How to Make a Career Pivot
A strategy to stay employable longer
I’ve known people who stayed with the same employer their entire careers, doing fulfilling work. That type of stability is rare these days. Both my grandfathers worked for their employers for 30+ years. They retired with pensions, retiree health, and Social Security benefits that supported them to their deaths at ages 85 and 95-years-old. Since I started working in the 1970s, I’ve seen a shift in the unspoken 'deal' between employers and employees.
The implicit employee-employer deal my grandfathers worked under was centered on the exchange of their hard work and loyalty for lifetime job security, rising wages, and healthcare benefits for their families. There was a union involved to ensure the company lived up to their part of the deal.
Quaint, isn’t it?
Today work is transactional. A company merger, divestiture or bankruptcy can land an employee suddenly out of work. With two weeks’ notice, an employee may leave a job for a higher salary, the opportunity to work remotely, to follow a manager, learn new skills, better benefits or a myriad of reasons. A spouse may relocate with their job causing the trailing spouse to find new employment. These are situations where a career pivot may become valuable.
A career pivot is identifying existing skills that can be applied to a new role. It could be in the same company, industry, or vertical. It is an intentional action.
I made four major career pivots over 46 years. The second was in June 1996. My position as Director, National Accounts required travel to the corporate headquarters of major health systems across the country. The job was in direct conflict with my son transitioning from daycare to kindergarten.
The prior year, I began working with company senior leadership discussing a position with little to no travel. I was also talking with an external recruiter in case I needed to change employers. Fortunately, my company was able to create a role on the human resources leadership team that leveraged my negotiation and communication skills. For a decade, I immersed myself in HR, earning an SPHR designation. That pivot involved making a functional switch in the same organization.
A more common pivot is using functional experience—marketing, finance, sales, supply chain management or another discipline—to enter a new industry. A friend of mine began his law career employed by law firms. Eventually, he made a career pivot to work for a client of his firm to gain more business experience. That move offered a wider variety of experiences over a decade including mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, and intellectual property. With the business experience representing a global company, when he went back to a law firm, he quickly became a partner.
My final and most difficult career pivot required assistance from an Executive Coach through an outplacement company. After being laid off from selling hospital consulting services for IBM’s Watson Health experiment at age 61, I mistakenly expected to secure a final high-level medical sales role to ride into full retirement age in five years. Interviews were plentiful over seven months.
Three companies I wanted to work for moved me forward to come to their corporate headquarters for a final interview. In two situations, it was between me and another candidate. The other was a “rubber stamp” of approval before an offer according to my recruiter. When the companies purchased the plane tickets to fly me to HQ, (and I had to provide my date of birth for the ticket) their enthusiasm dampened. In Pittsburgh and Boston, I had interviews and didn’t get the job. The interview in Southern California didn’t happen. I flew there checked into the hotel and received a call from the company’s HR department explaining the position was filled internally. She cheerily recommended that “I should feel free to enjoy a nice dinner and add it to my candidate expense report” before returning home the next day. I felt the sting of ageism, up close and personal for the first time in my long career.
It was time to visit the outplacement services that I (arrogantly) didn’t think I needed. IBM Watson Health offered these services to the employees they laid off. My coach, Tricia, helped me re-identify areas of strengths, review job descriptions where I would be an ideal candidate, and we role-played interviews because this was a BIG pivot. I focused on sales enablement, a function I wasn’t very familiar with, instead of healthcare sales. Two months later, I received two competitive offers the same week in sales enablement—one from a tech company and one in the tourism and leisure industry. Both roles came with trade-offs from my experience in healthcare sales. I chose the tech company and made the pivot!
Note: IBM sold its Watson Health business to private equity in January 2022. The private equity firm spun off their acquisition into a new standalone company six months later. I live happily ever after.