Maybe you left academia in a hurry and now that you've had a chance to actually deal with your burnout, you're feeling like you didn’t make the best choice. Or maybe you pivoted to a career outside of academia and now you're having second thoughts. Or maybe you are multi-passionate. Don't worry, that's all perfectly natural. You'll find people outside the academic bubble have a lot of options and they take advantage of them. No matter where you find yourself, there are some things you can do to get some sort of direction. The good news is you've done a lot of these steps before.
Incorporate your new job into your old job. Find ways to do parts of your new, desired career during your current workday. If you work in an okay environment, you could ask your boss or coworkers if there are extra assignments you can take on that you would potentially be doing in your new job. If your environment is not so great, you may be on your own doing this. This accomplishes several things: first, you get experience in your new field. Second, you get to practice and build your skills. Third, it helps your mental health, especially if your first job isn't the best environment. Fourth, it helps solidify your interests. It helps you determine whether you really like this new field, or you're just bored with your current one, or you just like the idea of a change, but not the actual change itself.
Network. Hopefully, you never stopped after the first pivot. Maybe that's how you found out about this next move. You should be networking with people in that new field, but don't forget about the people in your old field or people who are completely outside your field. If you backed off of networking after your first career pivot, now's the time to re-engage. Now that you know how to message people on LinkedIn and conduct informational interviews (or at least you know more than you did the first time around), networking is so much easier. Join all th online networking groups and coffee chats you can. Join Facebook groups, Slack groups, meetups, professional organizations.
Find your gaps. Just like before, I'm sure you'll have some gaps in your knowledge, but maybe not as many. Being in industry really exposes you to a lot, more than you probably realize. You may have met people whose background is completely different than the current job they are doing. You start to see all the possibilities.
Upskill. I'm sure you have a lot of opportunities to learn new skills. Get to learning and practicing what you need to know, emphasis on practice. As you learned before, knowing and learning a bunch of stuff isn't going to cut it. It's what you do with what you know that counts. Create samples, even if no one sees them. Portfolios are great even if you don’t need one. They give you examples to use during interviews; they give you confidence.
Apply. I know I listed this last, but honestly, don't wait to do this last. You can find your gaps, upskill, and apply for jobs all at the same time. I'm sure your first job out of the academy was a major learning curve. You can prepare all you want, but some things you're never really ready for. But you figured it out. You did it before, you can do it again. Don't wait until you've learned all the skills or software, don't wait until you can check off every job duty in a job description. Apply now.
A lot of steps may sound familiar and so may the wait. Your first career pivot may have happened quickly; don’t get discouraged if this one takes longer. Just like you’re first time out, you gotta show that you have the skills and experience in this new industry to get the job done. And you’ll have some competition, but nothing you can’t handle.
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