Sarah Taylor* was ready for a drastic change in her career. She had spent the last few years in marketing at a large computer company and was tired of dealing with bureaucracy, slow decision making and company politics. When she was laid off, it was a blessing in disguise. At first, she was resentful but soon came to realize being laid off set her up for a career change that would make her much happier.
When she started her job search, Sarah decided she wanted to work in the green industry. She didn’t know much about this business and had very few contacts. Her challenge was to figure out how to apply her skills in a new industry that many other people were also trying to break into. It was clear she had to learn a lot about the green industry to successfully find a job within this new field.
Sarah read everything she could find about the green industry. She also found a group of job seekers who, like herself, were very serious about getting into the business. This group met regularly and pooled their resources to help each other learn about this new industry. They researched green companies and learned about industry trends. Sarah also did volunteer work in the green field so she could learn the business, make contacts and have experience to list on her resume. She volunteered with an organization that does home energy audits and helped organize a green industry conference.
In addition to these activities, Sarah invested in her job search. Even though she didn’t have any income, she paid for classes and seminars to further her education. It was important to participate in these courses so she could understand this new industry. Sarah took classes offered at a local college and a utility company. She also attended seminars that were hosted by organizations focused on the green industry. At these events, not only did she learn more about the industry, she also met people who could help her with her job search. Attending these classes and seminars helped Sarah differentiate herself from the hundreds of other candidates interested in this business. With the knowledge she gained, she was able to target sub segments of the green industry that were interesting to her and was able to have in-depth discussions with hiring managers.
At one of her classes, Sarah met someone in the green industry who offered to look at her resume. Much of the information in her resume was incomprehensible to this person as it was written in the language used in her former industry. This feedback was eye-opening. Sarah rewrote her resume, taking out all the “industry-speak” from her previous job to make it easier for a hiring manager in the green industry to understand. She also placed the volunteer work and classes she had recently taken at the beginning of her resume to highlight her current knowledge of clean technology.
All of this paid off with three job offers after six months of searching. Two of the job leads came through someone she met at one of the classes she attended. This person helped get her resume to the hiring managers which led to interviews. She found the third job lead by using the automated job search engine on Indeed.com. This automated job search engine gave her daily listings of marketing jobs in the green industry. When she found a job posting, she used LinkedIn to find someone in her network who could take her resume to the hiring manager at the company she targeted. At these interviews, Sarah came across as knowledgeable about the green industry due to the classes, seminars and volunteer work she had been doing. She accepted one of the offers and is now working as a Senior Product Manager in the green industry.
* Fictitious name is used to protect the privacy of the job seeker.
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