Your Guide to Making a Career Pivot at the End of the World (Without Starting Over)
A practical framework for career change in an unstable job market
If you’re thinking ahead about a potential career pivot this year, I assure you, you’re not alone.
A lot has changed in the last year. Ask anyone in the tech, gaming, and media spaces, and they’ll tell you that the job market wasn’t so great before then.
But 2025 didn’t bring relief. It brought record-breaking layoffs, tariffs, and federal funding cuts that ricocheted across the economy.
Employed people are job-hugging. Unemployed people are facing an incredibly competitive market. Salaries don’t feel aligned with the cost of living. Self-employed people are looking for full-time jobs, while recently laid-off workers consider starting businesses, freelancing, and consulting.
Many of us are feeling pressure to do something, ideally something with stability.
And stability, at least from my perspective, is feeling pretty elusive right now.
So what do we do when we’re ready for a change, and the outlook is…challenging?
What you need is a strategy that reflects your resources and risk profile, protects your energy, and keeps options open.
What you need is a career pivot.
Right now, a career pivot is less about total reinvention and more about clarifying your needs, understanding your value proposition as a professional, and optimizing your positioning.
What a Career Pivot Actually Is Right Now
A career pivot is not necessarily a dramatic leap into the unknown.
It doesn't have to be a sudden or massive identity shift.
It may not even be a clean break from your past work.
When I say “career pivot,” I mean a functional pivot, an intentional and strategic adjustment in how you think about work and working, as well as the direction, scope, and/or container of that work.
This could look like making a lateral or adjacent move, instead of continuing to climb up the ladder.
It means learning how to effectively translate your experience for different industries or audiences.
And it almost certainly means repositioning yourself for a more complicated and changing market where you can maximize possibilities for yourself.
The ultimate goal of the career pivot will be up to you. Your needs and circumstances are unique, so your pivot plan should reflect that.
For many of us, the goal is not a perfect role or a final destination.
The goal is to learn how to navigate the uncertainty with creativity, flexibility, and resilience.
When the ground keeps shifting, you want a career structure that moves like a building designed to survive an earthquake.
We need to bend, but not break.
Step One: Adopt a Passive but Strategic Job Search Posture
One of the most counterintuitive truths of this moment is that urgency is rarely your friend.
Many people feel pressured to launch an aggressive job search the moment layoffs start happening - which is not necessarily a bad idea, by the way.
But most job seekers are noticing there are way fewer roles and way more rounds of interviews. Even when there are opportunities, the process is unfolding very slowly.
If you’re not pacing yourself, you could find yourself facing burnout, discouragement, and a sense of personal failure that has more to do with timing than talent.
Say it with me now: passive does not mean disengaged or even slow.
It means you don’t waste your time on a spray-and-pray approach; you apply intentionally and strategically for roles you’re a strong fit for.
You don’t chase every lead, but rather, the ones that resonate and feel aligned.
It creates a less energy-intensive process that creates more time: time to rest, time to work part-time, time to care take - whatever you need your time for.
You’re not going to find a 40-hour-a-week job search faster than a passive one right now.
But we can use our time to stay visible and connected, tailor applications for jobs we have a chance of getting, and “filling up the tank” so we can sustain our search.
When I job searched last year, having a busy, full-time business wasn’t an obstacle - it was an advantage. It meant that I couldn’t doomscroll LinkedIn endlessly and apply for just anything.
I was selective, targeted, and ultimately successful, landing multiple offers after applying to only 21 roles over 6 months.
This approach helps you stay in the driver’s seat. It keeps you aligned and easier to recognize the right opportunities when they appear.
Step Two: Align and Tailor Your Assets (Not Your Entire Self)
In moments of uncertainty, people often assume they need more credentials, more skills, or a complete professional overhaul.
In reality, most professionals do not have a skill gap.
They have a communication and translation gap.
Your resume, LinkedIn profile, and professional narrative are not autobiographies.
They are tools. Their job is to make your value easy to understand for a specific audience.
Aligned, tailored assets:
Reduce friction for decision-makers
Clarify where you fit and why
Do quiet work on your behalf
This does not require rewriting yourself from scratch.
It requires choosing which parts of your experience to lead with, which to contextualize, and which to set aside for now.
When your assets are aligned, you don’t have to explain yourself constantly. Your materials do the orienting for you.
Resumes are one of my favorite things to talk about. You can learn more about my approach over on my podcast, Careers at the End of the World. Here are some of my favorite episodes:
Do you need to be qualified to apply for a job? No. apply to whatever you want! But if you want to get traction? Then yes. Listen to me talk about the importance of qualifications here.
This is one of my most popular episodes, “Through lines, hinges, and sponges: Resume advice you won’t find anywhere else.”
For my career pivoters, learn how you might benefit from having more than one resume
These other episodes are a couple of years old, but I did an update recently here.
Step Three: Think in Portfolios, Not Binary Choices
One concept of modern work that we’re watching fall apart in real time is the notion of a singular job that supports us financially and fulfills us personally.
For many people, that model no longer provides enough stability, flexibility, or alignment.
At the same time, full-time entrepreneurship often feels too risky, too isolating, or too misaligned.
This is why I have been a long-term proponent of portfolio-style careers.
A portfolio career does not mean hustling endlessly or monetizing every hobby. It means distributing risk and identity across multiple containers.
Portfolios create breathing room - for your income and your life.
They can enable experimentation without catastrophe.
You can aim for a portfolio career as the final goal, or you can create one when you anticipate your job search lasting a little longer than usual.
Step Four: Build a Relationship Ecosystem, Not a Networking Blitz
When people feel stuck, they’re often told to “network more.”
This advice is vague at best and demoralizing at worst.
Career pivots are not unlocked through volume.
They are unlocked through relationships that help you make sense of where you are and where you could go next.
Think less in terms of networking events and more in terms of an ecosystem.
Your ecosystem includes friends and colleagues you know well, communities that support professionals in your industry, as well as those doing similar work in similar ways.
Many clients resist networking because it feels transactional.
But it doesn’t have to be!
It can start with curiosity, shared reflection, or offering support yourself!
Ultimately, job offers, business opportunities, and clients come from the same place - other people.
Staying relational keeps you visible and connected - even when you’re not actively searching!
Step Five: Make Peace with Visibility (and Self-Promotion)
This is often the hardest part.
For many mission-driven, thoughtful professionals, visibility feels uncomfortable. Performative. Misaligned. Or vaguely gross.
But here’s the tradeoff.
If people don’t know what you’re thinking about, exploring, or open to, they can’t support you.
Visibility does not have to mean broadcasting achievements or crafting a personal brand.
At its most functional, visibility is a commitment.
It might look like sharing your transition out loud, sharing what you’re learning and who you’re learning from, and sharing resources (like a blog post, perhaps!) that helps inspire others with your expertise.
To be honest, whether you have a portfolio career, a business, or a traditional corporate job, this visibility work is something I would invest in for the foreseeable future.
I implore you to find a way to be visible and connected. It’s a professional investment that can pay off in spades. (Check out our Revive Sessions, if you need some help putting a plan together!)
(Note how I slid some personal self-promotion in there?! A 1700-word blog post and fewer than 15 are promoting my paid work! I promise that you can do this, too 🙂)
You can still create possibilities
If this moment feels slower, heavier, or more complicated than past career pivots, it’s not because you’ve failed.
We can all see that we’re in the midst of a difficult moment collectively- one that seems likely to last long enough that we’ll need to consider how we’ll adapt, personally and professionally.
My overwhelming desire for people right now is to remember that you have options.
There are ways to create possibilities, generate income, and yes, land jobs.
But we’ll need to be creative and resourceful in the process.
It’s just going to look different from what you expected - and definitely more challenging than you hoped.
This month, I’m taking a break from the podcast to rebrand our Job Search Community into the Pathways and Possibilities Collective and focus on our upcoming Sacred Structures Retreat Day.
More and more of our clients aren’t just looking for a job.
They’re looking for tools, resources, strategy, and support to build opportunities that leverage their skills, align with their values - and pay their bills.
I’m excited to spend some time this winter upgrading the resources in our community!
Next month, I’ll be posting about creating new pathways and generating income - with or without a job. If you want to be the first to hear about it, make sure you join our email list below!