Using Past Experience to Guide a Career Change

Considering a Career Transition? Doing this one thing can make the difference between being overlooked or being selected for an interview and landing an offer. ✅ Be the obvious choice – Don’t assume recruiters will connect the dots. They’re often scanning for an exact title match. Your job? Bridge the gap for them. Translate your past experience into the language of your target role so they see you as a natural fit. Example:  Transition from a Project Manager → Product Manager Let’s say you’ve been a Project Manager for years but want to move into a Product Manager role. A recruiter or hiring manager might not immediately see the connection because they’re looking for candidates with direct Product Management titles. Instead of listing: ❌ “Managed project timelines, budgets, and stakeholder communications.” Reframe it to match Product Management language: ✅ “Led cross-functional teams to deliver customer-focused solutions, prioritizing features based on business impact and user needs.” Why this works: “Led cross-functional teams” aligns with how product managers work across engineering, design, and marketing. “Customer-focused solutions” signals an understanding of product development, not just project execution. “Prioritizing features based on business impact and user needs” shows a product mindset—something critical for a PM role. ✨ Bonus: 📎📄 Attached is an in-depth example of how to identify your transferable skills and effectively highlight them as relevant experience. This can be a tool that assists you with your resume, interviewing and negotiating. 💡 Need guidance? Assisting clients with career pivots and transitions is something I excel at. Plus - I’ve successfully navigated several transitions in my own career, so I’ve lived it. Let’s connect! #CareerChange #CareerAdvice #JobSearch #CareerTransition #Laidoff #CareerDevelopment #CareerGrowth #JobSeeker #CareerPivot

The Strategic Flaw Undermining Career Transitions   Throughout my career guiding professionals through industry and functional transitions, I've identified a consistent pattern among those who struggle to pivot successfully: they position themselves as inexperienced candidates in the new domain rather than as valuable cross-pollinating experts.   This fundamental positioning error creates unnecessary obstacles in an already challenging process.   Successful career pivoters employ a distinctly different approach: • Value Reframing: Positioning their outside perspective as an asset that brings fresh thinking to entrenched industry challenges • Problem-Solution Alignment: Identifying specific issues in the target field that their unique background equips them to address differently • Strategic Narrative Construction: Developing a compelling story that connects their existing expertise to the future needs of the target industry • Selective Credential Building: Acquiring specific knowledge markers that demonstrate commitment while leveraging existing transferable skills   The most effective career transitions aren't accomplished by minimizing differences or attempting to compete directly with industry insiders on their terms.   Rather, they succeed by deliberately highlighting how cross-industry perspective creates unique value in solving the target industry's evolving challenges.   For professionals considering a pivot, the critical shift isn't in acquiring years of new experience, but in reframing existing experience to demonstrate its relevance and value in the new context.   What unexpected industries have you seen professionals successfully transition between by leveraging seemingly unrelated backgrounds?   Sign up to my newsletter for more corporate insights and truths here: https://lnkd.in/ei_uQjju   #deepalivyas #eliterecruiter #recruiter #recruitment #jobsearch #corporate #careertransition #crosspollination #industryshift #careerstrategist

PSA: Transferable skills mean practically nothing if you're not able to articulate them. At the end of the day, if you can think strategically and show results (especially when those results are backed by numbers), that alone can open the door to a ton of different roles. The secret is learning the language of the role or industry you want to move into and figuring out how your past work translates to that new space. And yes, that includes more than just your official job title or responsibilities. That’s why I’m such a fan of ERG work..it gives you a real chance to build transferable skills! It’s a safe, contained space where you can show what you’re capable of. Whether that’s project management, internal comms, marketing, sales, or anything else, ERG work gives you proof of what you can do ...and that proof is often what gets people to take you seriously. That said, most folks get stuck trying to speak the language of the role or industry they’re aiming for. But once you crack that code a whole new world opens up. (Pro tip: Use AI to help: ask it what metrics matter in that role, what success looks like, and what common pain points exist in that space. Let it help you translate your story.) Another tip: Start reading job descriptions like study guides. Highlight the keywords, goals, and metrics they care about, then reverse-engineer your experiences to match. Bonus tip: If you’re using less conventional experience like ERG leadership, side projects, or anything outside of your core role be ready to explain what you learned and why it matters. Your stories and experiences are major tools. Learn how to tell them well, and they’ll make your transferable skills impossible to ignore. P.S. I’m the planner friend of my group with the powerpoint slides overview and spreadsheet of out itinerary … any others out there?