Pivot like Jordan: A structured approach to exploring different industries
This is 2nd in a multi-part series on transitioning into new industries. Using this approach, I landed interviews with 15 companies and received four offers while pivoting out of o&g into tech. Follow me on medium to follow the series.
In Part 1 of this series, I provided an overview of my job search strategy that landed me four offers in three months. In Part 2, I will lay out frameworks to help you whittle down and manage the number of options you may have.
Agtech, hydrogen economy, carbon economy, FinTech…if you are transitioning currently, there is an alphabet soup of “XYZ in the New Economy” industries to keep your head spinning. During my own transition, I knew I didn’t want to return to traditional oil & gas as I love exploring different industries and solving a variety of challenges.
The opportunity cost of taking one option over the other weighs pretty heavily on us causing stress and anxiety.
The world was my oyster…and it was pretty stressful. It’s the paradox of choice. Research shows that the more choices we have, the more difficult it is to choose an option due to FOMO. The opportunity cost of taking one option over the other weighs pretty heavily on us causing stress and anxiety.
You can’t start on your journey if you don’t know your destiny. Unfortunately, most people don’t spend sufficient time understanding where they want to go or what they are truly interested. Most skip this step and get trapped in black hole of ATS. Some jump into trendy topics like data science or full stack development without fully understanding if they truly connect with their future professions. Many end up wasting their time and spinning their wheels, burn out, and give up.
You can’t start on your journey if you don’t know your destiny
You need a methodical framework to figure out what you want to do next and narrow down your options. Here’s a step-by-step approach I took:
STEP 1: Figure out which industries you are interested in exploring
Setup a table with at least five industries or verticals in the columns. Then in the rows, list out all the criteria that you are looking for in the next industry and a weighting factor. Assign a score of 1–5 to rank how each criterion stacks up across various industries. This is a relative scale and is qualitative, but it helps you normalize across a somewhat consistent scale. Use the SUMPRODUCT function to create a weighted average for each column. Are there specific industries that jump out? If something does not feel right, do some additional research to help you delineate the options.
For me, this analysis confirmed that Tech and Management Consulting (MC) were my top two options. Green energy is an exciting field, but due to the lack of jobs and long time horizons, it didn’t rank. I would suggest limiting yourself two top industries to manage your workload.
Step 2: Figure out potential roles you maybe interested in
The next step is to research potential career paths in your industry of choice. Similar to step 1, create a table like below with a list of job satisfaction criteria and weights in the row, and job types in the columns. Tally up the scores using a weighted average.
My top options were Snr BD Rep in mid-stream o&g and product management in tech. For a while, I was pursuing both options, but it was pretty clear that tech was a growth trajectory — that’s where the jobs were going to be, so I dropped the Snr BD Rep option a few months into my job search.
I have always been super interested in tech, but didn’t want to be a coder. I knew I wanted to be in roles that were at the intersection of leadership, strategy, and business. I literally Google’ed “non technical roles in tech” as my starting point and stumbled upon product management as a potential career path. From there, I further Google’ed “What is product management”. Once it seemed like I was interested in the role and I had sufficient transferable skills, I started looking for contacts in my LinkedIn network for coffee chats.
Pivoting is akin to starting your own business. There’s a lot of work to do and you have limited time and energy. The options are limitless, so you need to prioritize.
It’s important during this phase to take your time to examine all your options. I would suggest at least a month of sustained effort to research various industries and career paths. Don’t take shortcuts. This step is key to crafting your resume and focusing your networking efforts.
Pivoting is akin to starting your own business. There’s a lot of work to do and you have limited time and energy. The options are limitless, so you need to prioritize. Relying on your gut feel is important, but can create potential blind spots so it’s important to test it out your hypothesis through research. If you are an analytical person (read: engineer), then having a structure adds method to the madness and can help alleviate stress levels. If you are more of an intuitive person, this analysis can confirm your gut feel.
In the next post, I will delve into best practices for mapping out your transferable skills and creating targeted resumes.
Credit: Brian Palmer, Senior Consultant, Cenera
