Video Transcription
Jim – Hi, everyone. My name is Jim Frisch and I’m with Career Track Coaching. And once a month we bring our past clients, who’ve had a, you know, a great new success and we asked them a few questions to seek their advice. And so today I’m really lucky to have Emily Shapiro. What I’m really excited about is Emily, was a teacher and she wanted a pivot to a new career. And so, today she’s gonna discuss a little bit about,, her new opportunity going from a teacher to becoming a learning and development specialist. And, so welcome. Emily.
Emily – Thank you.
Jim – Yeah, it’s been a while since we’ve talked and you know what? I, I’m just curious if you could tell everyone what made you decide to go from, you know, becoming a teacher that I believe you were there for eight years to pivoting to a new career.
Emily – Yeah. I started teaching in Baltimore, was there for seven years, and taught one year in New York. And by the time I was teaching in New York, I kind of felt like I kept searching for more and it was like hitting the ceiling of what I could learn and get out of teaching. I felt like with every school change and the city change, I thought I would feel that like growth and I just wasn’t feeling that growth and felt like I needed a challenge in a different way. I needed a different lifestyle balance from teaching. And so, yeah, I tried to figure out what would be a transferable option from coaching because I had done my whole undergrad, my whole master’s everything was teaching related. So Jim helped me figure that out.
Jim – There you go. All right. Awesome. And so, you know, I always ask, you know, a couple of different questions and one is, you know what, I guess one or two pieces of advice, you would give someone that’s looking to not only change a job but also pivot to a different career.
Emily – I think the biggest thing that helped me because when I started doing my search and knowing that I didn’t want to teach anymore, I had no idea what that meant or what that would look like. So I just started having as many of those networking conversations as I could. Even if they were with people where like I had no interest in their career, but somebody suggested they would be a good person to talk to because then they suggested other people at their firm who were more aligned or they were like, oh, in a previous job, I did this kind of field. And through those conversations that led me to finding my current field, which I had never heard of otherwise. And then once I discovered that I was interested in this field, those conversations continued to push me towards people in that field and learning more about it as I went. So that was really helpful. And I also think keeping track of every single thing that I did was really important. The spreadsheet you sent, like my Bible, I logged every single conversation and the connection. I had a tab where I saved every job I was interested in and then edited it when I applied and then updated the status of it. And that was really helpful, keeping me on track as well.
Jim – And, you know, I was thinking about this, you know, the, the point is you did have your current job. It’s not like you were out of a job but, and then, and then pivoting and so forth. How, how long did it take you?
Emily – It took me all in all about eight months. From when I started having those conversations and applying. And that was like, you know, maybe here and there when life got crazy, I would take a few weeks off, but I tried to, I tried my best every week to consistently set a couple hours aside. So, I’d like block off my calendar for it. Make sure I didn’t have plans or appointments or anything those days. What works for me was like, let’s say on a Tuesday after work I would spend two or three hours going through Linkedin. And indeed, and just saving jobs and then the next day I would go back sift through them all and actually, like, apply to the ones I wanted to. and that kind of helped me going.
Jim – Yeah. And then the other one, was if you, if you thought about like a couple of different habits that helped you in success, I know you just mentioned about being consistent in terms of the search. Any other habits that were real helpful?
Emily – I think going through each posting and actually like running the job description through ChatGPT, right? Ok. And just like saying like, what are the highlighted, like words because that helps me narrow and I’m like, ok, what’s important here? What are the keywords? I want to make sure I’m using as well. And just making sure that for every job, I was also like updating my whole resume, updating my cover letter so that I wasn’t just copy and pasting every time I think that made a really big difference.
Jim – Mhm Awesome. And so, so in terms of, you know, I was laughing because we were talking beforehand for, for a minute you had mentioned too that like you consistently were applying to positions and so forth. So, one of the things that was interesting is how you, you mentioned you applied with this current position that you just got and it was a while ago, right? So if you could maybe elaborate and tell a little bit about that story, you know. Yeah, go ahead.
Emily – Yeah, I feel like when you’re like, I at a certain point kind of got desperate for leaving my job. And so I was just applying to so many jobs in this field that I forgot that I applied to my current company. And so then when I got the email from the recruiter asking me to do an interview, I was kind of like, is this spam? What is this? I had no recollection because it had probably been about three or four weeks since I submitted the application to when I got that interview, but I had the handy dandy spreadsheet. And so I went back and saw it there and that I had synced not only the job and the title, but also the actual Linkedin post where I had found it. So I was like, oh, ok, this is real and I did apply and that was really helpful because otherwise I probably wouldn’t have answered and wouldn’t have gotten where I am today, right?
Jim – No, awesome. I’m, I’m so excited for you. You know, we were talking about how different the position is and, and how happy you are. So you did a great job and, and, you know, just summarizing, you know, it’s, it’s all about, again, when you’re, when you’re changing careers is, you know, obviously the first one is figuring out what, you know, what skills to transfer like you had mentioned, and then talking to a number of different people, and then applying, you know, and so it’s networking, applying and being diligent day in and day out. And you, you, you know, you did a great job. So, thanks for your time. I appreciate it. So, from Career Track Coaching, have a great evening. Thanks.
