Career Reinvention

DAN MCGINN: Welcome to Dear HBR: from Harvard Business Review. I’m Dan McGinn.

ALISON BEARD: And I’m Alison Beard. Work can be frustrating. But it doesn’t have to be. We don’t need to let the conflicts get us down.

DAN MCGINN: That’s where Dear HBR: comes in. We take your questions, look at the research, talk to the experts, and help you move forward. Today we’re talking about pivoting your career with Monica Higgins. She’s a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Monica, thanks for coming on the show.

MONICA HIGGINS: Thanks for having me.

DAN MCGINN: Now, you spent a bunch of years at the business school. Now you’re at the School of Education. Is it easier to do these pivots today? Are employers more open to people who don’t have a linear career path?

MONICA HIGGINS: Well, today, of course, we’re dealing with this pandemic, and so employers right now are feeling themselves at risk. So that means it’s in some ways more difficult for them to take a chance on somebody who doesn’t have a proven track record in a particular area, and somebody who is kind of pivoting or exploring. But on the other hand, they have to do that. So, if you can convince folks that perhaps some of these things you did in the past could apply in a new way, then there could be a real win/win. And that’s what you’re looking for.

ALISON BEARD: What are some of the biggest obstacles that people face when they’re trying to reinvent themselves?

MONICA HIGGINS: Part of it is just simply their mindset to kind of think, yeah, I’ve done that well, and I can do that well, and I’ll get rewarded for it. But what do I actually want to do? And that’s a very different question, and it requires that you step out and start actually exploring, not the previous path so much, but new opportunities or new ideas, and talking to different people you might not otherwise have had a conversation with.

ALISON BEARD: OK, let’s go to the first question. Dear HBR: I’ve had the opportunity to make a living doing what I love. I’m a professional dancer. I’ve been one for the past 16 years. However, dance careers are relatively short. Sixteen years is actually really long. Many dancers then transition to totally different careers. So I’ve done as much school as I could while dancing full time and teaching on the side. I now have a graduate certificate in arts administration and a master’s degree in museum studies. I’ve volunteered for numerous arts and education outreach programs and interned in two arts administration positions. I’ve networked with other people passionate about the arts. In my own dance company, I’ve volunteered for non-performance roles. I’ve also shared my interest with the director and pitched a couple of ideas, but the company is under new leadership and not willing to take too many risks outside of what’s been done in the past. So, despite all these efforts, I feel like I’m not making any headway. I’ve applied for assistant and associate positions, but I’m competing with people who have more applicable experience and education than I do. These small organizations seem to prefer candidates who’ve done the job before, since training time and other resources are limited. I don’t even get interviews. Of course, I’m also concerned by the abysmally low salaries that nonprofits pay to entry-level positions. I wonder if my best option is to just become a freelance teacher, creator, entrepreneur. But I’d rather have the stability of a secure job with benefits and a clear path forward. The stress of this career change has been wearing away at me. Is there anything else I should be doing? Monica, what do you think?

MONICA HIGGINS: Well, I think she actually has a lot going for her. So, I’d love to look at this from an asset-based perspective  First of all, she has a passion for something. This woman has a clear passion and commitment to dance, and the dance profession itself basically breeds this kind of sense of a certain discipline and ability to work extraordinarily hard, hours upon hours getting feedback, always, always, always. And as a result, she’s probably got a really thick skin. So going out into a marketplace right now, wow, she has that kind of mindset, those sorts of capabilities, that dedication, that work ethic, as well as what she was talking about, which is the passion for the arts.

ALISON BEARD: Yeah, I totally agree. I think that teaching part-time, going to school, getting her master’s degree, being willing to volunteer, also networking, talking to her director, pitching ideas. She’s doing everything right. But there’s this hurdle she has to overcome, convincing people that although her experience isn’t fully and directly relevant, it actually is. So how does she begin to think about her assets in a way that will make other hiring managers find them compelling?

MONICA HIGGINS: What I was thinking was, well, it’s wonderful she’s gotten this other credential in museum studies. But actually, if you look at where the pain is in the marketplace right now, it’s revenue. It’s cashflow. It’s how do you create a sustainable business model? And for her, being in the kind of sales or development side of things, I think would be really interesting for her to explore. So, if she could figure out how to move into that space, she would really get the thrill of being forward-facing, front-facing, showcasing artists, and at the same time providing value, as in fundraising in some kind of creative fashion, for a nonprofit.

DAN MCGINN: With her certificate, she’s probably already got at least a little bit of training on the financial management side of nonprofits and museums. I was struck by two things. Number one, Monica, you talked about mindset as an obstacle that people have to making these kinds of changes. And it seems like the fact that she’s in, really an athletic kind of career that has an end date on it. You can’t be a dancer for your 40-year career. That seems to have really motivated her to go out and get outside training, to continue her education, and to really plan her life around the idea that she’s going to have to pivot sometime probably in her 30s or 40s. So she’s got that going for her. The second thing was, I suspect that whatever move she makes, it will be somewhere related to dance. I don’t think it’s just going to be a jump out of the blue to the Museum of Fine Arts. I think it’s going to come somewhere out of the dance universe that she makes her next move.

ALISON BEARD: I completely agree with both of you. I think that in a way, we want her to think more broadly. But then, also, more focused. It’s what Herminia Ibarra has talked about in terms of career invention, you need to explore multiple identities and sort of not fixate on this one thing that you thought was going to be your transition. You need to think, OK, well, what are all the things I could do? And I completely agree with you, Monica, that fundraising is where the need is and where people are going to be interested in what she has to say and willing to hire. And I agree with you, Dan, that dance is her thing. That should be her focus.

MONICA HIGGINS: Absolutely. One of the things that Herminia Ibarra talks about in her research on provisional selves, it tells us that one of the ways of shifting mindset is by talking to people about what they do and imagining yourself in that role. So what I saw with her reaching out and trying different jobs, she was kind of doing all these experiments herself. I would also love to see her reach out to perhaps some associations, women-in-nonprofit associations. There are so many different ways in which you can kind of get that quick look, or even an in-depth look, by developing relationships. I don’t know who she’s talking to, but to get that information that she needs, to do as you were saying, Alison, to think more broadly, but not forget what she is so good at and passionate about, which is dance.

DAN MCGINN: Is it an advantage that in the nonprofit and arts and museum space there’s a well-developed of volunteerism? Would that be a foot in the door for her?

MONICA HIGGINS: That’s a great point. It sounds like this new leader was not willing to take too many risks, but on the other hand, given the situation, and given what you’re saying, my bet is that she could pitch something.

ALISON BEARD: Yeah, I think her frustration is that she feels like she’s doing all of that, yet still hasn’t made any headway. There’s a local arts organization, a dance company, actually, in Boston, called Urbanity Dance. It is a former professional dancer who decided to start her own company, and they just launched the best creative virtual fundraiser I’ve seen, where they had, you know, videos of people dancing, and it was coordinated on multiple screens. And so, if she can pitch that kind of idea to her director, I think that’s something the company will want to listen to. That does bring up a question for me, though, because she asked about being a teacher, creator, entrepreneur, which is exactly what the founder of this organization I just spoke about, Betsy Graves, did. So could that be a possible avenue for her?

MONICA HIGGINS: Well, this gets back to that question of thinking long term. And I think she could certainly think about that long term, but also we’re going to be in an economic crisis sort of situation certainly for a few years. So, I think exploring the development side of this business and of nonprofits would be a terrific next step for her.

DAN MCGINN: She talks directly about her concern about the salaries in the field that she’s moving into. How should she think about that challenge of what she’s trying to do?

MONICA HIGGINS: You know, honestly, I think, unfortunately, given the situation that we’re in right now, it’s finding some form of stability as you think longer-term.

DAN MCGINN: So Alison, what’s our summary?

ALISON BEARD: So, first, we congratulate her. We think that she has so many assets, and we think she has a bright future. We’d encourage her to explore multiple paths in arts organizations, but also to focus on what her passion and expertise is, which is dance. So we’d like her to talk to lots of different people working for companies about potential jobs that she could play within them. Especially in the current crisis, we would encourage her to look at where the greatest need is, and that is in development and fundraising. She should build those skills if she doesn’t already have them, and there are ways to get really creative in those roles and use her dance experience to make a more compelling case for donations. We’d like to see her pitch her ideas, but also projects, specific projects to her director and to other dance companies. Long-term, we think she certainly might eventually want to launch and run her own organization, but we think right now it’s really better for her to get experience within strong organizations, doing roles that they think are key and most important now.

DAN MCGINN: Dear HBR: For the past few years, I’ve been working for the Canadian military. I was recently selected for a scholarship program to go back to university and then commissioned as an officer, a leadership position. I’ve been doing very well in school. Now I’m thinking of possibly leaving the military for other careers, like law. Is it worth it to leave a stable income job with guaranteed promotions? Or should I venture out towards a more flexible career that may interest me more? If I stay in the military, I can be moved anywhere, but I’ll gain valuable experience that can be applied later when I retire from service. That’s at around 45 years old, a relatively young age, but one that would be considered old for starting a new career. If I left, I would be able to focus on a new career immediately, but I’d give up the comfort of steady income for a couple of years. Is it worth the risk? Monica, what do you think?

MONICA HIGGINS: Hm. So, this sounds like somebody who has real potential, pulled out, in a sense, essentially an unskilled worker who’s been pulled out to go back to school, with a scholarship. Now, generally, that means for the military that they see this as somebody who has tremendous potential and possible opportunity within the military, and indeed this person knows that he’s going to be promoted upon return. So from my perspective, you’d really need to know what it is that you want to do before you leave a situation like that.

ALISON BEARD: Yeah. I think there are huge benefits to becoming a military officer. We’ve published articles by Boris Groysberg and co-authors that talk about how many former officers become senior leaders in organizations. There was one study that showed they make up 3% of the US adult male population, but about three times that of the CEOs of S&P 500 firms. There are so many lessons you can learn through that experience that no one else has access to. So, my gut reaction is, keep going in that career path.

DAN MCGINN: I’d pause on that a little bit, for two reasons. Well, first let me say, the plan that he’s sketching out here, if he stays in the service until he’s 45, retires with a pension, and then starts a second career, I’ve seen that work out wonderfully for people. The two things in his letter that give me a little bit of pause, he doesn’t sound like he loves the military. He says, should I venture out towards a more flexible career that may interest me more? He also seems to be aware that if he stays in the military, they can move him anywhere at any time. And that can be tremendously hard on families. And it’s not clear what his family situation is right now, what it might be in five or ten years. Those are two of the big costs of staying in the military and following this plan. Do those seem relevant?

MONICA HIGGINS: Absolutely. I would say, those are relevant, and it just wasn’t clear from his letter, what’s his obligation to stay, and how long is that? I just couldn’t figure that out. But it isn’t entirely clear from his letter what, why the law? How much does he know about the law? Is there a way for him, certainly in the military, there are generally people who, you know, are able to get some training and become lawyers, even within the military, or engineers. But I would love to see him talk to some people in and beyond the military. I can’t tell, does he have mentors? And clearly, he’s got sponsors. But does he have mentors? Does he have people that he can talk to? It just feels like he’s early-stage to me.

ALISON BEARD: And I think also, you can do a ton of thinking about what you want long term when you’re young, but that can change as you get older. [LAUGHTER] So buying himself a little bit more time, keeping as many possibilities open as possible, seems wise.

MONICA HIGGINS: Maybe there’s even some training that the military might pay for. If he decided, yes, the law looks interesting to me. Maybe there’s some ways that he can go down that path and actually get trained in that area, maybe even serve in that area, and then make a move out of the military. It just seems like there are so many possibilities for him.

DAN MCGINN: Should the economic climate play into his decision? One of the benefits of the military is, they tend not to do layoffs, pretty stable place to work for the most part. Should that be something he factors in?

MONICA HIGGINS: Absolutely. You know, it feels to me as though we might tell them, irrespective of the economic climate, you know, hold, stick where you are. Learn and grow. Talk to people. Find mentors as well as sponsors  But especially now. It’s a perfect time for him to do that. It’s even a better time.

DAN MCGINN: One thing he addresses here is the idea that at 45, coming out of the military, at that retirement, that it will be really hard to start a new career. Is he overestimating the difficulty of that? My perception is, it’s gotten easier for military people to start the second career, partly because of what Alison said at the beginning. We know these are really high quality, well-trained people.

ALISON BEARD: And so many organizations now have dedicated programs designed to draw in military leaders.

MONICA HIGGINS: Oh, absolutely. I mean, I am so glad, Alison, that you brought in that research. I actually think, being in the military, reaching, I don’t know what position he would end up at, but I would think that he would be highly desirable, and this idea that he could potentially move into a particular area or specialty, I mean, there’s law. There’s engineering. There are probably other specialties. Why not getting that training paid for, then getting some practice. My guess is, 45 is young for having all of that experience. Right?

ALISON BEARD: How should our letter writer, if he does continue with the military for an extensive period of time, but still wants to make a switch eventually, how does he make sure he keeps his mind open to it?

MONICA HIGGINS: It’s absolutely about talking to people that are beyond your working and military colleagues. So, there’s some really interesting research on social networks, and for a long time, those of us who did research in this area felt that networks are about providing exposure and visibility and information. That’s so true, but it all gets back, or it also gets back to mindset. If you talk to people who actually have different career paths, you can’t possibly imagine that that is an option for you, and that also links to Herminia Ibarra’s work that networks can be both pipes and prisms and can really alter the way you think about yourself and your career and how you fit into the world, and how this career fits into your life, and how you can contribute to other people and other organizations and society. So I would encourage him to build that broader ranging, you know, personal board of directors. It’s going to be hard because he is nestled in the military, but he can do it.

ALISON BEARD: So Dan, what are we telling him?

DAN MCGINN: We think he’s in a great situation right now. He’s been identified by the military as a high potential to become an officer. We recognize that the military is one of the best developmental training grounds around. We think he feels some pressure to plan out the next 20 years right now. It seems like he sees it as a binary choice. Either I leave the military soon, or I stay until I’m 45. We don’t think he should approach it that way. By going into this officer training program, he’s probably committed for the next couple of several years. We think he should use that time to explore, to try to learn, to try to gain some specialized training. That’s especially true during a recession. In times of economic instability, the military can be a pretty secure and stable place to be for the next several years. He’s in very good shape. He’s got some great options. And he should embrace the opportunity the military has given him.

ALISON BEARD: OK, last question. Dear HBR: I’ve been a teacher for five years, but not a year has gone by without me considering leaving education altogether and going into a different field. It boils down to a desire to be challenged more in my work. I’m particularly interested in the tech industry, and maybe even more than that, salary. Even with a master’s degree, it would take two more years in my current position to hit $50,000 a year. At this rate, it will take years for my husband and me to achieve our financial and familial goals. I’ve tried enormous public schools and small private schools. Though I really enjoy some aspects of what I do, and I’ve had a lot of success, I just don’t get enough job satisfaction out of teaching to justify the financial sacrifice. Quality resources on how to transition effectively out of teaching are surprisingly difficult to find. Some articles list jobs that would lead to similar salaries, like professional tutor, school counselor or administrator, or curriculum writer. No thank you. A friend of mine who successfully switched from teaching said that teachers have lots of transferrable skills, organization, communication, people management, event and curricular planning, presentation skills, public speaking, and loads of interpersonal skills. The thing is, people in corporate positions often don’t really understand what teachers do. So teachers aren’t taken seriously. How can I best portray my time in the classroom in a way that doesn’t pigeonhole me? What can I say to get my foot in the door? I know I want to leave teaching, but I linger between optimism and crushing self-doubt.

MONICA HIGGINS: Wow. So, this is a tough one, but we need some reframing here. So first of all, I would say, you want to leave teaching, but do you want to leave education? So education is a very broad topic. We can think about leadership development. We can think about adult development. We can think about human resource training. There are so many ways that this letter writer can think about, again, from an asset-based perspective, what do you have that you can offer? So, let’s recognize you may not want to be a classroom teacher, but that doesn’t mean you can’t pivot to something which can build on your strengths, which is understanding education.

ALISON BEARD: Even her mention of the tech industry makes me think, wow, the biggest growth area in education right now is technology, especially post this crisis, in which all educators have had to become experts in technology and virtual classrooms and get creative. So, surely, this is actually a growth area.

MONICA HIGGINS: Absolutely. I mean, this is an example where somebody is trying to pivot, and she’s moving into an area or is interested in an area, technology, coupled with what she’s done in the past, which is just exploding. The challenge is, she needs to figure out where she can contribute, and how she can learn more and credential herself in the area of technology? It’s one thing to say, I don’t want to teach. It’s another thing to say, what do I actually want to do in technology? You need to have a story both for, not so much, in fact, for what you want to move from, but much more so where you want to move to, and that’s what she needs to work.

DAN MCGINN: Yeah, I felt the same way. She knows what she wants to leave, but she doesn’t have much more than a vague sense of her destination yet. And when I think about the situation she’s in, I thought back to the dancer in our first question, and in a perfect world, in a year or two, she’s going to look at a little bit more like the dancer who has known that she was going to leave dance, and has spent some time getting certificates and doing some study, and sort of making a plan on how to get from here to there, rather than sort of vaguely saying, I don’t like what I’m doing. I want to go kind of in that direction, but not really gone further than that.

MONICA HIGGINS: Absolutely. And she needs some credentialing. Unfortunately, having a BA in English and a master’s in education is, along with her years of teaching, are definitely going to signal a certain kind of area of education, and she needs to shift. So I mean, right now, you can take all sorts of courses online for free in the area of technology. And so, I would take that. She’s got to get some more, because she has to signal as well as gain some substantive knowledge in technology in order to convince potential employers.

ALISON BEARD: So let me throw a wrench in the works. She does say that administration, curriculum, all of it, she’s actually not interested in. So what if she rejects her education idea and says, actually, I don’t want to do that anymore, even though it’s where I got my master’s? How could she explore other industries, different types of roles?

MONICA HIGGINS: I think, again, she may be thinking too narrowly. I mean, I have students, I teach at the [Harvard] Graduate School of Education, I have students who go off and work at Google. You know, education is, particularly for tech companies, an area of growth. So I’m thinking, the employers she might want to look at, and I know she’s started looking, are actually different kinds of employers and different kinds of roles than the ones she’s been thinking about so far. There is a problem, though, which is a different wrench. When people interview and they have been teachers, oftentimes in, what I’ve heard, in interview settings, and maybe she’s even experienced this, people think they already understand what she’s been doing, because they have done education themselves. They’ve been in a classroom. So I see that as a tripwire for her and she’s trying to fit in.

ALISON BEARD: So what does she do to overcome it?

MONICA HIGGINS: This is where I think it does relate to the questions and ideas we had for the dancer. I think she needs to change and reframe what she’s doing away from teaching to, she needs some ed/tech. And the nifty thing is, if she is actually teaching right now in this global pandemic, she is doing mini-experiments with her students.

DAN MCGINN: Monica, when you were talking about how you have students at the Graduate School of Education who go to work for Google, that resonated with me. You know, I have a family member who thought she wanted to be a teacher, didn’t really like it, ended up getting a job in the onboarding operation of Goldman Sachs and having a career that felt a lot more like a Wall Street career than a teacher career. I think it would be useful for this letter writer to not just know vaguely that there are examples of that, but to actually have like role models, like somebody that she can look at on LinkedIn and say, oh, they went from public school teacher to X. I wonder how they did that? I mean, I think she needs to, almost like you would sort of explore the career trajectories of famous people in terms of a biography. I think she needs to like actually look at how people get from A to B and look at very concrete specific examples of people who’ve done it. And that will give her a little bit more of a sense of what’s possible and maybe help her be more specific in what she wants to do in terms of job title, versus, I want to work in tech.

ALISON BEARD: I agree with you, Dan. In addition to talking with people about different paths, making those people are part of her network, you know, there’s the classic research from Daniel Levin on dormant ties. And the idea that you reach out to people who are well beyond your teacher circle to find people who will give you more creative ideas about what you can do with that teaching experience, and then actually make the connections that will help you get the job.

MONICA HIGGINS: Yeah, and so far, from what we read, she’s been reading some articles. Well, this is a true educator. I get that you’re reading articles. And she’s talked to one person. But she needs to talk to a whole bunch of people. Our research on role modeling actually says that the way we figure out what’s a good model for us is by picking and pulling from different role models and figuring out what makes sense. So doing some research, she’s probably very good at it. You know? She’s reading articles on synthesizing and teaching her students, you know, work from multiple kinds of examples and multiple possibilities, and say, OK, I’m seeing this kind of pattern. And let me go talk to a bunch of different people, as you were saying, Alison. I liked both those ideas.

DAN MCGINN: So Alison, what’s our advice?

ALISON BEARD: We’d like her to start with a little bit of reframing. We think that she might be able to merge her experience and expertise with her future ambitions in technology. Ed-tech is a huge growth area, especially right now. We want her to get some credentialing in ed-tech, maybe take online courses. Take these mini-steps towards this new path, and especially if she’s working in the pandemic, teaching in virtual classrooms, she could get really creative, and that would enable her to shift the conversation when she’ stalking to potential future employers to those projects, instead of the teacher stereotypes that they have in their heads. We want her to talk to people who have had different career paths to get inspiration, and then explore multiple possibilities to find the right firm for herself. Ultimately we think that if she thinks broadly, she could find employment at organizations like LinkedIn, Google, Goldman Sachs. She just needs to open her mind about the possibilities.

DAN MCGINN: Great. Monica, thanks for coming on the show.

MONICA HIGGINS: Thank you so much for having me.

DAN MCGINN: That’s Monica Higgins. She’s a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Thanks to the listeners who wrote us with their questions. Now we want to know your question. Send us an email with your workplace challenge and how we can help. The email address is, DearHBR@HBR.org.

ALISON BEARD: We also want to thank Louis Weeks and Nick DePrey for composing our theme music.

DAN MCGINN: We hope you liked today’s episode. And if you want to get the next one automatically, please go to your podcast app and hit, subscribe.

ALISON BEARD: And if you liked the show, please give us a five-star review.

DAN MCGINN: I’m Dan McGinn.

ALISON BEARD: And I’m Alison Beard. Thanks for listening to Dear HBR:.