How to Keep Your Career Moving Forward Through Changing Times

Thank you so much for joining me on another edition of my LinkedIn newsletter! This week, I’ll be featuring the wisdom of Lindsey Pollak, author of Recalculating.

This newsletter also serves as a reminder, because later today at 12pm EDT/9am PT/5pm GMT, I’ll be talking with Tony-nominated broadway producer Rachel Sussman about identifying and nurturing creative projects on my weekly Newsweek show, Better. Rachel and I will be taking questions from the audience live, so bring yours! If you’d like a calendar reminder for today’s interview, click here.

It goes without saying that this year has proven to require a fair amount of recalculating for many of us in our careers. It has required millions of people to put their plans on hold in both our personal and professional lives. If you are trying to figure out how you can stay on track for your long-term goals, I recommend checking out my brand new course on LinkedIn Learning: How to Set Goals When Everything Feels Like a Priority.

Speaker and author Lindsey Pollak wrote the book that she wished she had for herself at the beginning of the pandemic. She accomplished this in a miraculous matter of months from conception to publication! Initially inspired by her car's GPS mantra - "Recalculating..." - here are just a few methods and tips she offered on how we can reinvent our career path and stay productive regardless of the pitfalls that may appear. To hear our entire discussion, you can view the replay of our conversation here.

Defeating feelings of malaise and inactivity:

“I am a huge fan of accountability partners. I have certain friends where we have agreed, informally or not, when we are bored, when we are unmotivated, to text each other. And I have one friend, Alana, who is my guru self-help partner. And I'll say, "Alana, I can't do anything. I can't do anything, I'm miserable." And she'll either say, "You know what? Sit in it for an hour, go watch a Netflix show." Or she'll say, "Come on, Linds, You promised you were going to get that book chapter done. You've got to do it. You've got to do it." My mom and I used to have something, especially when I was in high school and college, she called it sandwiching, which is, I would call her before doing something scary or annoying or irritating, and then I would call her after I did it. That made the thing a little less scary and bothersome.” 

Why starting at square one is never starting over:

“Often, the transition is less hard than you think. Let me go a little bit further with the recalculating metaphor. When your GPS says 'recalculating,' it never sends you back to your driveway to start over completely; it always takes you from where you are. You have built skills and knowledge and experiences in whatever job you've done. I spoke to a chef who couldn't get work during COVID because so many restaurants had shut down and he admitted, as a lot of people did, that he was wanting to make a change anyway. He went back to his college career center, which is another tip - no matter how long ago you graduated, you can always go back to your alma mater for services, assessments, coaching, resume, critique, interviewing, and so on. He said, ‘I don't really want to be a chef anymore, I want to do something different.’ He took an assessment test, and one of the areas where he really excelled was logistics. He didn't have to go back to school and get a second degree, he took a one-credit online course in logistics, added that to his resume, and they helped him pull out the logistical things he had done as a chef. He stopped talking about flavor and cooking and started talking about ordering and vendor management. And he was able to get a really great high-paying job in logistics.”

The best ways to use LinkedIn:

“I think the most important piece of real estate about you on the internet is your LinkedIn headline. Those words under your name are so tremendously important. So, make sure that whatever it says in there is exactly what you want people to know. If you're pivoting or changing careers put the thing you want first. Don't say 'former teacher and seeking to pivot.' Say that you are an electrical engineer pivoting from teaching. The second thing is always, always, always customize your outreach request to people. Just a sentence, ‘Hey, Dorie, really enjoyed your show. Hey, great to meet you at the career fair. We're an alum of the same school.’ Give people a reason to show that you're not just writing 'Dear occupant,' that you are putting something personal. And the third piece is something I learned from Reid Hoffman, who's one of the founders of LinkedIn and just a tremendous business person and generous networker. He thinks people use LinkedIn wrong for networking. He said, ‘Most people go into LinkedIn and say, what can I get today?’ And he said the way he uses LinkedIn and what he recommends...he goes in and says, ‘What can I give? Who can I help today?’"

Thank you for reading this week’s newsletter! If you have found success pivoting in your career over the past year, please share your advice in the comments! Next week’s interview will be with author Cal Newport to discuss email and the future of work. For a calendar reminder, click here.

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Wishing you health and success - 

Dorie