Wanting to shift gears and make a career pivot?

It’s definitely do-able.

Case study:

Recently, a client in pharmaceutical sales (a declining career due to so many consolidations / acquisitions) lamented that yet again, she is being laid off.

She’s been a sales dynamo who has a loyal clientele following.

The problem is that she is loathe to leave the field even though this is her now third pink-slip – not due to her performance but the company itself.

How can she make the pivot into a different career?

It’s easy. She needs to see the transferrable skills right in front of her.

Since she is in sales, she has the ability to prospect potential clients, highlight product features, do research on possible targets, engage in active listening, keep detailed notes on client interactions, and close the deal.

Presto! She is primed and ready to go into a different industry, but she can still do sales – just for a different product type.

You can do it, too.

Uncovering then understanding what skills you can pack up and transfer with you to another field can help anyone engineer make a career pivot.

What if you aren’t sure what those skill sets are?

A good trick is to take a target job description and paste into a website like http://www.wordle.net/ which will visually demonstrate the keywords (the keywords are the biggest font size).

Having an idea of what skill sets are required when you want to make a career pivot will help you understand if you are qualified or not.

Missing skills? Never fear.

If you are missing some skill sets, then a proactive career move is to start taking classes to address those gaps or update your skill sets.

That way, you are in the best possible position to make the leap, and also theme your resume around your skill sets, not what industry you’ve been in.