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Five years ago, in the early autumn of 2015, I was sat with my boyfriend in a park, trying to work out what the hell I was meant to be doing with my life. I was in a job I'd started just a year previously but that wasn't working out and I felt like my career had stalled. I'd been looking at going back to university – boggling at the cost of doing an MBA – when my boyfriend finally asked 'what would you do right now if you could do anything at all?' Straight away I answered: 'I would try setting up my own sewing pattern company.' Bearing in mind that at this time I was the Business Development Manager for a small arts publisher, this was quite the leap, and based purely on my rampant sewing obsession. But when I realised there was no hard and fast reason why I couldn't give this a go, everything clicked into place. By Christmas I had left my publishing job and started training as a pattern drafter. I had pivoted.
Whilst I had always known that my chances of finding a job I loved and then staying in it for the rest of my working life were low, I hadn't anticipated changing tack quite so early on. But nowadays this sort of seismic career shift is becoming the norm. Most entrepreneurs didn't launch businesses straight out of school; in many cases they spent a few years (or many) doing completely different jobs – something very evident in our self-employed Career Girls. Harriet of online fabric shop Sew Me Sunshine was a nurse before health issues forced her to take a break and reassess. Hayat Rachi went from a nightmare job in financial recruitment to founding her own lingerie brand, fuelled by anger from her previous role. Jodie of Paws and Pause was simply driven by 'a huge desire to do something new and exciting', after years of wanting to be her own boss. There are many reasons people pivot: they no longer feel satisfied or inspired by their work; their industry is changing and their path along with it; they have found a passion elsewhere and want to pursue it – or, as is happening to so many people right now, they lose their job entirely. What all successful pivots have in common is the person's willingness to be bold with their choices, to work hard to earn their place in a totally new area, and their ability to recognise the transferable value in the skills and experiences they've already gained. As author Tony Parsons wrote in GQ, 'A career pivot is never a gamble. It is always an investment.'
In the world right now, it has never been more important to consider your own capacity for pivoting. The knowledge that you're not limited to one kind of role or industry is empowering in the face of huge job uncertainties. The key steps to preparing for a pivot are:
Know what excites you (for me back in 2015, I was spending all my spare time thinking about clothes design, sewing and fabrics...)
Know what your transferable skills are (the communication, project management and quality control skills I developed working in publishing are vital for the production of a successful sewing pattern.) These skills are the anchor that you pivot around – the one foot you have to keep on the ground when holding the netball. You are changing direction; not going back to square one.
Know what training/education you need to bridge the gap between where you are and where you want to be (when I quit publishing I knew how to sew – but I didn't know how to draft patterns. I spent several months taking courses and practising whilst supporting myself with freelance dressmaking and freelance publishing work.)
It's worthwhile to work through these points even if you're feeling pretty stable and secure in your current role. If you're tempted by an alternate industry, a side hustle can be an excellent way to expand your skills and experience and test the waters in a new role (check out our post on managing a side hustle). If you're serious about making the pivot, planning is key. Jodie of Paws and Pause states that: 'It took about a year of planning, researching, testing ideas and refining our business model. We attended lots of free workshops for business start ups including UntLtd and ECHO and got ourselves 2 mentors which helped with planning the financials. I then was able to go part time in my current job at the time, which was a huge help and gave me some financial stability.'
Getting familiar with your own curiosities, passions and skills – in other words laying the groundwork for a career pivot – is going to be fundamental in the future, because chances are none of us will stay in the same industry for our entire working lives. And if you're unsure how to go about taking those first steps towards pivoting, we've advice from those who've been there. Harriet says 'Don't be frightened to take the leap, otherwise you will only look back and think what if. The worst thing that could happen is that it doesn't work out and you go back to what you were doing before as you will still have that skill set.' And Jodie advises, 'Reach out to people in the line of work you're thinking of changing to; we did this with other dog businesses and found that people were generally very open to meeting up with us and giving us some insight into the business side of it. Enjoy a change and know what you don't want in your new career, be brave and have good people around you to support you! YOU CAN DO IT!'
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