On the hunt
Over the last 12 months, I have talked 16 different friends through career transitions. Not clients that I have coached or advised, though there are some of those too. In this case, I'm talking about 16 people I know personally. That's a lot!
Some of them have been laid off. Some just want to work somewhere else. Others are just looking to do something different, perhaps a new kind of work or perhaps the same work but on different terms (like freelancing vs. working in-house). A few have started companies.
Even in the situations where the change is intentional and exciting, the transition has been a bit uneasy.
Changing careers in an employer's market
Some months back, I shared that 35% of job seekers are ghosted after completing full interview loops. Of all the data points that nerd processor has published in the last 18 months, this is the one I keep going back to. It is mind-boggling. 35% is a really high number.
It is hard to make a career transition in an employer's market. Still, some people are getting jobs, and some of them are career changers. Career changers are both more opinionated and more likely to hire other career changers. They are also more likely to become leaders in AI-native companies.
But even though we are in a strong employer's market right now, among my 16 friends who have looked for jobs this year, 12 are aiming for meaningful career change. But even though they know they want a change, they are not all sure what they want to do next.
Traditionally, people push through these ambiguous career moments either intentionally (working with career coaches, doing self-reflection exercises, etc) or opportunistically (like you take whatever job you get). But maybe there's a more modern way.
Spot your career pivots
I've suggested the exercise below for several friends and clients this year, and collected data from 25 of them. The exercise is simple and you can try it too:
Upload your resume to ChatGPT and provide a link to your LinkedIn, along with the prompt:
Given my resume and LinkedIn, what are five interesting plausible career pivots (big or small) that I might not have considered?
For instance, when I do this myself, I get these five suggestions:
- Chief AI Officer (CAIO) or “AI Transformation Partner”
- Media and Influence: Data-Driven Public Intellectual
- Venture Partner or Platform Architect for AI-Native Startups
- Chief Behavioral Scientist or Chief People Analytics Officer
- AI-for-Education Founder or Academic-Industry Bridge
Each AI suggestion comes with detailed explanations like these:
Sad to say, I'm not sure "Data-Driven Public Intellectual" is a real job title (lolsob). But when I read the details, all five are at least somewhat plausible, and three of them I can imagine actually enjoying.
I was curious how well the exercise worked for other people, so I asked all 25 participants three questions about their results.
#1: What % of the AI suggestions seem plausible based on your background?
I expected AI to be good at generating plausible suggestions, and it generally was. 19 out of 25 participants said that at least four of their five AI suggestions were plausible.
When AI missed on plausibility, the misses were less like "I don't think this sounds like me" and more like "I don't think this really would pay my bills." (See also: "Data-Driven Public Intellectual," lolsob again.)
#2: What % of the AI suggestions could you imagine enjoying?
Most participants (18 out of 25) reported that at least half the AI suggestions struck them as not only plausible, but enjoyable.
Though the average score looks good, it's heavily weighted to the middle of the scale. I expected this to be a little higher, especially in light of data point #3 below.
#3: Will you consider any new kinds of roles based on these suggestions?
This amazed me: 22 out of 25 participants said they would broaden their job search to consider new job titles after seeing the AI suggestions.
As a matter of fact, a few months after completing the exercise, three of the 25 job seekers ended up taking a role that 1. aligned with one of their AI suggestions and 2. they hadn't considered previously. Wowza.
The bottom line: AI was pretty good at suggesting plausible career pivots, which I expected. What I didn't expect is how much impact the AI suggestions would have on people's real job searches.
If you try the exercise, I'll be curious what you find.
Kieran
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