Making a career pivot is challenging no matter what profession you’re coming from, but for highly specialized workers like teachers, lawyers, or healthcare professionals, it can feel next to impossible. The skills and experiences of specialized workers often go unrecognized or undervalued in the broader job market despite their vast applicability across industries. Thankfully, there are resources that hopeful career changers can leverage to successfully transition into a new industry.
Goldendelicious connects you to employers who value your unique skillset as an educator.
We would point potential career pivoters to three key practices:
Free tools like Lightcast’s Resume Optimizer can extract skills from a job seeker’s current resume and display the delta and the gaps between the job seeker’s current skillset and the skillset required by hiring managers to secure the position. I would talk about the importance of having the right keywords in your resume and application and how to translate your skills into those keywords. Ziprecruiter offers data on the most sought-after skills for each job title, scraped from their immense trove of employment data, if job seekers want to carry this out manually.
Many workers assume that even if they pivot into a new role, they will be relegated to staying in their current professional field. For example, teachers assume they will be limited to roles in instructional design or corporate training. Instead of focusing on an issue area like education or healthcare when considering a new role, job seekers should consider their interests, values, and the kind of job tasks they currently enjoy. O*Net offers a free interest profiler tool that allows for this.
A significant hurdle in transitioning to a new field is understanding the myriad job titles and what they actually entail. Job titles can be industry-specific and may not immediately resonate with someone from a different background. There are strategies for demystifying job titles, such as using LinkedIn to explore the career paths of individuals who have made similar transitions and utilizing platforms like Glassdoor or Lightcast Titles to understand the responsibilities and requirements associated with various titles. This knowledge is critical for identifying potential job opportunities.
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