you’re like, oh no, I don’t know what questions I’m going to get asked. Don’t hinder your ability to get it quicker and not prepare in advance. So prepare for those job interviews and common questions. Maybe talk to some people, and I’m getting ahead of myself because informational interviews is coming, so I’ll stop, but we’ll go into that more. But definitely look into some common questions for job interviews and things that will happen in the new field that you’re looking to go into.

(19:07):

And then you can always take courses to gain and improve on in-demand skills. So you did that research right of some gaps in the industry, things that are needing to be worked on. For instance, for me, for everybody right now, AI is so huge. Everybody needs to get a little bit more informed on ai. Well take an AI certification, how it’s used. Northwestern, one of our sponsors today, they have tons of certificate programs that are really, really great for adult and modern learners because you probably have a job, you have a family, you have other things, you have responsibilities. You can’t go sit in the classroom for hours on end. You’re not an undergrad. That doesn’t mean that you can’t keep learning. Continue to be curious and take some of these courses. Northwestern has tons of certificate programs that are online that are really great, and it is something that goes into our next item and updates your resume. It adds new skills, new certifications. It’s a great way to really fill that gap that we already established the other industry has in our previous slides. So that’s huge. And then obviously update your resume. You can’t use the same resume you used for your last job. If you do that, you’re sending yourself up for failure. You really need to dig deep and update your resume. Probably almost gutting it to the point where it now better aligns with what you’re doing.

Lori Cole (20:27):

Yeah, all great advice. The other thing I want to point out, there’s another tool that you can use. It’s called Google Interview Warmup tool. And if you just Google interview warmup, their tool will come up and it’s great for you to prepare for any interview, but especially those interviews where you’re changing careers, you’re not really sure what they’re going to ask. It’s very interactive and it will ask you questions that you’re likely to get in that field. So highly recommend that for you as a resource as well. All right, Laura, let’s talk resumes. What should career changers keep in mind when they’re updating their resume? You’ve already said if you’re using the same old resume, you’re already setting yourself up for failure.

Laura Nauta (21:20):

Absolutely. It’s like I just gave myself a nice layup here with my next slide, so it’s like I knew it was coming or something. So creating an interview winning resume for your career change. I touched on it earlier, of course, now we’re going to talk about it more. So it’s huge. I mean, like I said, if you’re using the same resume from before, you’re setting yourself up for failure, truthfully, and we don’t want, we want you to be ready and prepared. So you need to do a huge resume rework. Like for instance, for me, there’s a lot of things that on a sports resume you needed to do, right? For sports, they like to have numbers. They don’t need necessarily a skill section. They don’t really, I never used a summary paragraph with sports people because they get so many applications that it’s just they look at the first five lines and they move on.

(22:08):

So when I switched back out of sports, I needed to drastically change my resume, so it to be more education focused, because education uses a lot of different things. They actually have CVS versus resumes. They include classes that they teach. It’s a very different thing. I had to do a lot of research. So you might need to consider doing a hybrid resume. You need to title your resume with the target role you want, and you need to have a strong summary paragraph. You need to change things up. Create a skill section in this case, because you need to highlight your transferable skills. We talked about how you have ‘em in this case, if you want to stand out, you need to highlight ‘em. And then you need to highlight only the most relevant experience and achievements. So when I was applying for sports jobs, I put the fact that I was a mascot in college, pretty high up on my docket of experience because it’s a unique identifier for me.

(23:01):

Sports people know that it’s important. Everybody in sports knows what mascotting is. It’s very industry specific, right? It’s a big unicorn. They remember it on a resume. So I always put it first when I switched back over to the corporate side. Yes, is that great? Is it a nice icebreaker? Does it make people want to talk to me? For sure. But it’s not necessarily the most relevant experience for me to get a job in selling higher education. So I shifted some things around, not that those things aren’t important and they can come up in your interview or even in your cover letter, but it doesn’t necessarily need to be the first thing that they see. And then consider some relevant volunteer roles or unpaid positions. Because as you’re trying to make a career change, you might be doing some different things on the side, testing some things out, working some different things.

(23:50):

Please include those because it’s going to show that you have relevant experience, even if it’s not a full-time gig, it’s relevant experience that will help transfer you into this new market. And then really ask yourself, will this detail on my resume help me make my career change? Is this needed? Right? Sit down and look at everything on the resume and start redlining things that are like, okay, this is great and I do have this experience, but is this hiring organization going to care, right? Is it going to be helpful for me getting this specific job? And if it’s not, switch it off for something that

Lori Cole (24:25):

This is where our resume builder really can come in handy. It also has a follow-up tool with it that will compare your resume built in our system with the job description that you’re looking at. And then it will tell you which skills from the job description you have in your resume and what you might want to add. So Laura talked about you’re going to have to add certain skills for different job descriptions. This will tell you exactly what you need to know with the resume builder and then that follow-up AI resume score. So yeah, again, check those out. Great tools. Alright, let’s talk about one of the most underrated strategies out there. Break down how these informational interviews can help you.

Laura Nauta (25:18):

My favorite slide, I love an informational interview. I’m glad we’re here. So informational interviews, they are game changers when it comes to changing careers. They’re game changers for anyone really wanting to do anything, I highly recommend them. Even if you’re not looking to make a change, you just want to learn more about your industry, they’re huge. It was something that I did a ton of in college and thank you to my professors for enforcing it. It was actually part of my curriculum, but thank you for making me do it. Professors, it was huge and I’ve kept up with it. So informational interviews can help you learn more about anything, right? A position, a career path, a company, an industry, anything that you want. And it is a lot less invasive and a lot easier to do and to get people bought into doing than just reaching out to someone on LinkedIn and saying, can you help me find a job?

(26:13):

Because no one’s going to reply, right? Informational interviews is a completely different value prop. It’s more of a, Hey Lori, I see that you are a career coach. I’m thinking about getting into that field, but I’m not entirely sure what that looks like. Would you be willing to give me 15 minutes of your time so I can learn a little bit more about what you do? It is very easy to do. It’s a very easy ask. Anytime anyone has reached out to me on LinkedIn that is looking to get into whatever industry, and they come to me and they say, Hey, I think what you’re doing is pretty cool. I’m looking at maybe doing something similar, but I have no idea what the day-to-day looks like. Would you be willing to give me some time to try it out, right, to see, to ask you some questions.

(27:02):

I always say, yes, it is great to find these people on LinkedIn, professional associations, your alumni network. I use my alumni network a ton. It’s actually how I got my job with work and sports back in the day. My alumni network was what got me the referral for the job. So yes, you can get jobs from it too, but that should not be the reason that you reach out. The real reason that you reach out to people is to learn and be genuinely curious about what they do. It will also help you decide maybe it isn’t what you want to do too. So I will tell you, when I did some informational interviews and some job shadowing, very similar idea. I was always pushed to go into sales, to sales to sales. And I was like, yikes. I do not want to go into sales.

(27:48):

It’s very used car salesman. I thought of the movie Matilda. I was like, no, the dad on Matilda. I was like, no, I don’t want to do it. But they’re like, you should just go and talk to someone in sales and actually see what they do in a day. And I literally went and I sat with Kelsey Smith from the Tampa Bay Lightning for and a half a day, and I asked her a bunch of questions and I watched her work and I have been in sales ever since and I knew that I’d never do anything else. So it’s huge to learn what you may not have thought you want to do is what you want to do or what you really thought you wanted to do isn’t what you want to do. So huge, huge, huge. And some tips for informational interviews. Be on time and be prepared.

(28:28):

You’re there to learn, but you’re also taking time out of someone else’s day. So you don’t want to go in and be like, what’s up? Can you get me a job? Make sure that you’re on time, that you come with prepared questions and that you’re there to learn. You should not be talking majority of the time. You should be asking questions and learning more. And then express very, very, very genuine gratitude for this person, giving you their time. And then follow up. You can keep in touch with them, see what they’re doing. And if it’s really a great relationship, you can ask for them to be your mentor. I mean, there’s a lot that can come from it or it can simply be, I wanted to learn from you, I learned from you, thank you. But it can always evolve into more and it’s a great way to extend your network. I highly, highly, highly recommend it.

Lori Cole (29:18):

Yeah, I do too. It’s also if you can job shadow, if you’re offered a job and you have the opportunity to job shadow with the person that’s maybe leaving that job, I was able to do that one time and I ran from the building after just a few hours because it was like the company, I’m very techie. The company was still doing things on index cards and I said, well, I think I’m really going to be able to help you guys get all this stuff computerized, create a database. And they were like, oh no, you can give that up right now because the owners are not going to get computers for people and this is the way they’ve always done it. This is the way they’re going to do it. And I’m like, okay, not for me. So it can also be a great resource for you if you’re thinking about taking a certain job or getting into a different field. Absolutely. Alright, we’ve talked about what we should do, but what should we not do when we’re preparing for this career change?

Laura Nauta (30:29):

For sure. So these are some things that have happened and I will tell you, I’ve done some of these mistakes. So this is coming from personal experience. I did try just using the same stuff that I had before. I tried just keeping my profile the same and was like, oh, well, by the time I get into the interview they’ll understand and it didn’t work. So I’ve made some of these mistakes. So I’m telling you for personal experience, don’t do it. But conducting an honest self-assessment is number one, if you don’t do this, you’re going to end up having to do it later or you’re going to end up taking the wrong role or you’re going to end up doing the wrong thing and being miserable again. So you really need to have some really strong self-awareness of what am I good at? What do I want to do and how can I do it?

(31:18):

And then like I said, not updating your resume, cover letter or profiles. You are skipping a step in the whole process and you’re probably not going to get a lot of, you’re going to end up not being as successful in the process as you think you are and it’s going to hurt kind of your, I don’t know your heart, but it’s going to basically, if you don’t do those things by the time you go and start applying for jobs, you’re not going to get a lot of callbacks and it’s going to hinder your ability to think that you can do this. So skipping any of these things or not doing them is going to make it seem like you can’t reach this goal. Not being realistic about your career change is another thing. You got to be a realist with yourself and what this looks like and then confusing a career change was simply changing jobs.

(32:08):

It’s a very different thing. Changing jobs is, Hey, I like what I do. I just don’t like where I’m doing it or what I’m doing. I want the same job just somewhere else or that’s different than changing careers. Changing careers is I am pivoting from something I’ve done for a long time that I’m focused on and I’m specialized in and I need to transfer it to a completely different thing. So definitely don’t confuse those two. And then trying to navigate your career change alone, this is something that a lot of people do because they’re worried that they won’t necessarily get the support that they want or that people will maybe not even help them in the way that they think, but it is huge to bring your network in and to help you. When I was looking to navigate, I talked with my mentors from the sports side and from the I hire and the education side constantly. I stayed in touch with all of my different people to really get a fully well-rounded support network for me trying to do this. And that included my family too, but it even included my professional mentors and my professional network. So do not try to navigate it alone. It is a long, hard process and you shouldn’t do it alone. You should lean on your people.

Lori Cole (33:23):

Totally agree. Before we get to the recap slide, I just wanted to do a quick emoji poll with people. If you have used AI in either creating your resume or creating a cover letter, I would really like to see those emojis flying. They’re already going. And something that we’ve kind of overlooked here and should talk about is your cover letter. We have a great cover letter generator on the website, or you could also use AI for this copy in your resume, copy in the job description, and tell AI that you’re a career changer and you want to write a great draft of a cover letter. And I’m going to say this, although we’ve probably all heard it, never just copy and paste things directly from ai. Always use it as a draft and create your own copy from it because AI will have some dead giveaways about if you’ve copied and pasted, and I’ve even seen this on recent news sites, one dead giveaway is a long dash between words. Sometimes it won’t use the commas or the proper grammar. It’ll put a long dash in, and when you see that long dash, somebody has just directly copied and pasted from ai. So that’s just something for you to all keep in mind.

Laura Nauta (34:49):

Yeah, good call out about cover letters too, Lori. I think it’s something, especially for a career changer that is important because a resume is words and a cover letter is a story, so I think the biggest thing for you guys is if you’re going to mention, Hey, these are my skills that are transferable. Well, they need to know what they are in action. I will tell you, even when I was hiring, I got tons of resumes for sales executive positions. Anyone that had a cover letter, I actually filtered to the top because they took the extra time to give me some real experiences that they had. Even if they weren’t qualified for the role I read there’s more because I wanted to hear how they were going to pivot what was on their resume to apply to this job. So I highly, highly recommend that as well. Good call out. Lori.

Lori Cole (35:37):

Let’s go ahead and have you give a recap here and I’ll get into the questions. We’ve got tons of questions from the webinar participants, and if you haven’t already, this would be the time for you to put your question in, so go ahead with that recap.

Laura Nauta (35:53):

Yeah, quick recap of what we went over today. A lot of good stuff here. Changing career successfully is possible with a clear target in preparation. We talked a lot about that, right? It’s not an overnight activity. It’s on check the box activity. It’s going to take some time. We talked about identifying your most marketable and valuable skills that can be transferred to this new role. We also discussed updating your resume cover letter and online presence, making sure all of those things match and that you’re keeping your finger on the pulse with what you’re trying to shift to growing your professional network through informational interviews, things like that. Getting out there in that new field that you’re trying to get into. Take some courses to gain high demand skills. We have Northwestern, that’s a great resource for you. They have tons of different certification programs for professional studies, great ways for modern learners to really get out there and fill some of the gaps that are happening in different industries.

(36:44):

And then my favorite hold information, interviews with people in your industry. Ask for ‘em. Just say, Hey, I want to learn more about what you do. It’s really interesting. I’m thinking about making a career shift, but before I do that, I want to learn from people that are currently in it. It’s a really easy ask. Not everybody’s going to do it, and not everyone’s going to say yes, but if you do it the right way, you’ll have a lot more success than just reaching out to somebody and saying, Hey, I want a job like yours. Can you help me do it? Coming at it as more of a I want to learn from you is always the best method.

Lori Cole (37:16):

Absolutely. Alright, so let’s get to some of these questions here. The first one’s about cover letters and we’ve already kind of talked about the those, but should I mention my career change in my cover letter and how should I mention that career change?

Laura Nauta (37:36):

Absolutely. Absolutely. You should mention it because they’re going to look at your resume and see that you’ve been in a very different field. Pretending it’s not happening isn’t going to help you at all. Employers very clear, concise, this is why I’m doing it. So absolutely, I think you should include it. It’s always better to be totally upfront and honest and very clear with an employer. They’re going to prefer that rather than you get into the interview and you hit ‘em with a totally out of the blue thing, they’re definitely going to want to see it first, and then that cover letter is where you can talk about why the shift is happening and how it can work for them and in their favor. So absolutely mention it.

Lori Cole (38:20):

Yeah, I really like that. How this is going to work for them in their favor. What skills are you bringing? What talent do you have that’s going to apply to this new job and your cover letter, you should keep it to a page, maybe three or four paragraphs, a paragraph in the middle about why you’re doing this career change. It doesn’t have to be a whole life story. It shouldn’t be a whole life story. You want it to be easy for that employer to digest, but you definitely should be mentioning it just so that your resume makes sense. Because if they see your resume and they’re like, oh, this person doesn’t have any experience in this industry before, they just automatically put it to the side. You want them to understand where you’re coming from and that this is something you’re pivoting to. All right. How do you cover up that you’re overqualified for a position?

Laura Nauta (39:22):

You should never cover up anything.

Lori Cole (39:25):

I would agree.

Laura Nauta (39:26):

You should never cover up anything. I do understand what you’re saying though. I understand what you’re saying. Hey, if I’m shifting positions up, but I’m a senior director, but I’m willing to take the shift like a career shift and go in at entry level, they’re never going to look at me because I’m way overqualified. Again, this is where your cover letter should come into play, and this is where your summary in your resume should come into play. Never hide your skills, never hide your abilities, but be very clear and upfront with employers about why you’re applying for the job. Call it out. I know that I am overqualified on paper for this role, but this is what I want do. If you’re, I want this thing, please consider me for this, right? It’s okay to be overqualified on paper. It will be upfront about it.

(40:16):

Say, Hey, I know I’m overqualified. I know if you look at my resume, it shows that I’m a VP of finance and I’m trying to come in for your job at an entry level. I know what I’m doing and I’m willing to take the hit. They will respect you more for being open and honest, and then they might also say, Hey, we see you. We actually have a higher level role. You never know what’s going on at a company, so if you’re more upfront and honest about why you’re doing it, they might find something else that’s suited for you that’s at a higher level if they really truly think you’re overqualified, but never hide it.

Lori Cole (40:50):

The other thing that you should consider is only put the last 15 years of your experience on the resume. Again, the resume doesn’t have to be your whole life history, your whole work history, so the last 15 years would probably be sufficient, and I saw something in the chat like, well, why would somebody hire me because I’m over 50 or I’m over 60. You still have a lot of work life left and that’s why they would hire you, so it’s just better for you to just put those last 15 years on, make sure that you are, I am not going to say that you should hide anything, but it doesn’t hurt if you camouflage it a little bit by not putting your whole history on there. And we also have an age as a masterclass. I mean, I completely forgot about that. We do have, if you are in the position where you feel age is an issue with your job search, check out that age is a masterclass because we talk specifically about how to do your resume, how to negotiate salary, how to do interviews, what your interviewing answers should be, so it’s a great thing for you to check out.

(42:15):

Okay. Most older experienced candidates have already gone through a career pivot at least once. Their main concern now is how to overcome the challenge of getting hired over younger candidates and how can they break through that barrier. I’ll again, talk to this one for a minute, Laura, but just that age as a masterclass, you’ve got to go in those interviews and not be intimidating because chances are, I’m in this class too. If I were going into an interview right now, I’m going to get interviewed by somebody much younger than I am, so I just would have to go in personally and more humble, more non-intimidating, like, I’m not here because I want to run the show. I’m here because I want to work for this company, and I’m so excited about this opportunity and I bring diversity. I bring age diversity to this team, and that’s a piece of diversity you don’t hear getting talked about a lot is the age diversity. Laura, anything else to add with that?

Laura Nauta (43:38):

Yeah, I mean, plus one to everything you’ve said, I think everybody gets in this mindset of, oh, they’re going to take younger because they’re hungry. Well, they’re hungry to move up the ladder as fast as they possibly can, whereas what employers are needing is people who they want their employees to grow and to learn and to move up the ladder, but they don’t want that to be their only focus. They also want them to work. They want them to get the job done and do a good job for the company and understand why the company is around and the values and the passions and everything behind it. So you can provide a very different perspective by being an older candidate. It’s something that they’re not going to see, and you can provide a more well-rounded experience than a young, hungry, fresh out of college just looking to get their first job,

Lori Cole (44:28):

But you also have to keep up those tech skills. I think that

(44:35):

One of the common things that I hear about candidates who feel like they’re experiencing ageism is that people don’t feel like you’re very techie. You haven’t kept up with your tech skills. That’s got to be something that you come out of the gate with on your resume and just get over that hurdle immediately. Make sure that they understand that this is where the Northwestern classes could come in. You could show that you’ve done some of these micro certifications for different things that Northwestern has as it relates to tech, so really encourage you to keep those skills up.

Laura Nauta (45:15):

Good call out.

Lori Cole (45:18):

Again, here is another one that is a little bit ageism related. How do you pivot when you’ve been in a specific career such as HR and are 60 or over?

Laura Nauta (45:34):

Yeah, I mean it’s similar to what we’ve already discussed. It can happen. It’s not something that, it’s not a no, right? I think it’s making sure that you’re prepared, making sure that you’re pivoting properly. I just read an article from one of my news. I told you I signed up for a lot of newsletters, so I got a lot of things coming in, but I just read something recently that employers are looking for more experienced years on the earth staff than ever before because what they’re finding is a lot of this next generation of employee are coming in and they are wanting things that the company can’t offer. They’re wanting this four day work week. They’re wanting hybrid or work from home, and they’re not willing to budge on it. So I think there are always companies out there that are looking for a traditional hardworking individual no matter their age or no matter their experience. They need someone who’s willing to put in the work, and this next generation is a little bit more picky about what they want and that’s great. Everyone should do what is best for them, and I’m part of that generation that’s a little bit more picky, so I’m speaking for me too, but there are still those companies that need dedicated boots on the ground, so there’s always going to be opportunity. It’s just making sure that you’re pivoting the right way and preparing and really selling yourself as that right fit.

Lori Cole (47:18):

All right. Here’s a quick one that I’m going to refer you to the resource center for. Do you prefer a hybrid resume over a skills-based functional resume? So I’m going to just tell you that we’ve got an article in our I Hire career resource center that will explain all the differences between the different types of resumes and which one should apply to you. We would really have to have a career coaching session or something with you to understand which one you should personally use because it’s not a one size fits all thing. Alright. Can you talk about entrepreneurial ventures versus trying to get a job as part of a career pivot? For example, considering hanging your own shingle as a consultant? I’m going to say just out of the gate, you’ve got to have a really great plan and roadmap about how you’re going to get there because it’s probably not that you’re just going to stop working tomorrow and say, oh, hey, now I’m a consultant. You have to have a very long runway to get that set up for you to the point where you’re making some money and you can afford to quit your current job. Laura, anything to add there?

Laura Nauta (48:38):

Your network is everything. In that case. If you are trying to switch to a more consultant type, I’ve seen it happen a lot. It’s very common in sales where sales professionals, they get to that point where they’re like, you know what? I could consult on this. I’ve done so many different things that instead of staying in-house with someone and doing it, I think that I could help a wider range of people. It’s very common. It’s basically when you become an expert in something, that’s when you consult and a lot of people get to that point in their careers and it’s an amazing thing. The only way it works is if you have an incredible network of, you have people that know your worth and know your work and how you do things that are willing to buy in to you as a person and to what you’re consulting about.

(49:22):

That’s the best thing that you can do is have a strong network and then ultimately you need to operate it as almost as if it’s a startup small business. How it needs to function is like it’s a startup because it’s a startup of you. That’s how it’s going to work and it can be done. I’ve seen people do it and I’ve seen people that have transitioned it out, whereas they’re working for a company, they bring on a client here and there, and then eventually their book of business gets so large that they don’t have to have this other job that their whole focus is that it will not be as clean of a pivot as a career changer, like a career changer. It’s like, Hey, I want to know what I’m doing. I do all my planning. I’m in my job, and then I take a new job. Moving to more of a consultative entrepreneurship type of pivot would probably take longer, so you got to stick it out and it’s probably going to happen gradually. You’re going to bring it to a head and then eventually you’ll be fully into that, but it’s not going to be as I’m just shifting and taking on a new career, but I definitely,

Lori Cole (50:29):

Yeah. We’re going to do one more question here. How do you get your pivoted resume seen for a role that you haven’t had, but you still have skills for? I get quick rejections for not having the title on my resume, even though they say my resume is impressive. I have a quick fix for that. So at the top of your resume where it says you would usually use the word summary or career objective, we don’t really use that anymore, but the word summary, put the title of the job in that you are applying for. So if it’s a senior HR manager, you’re going to put that title in where that summary is, and then the very first line of your summary, you’re going to say career changer to this role, which explains it. So you’re not really claiming that you have that title, but you’re saying you’re helping the HR people connect the dots. So if they see senior HR manager on the top of your resume, they’re quickly going to say, Hey, I’ve got a senior HR manager job, and then it just gets them a little bit more engaged and involved with your resume instead of just seeing something generic at the top of your resume. So that’s where customizing your resume is really going to be key.

Laura Nauta (51:59):

Yeah, keyword searching too. It’s one of those ones where sometimes that HR people and hiring managers set up specific things where it’s like, if these words aren’t on there, you can automatically disqualify them. Don’t get yourself into a situation where you’re automatically disqualified. Make sure that you’re pivoting and changing your resume for those keywords so that you do not automatically get disqualified for something even though you’re definitely qualified for it.

Lori Cole (52:25):

Yeah, definitely. Alright, well that’s all the time we have left for today. We appreciate everyone who submitted their questions and took time out of your busy day to talk about this. Another huge thank you to our presenter, Lauren Nata, and another huge thanks to our wonderful sponsor, Northwestern University School of Professional Studies. Be sure you click that widget, look at those certification programs, look at those degree programs they have you covered and they can take care of you. Make sure that you keep an eye on your inbox tomorrow for a recording of this webinar and as we’re going to be sending out invitations in the next few weeks. For our next one, hope you have a great rest of your day. Thank you for the emojis. Thank you for all of your support and have a great rest of your day.