Episode Transcript

Matt Villanueva 0:00
So to answer my original question, is it getting harder to be a job, pivoting, industry hopping, it will be harder, and may take longer. You may have to be open to a lesser compensation in even a less desirable workplace.

Chris Villanueva 0:16
Welcome to the Let’s Eat, Grandma Career Warrior Podcast

Chris Villanueva 0:24
and Welcome to the Let’s Eat, Grandma Career Warrior Podcast, where our goal is not only to help you land your dream job, but to help you live your best life. My name is Chris Villanueva. I am the Co Founder and CEO of Let’s Eat, Grandma the resume service for mid to senior level professionals. So excited for today’s episode, because we’re going to talk all about career change.

Chris Villanueva 0:45
Career change is a huge theme of this podcast and of our resume service that I don’t think we cover enough. There are so many folks who are deciding they want to switch industries, switch position titles, or just switch all together. They just need to change and so for this episode, we’re going to talk about the concept of why now can be a great time for you to make that leap. Maybe today’s episode is going to be that catalyst for change that really gets you moving and we’re also going to be talking about the difficulties of career change.

Chris Villanueva 1:16
Why we may have all these talents, you know, we may not be good at one thing and commit to that thing for the rest of our life, but oftentimes hiring managers expect to see some sort of coherent narrative on our resumes and in our job searches. So why is career change? Okay? We’ll also talk about that concept as well, because we don’t want you to feel alone and like you were the only one who’s going to be going through this.

Chris Villanueva 1:42
In fact, almost 50% of our clients. Number fluctuates from time to time, but anywhere between 33 to 50% of our clients are career changers. You are not alone when it comes to wanting to make this. It doesn’t matter how old you are, either. We’re talking people in their 40s, 50s and even up to their 60s, who are making these changes here.

Chris Villanueva 2:03
So we’ll get into that in a second. First, I wanted to announce our winner for our resume package giveaway. Congratulations to Atlanta from New York City. I’m so excited that you’re going to be working with our team here at Let’s see grandma. We hope to get your resume in tip top shape and Congratulations for winning our free starter package. I also wanted to say that we are going to announce another contest at the end of this episode.

Chris Villanueva 2:29
We’re gonna do another resume package giveaway, and I’ll give you information on how to submit your name at the end of this episode. Without further ado, here’s my co founder, Matthew Villanueva, he’s also my brother. He’s going to be talking about career change, some things that he’s noticed and hopefully get you inspired to make your own change.

Matt Villanueva 2:54
Hello, Career Warrior Podcast. This is your co host, Matt Villanueva, co founder and brother of Chris Villanueva here at Let’s Eat, Grandma. I am happy to be speaking to you guys today. We’re gonna learn a little bit about what I perceive to be the environment when it comes to career changes.

Matt Villanueva 3:11
Now listen up if you’re not intending a career change. If you’re not in that category as a professional right now, maybe you will be in a few years. Maybe you were five years ago, and you have some wisdom to share with me and our other listeners. Perhaps this is not something you plan on, but when, God forbid, you know the layoff happens, or the situation in your life and your personal circumstance, that means that you have to pivot, and you have to change from one company type to another, this may become pertinent for you, so listen up.

Matt Villanueva 3:42
That’s my pitch to listen in, even if you don’t consider yourself a career changer or an intending one. All right, is the question of the day. Is career changing harder in 2024 my pitch backed up by speaking to hundreds of clients each month in assisting and helping out over a third of our customers at Let’s Eat, Grandma, in understanding the market in the literature, and speaking to plenty of other career assistant professionals career coaches, is that it is not harder.

Matt Villanueva 4:15
It is not in fact, it’s ever more prevalent and it’s ever more possible today than it was last year. I’m going to give you guys some real, hard reality tips by the end of this, and I’m going to tell you right now, it’s not going to be easy if that is something that you’re intending on doing, but it is possible based on what I understand, based on my perspective, fact or stat of the newsletter, which I want to preface, if you were already this is our second installment of Matt’s coffee thoughts.

Matt Villanueva 4:44
In the first I’ve already told y’all, I’m trying not to make this a stat heavy podcast. I want this to be well researched. I want to give you guys an impression and understanding of the reality of the market. However, I don’t want it to be spouting all sorts of facts and stats that are surrounding this job search, which is not always possible. People to find online, and is honestly not always true.

Matt Villanueva 5:02
A lot of it is folk wisdom. I want to stray away from that just for a little bit today, at least, but I do want to tell you this fact that I give to you is one that we’ve all heard if, at least if you’re in this space, and it’s one that you might have heard even if you’re just your average, normal, everyday professional, the average person will change careers five or more times in their professional life.

Matt Villanueva 5:25
Think about that. It’s true. If it’s not the average person they say will change careers five or more times. I’ve heard five to seven in their professional life. Now, reasons why that’s problematic. Who is this average person? What poll did they use? Is this us? Is this global? Is this dependent on age? Is this dependent on stage of career? Is this really true and modern up to date for the 2024, job market?

Matt Villanueva 5:52
I think we can all probably name people who fit this mold, who are in that category, but I’d say more often than not, that seems astounding, at least to me. So on one hand, while this does hearing this does give us as professionals, the Liberty in the freedom to think, Hey, listen, I don’t have to be in one bubble now from the time of graduation, or if you even went to college until my retirement.

Matt Villanueva 6:17
So hearing that, hearing that astounding fact, might give you that freedom to think that right? On the other hand, that’s quite a lot of changes, and I would struggle to find someone who, depending on how you define a career change, has honestly done that and has done that successfully. That would be very astounding to me. Now let’s go ahead and define a career change as we call it.

Matt Villanueva 6:37
Career change is either a pivot from one industry to another, or one job type to another, or both. And oftentimes it is, when you think of a big, sweeping career change, it probably is both. Hey, I got to get out of dodge. I’m doing this currently, and I wanted to find my new career person, my new path, my new brand, my new persona.

Matt Villanueva 7:00
What does that look like? Right? That’s usually what people think of when they hear a career pivot. When I speak to my many hundreds of clients each month, I see a little bit of both, and it’s honestly not overwhelmingly one or the other. It can be as small as, hey, I’m within manufacturing, and I am an operations lead, and I want to stay within manufacturing, but I want to go over to be a production supervisor.

Matt Villanueva 7:22
I’m doing something functionally pretty different. Maybe I’m still within my company, or at least the mission of what I’m doing and what we’re providing. The product itself, the product line is the same, but I’m doing something different, right?

Matt Villanueva 7:35
Many people would consider that not a giant pivot or career change, but perhaps that’s where this fact of the newsletter is coming from just how you define it, defining it loosely, another type of pivot, going back to the analogy, or to the definition being job type or job function.

Matt Villanueva 7:51
Hey, perhaps I’m a Marketing I’m a product manager, and I’m working for a paper company, right? But now I’m going to switch over from this physical product, this paper, and I’m going to switch over to a health tech startup here in Austin, Texas, right? I’m still doing the same thing. I’m still within marketing and I’m still a product manager.

Matt Villanueva 8:13
However, the thing that I’m selling, the thing that I’m the product that I am describing and the product that I am managing has become completely different. That is a career change in and of itself as well. All right, both are possible. Both are feasible, even doing both at the same time and again. Like I said, oftentimes I’m hearing it’s a mixture across both. And I tell them, hey, listen, you’re in good company.

Matt Villanueva 8:36
I mentioned earlier about a little over a third actually, depending on the given month we’ve seen over time, it’s been a little over a third, but it can be from 30 to 45%.

Matt Villanueva 8:45
Of all of our clients are intending to make a career shift, a change, pivot, a transition, whatever you want to call it, that’s quite a lot. This may not be representative of the environment the US or even the global environment. In fact, it probably isn’t. If you are making this career changed, you are doing so, and you might need to leverage that extra help on your resume. You need to get past the ATS systems.

Matt Villanueva 9:12
You need to have the right relevant keywords for the industry that you want to be in without having had that on your resume. That’s difficult, and if you want to learn more about that, I’m sure you can scroll back a dozen or more episodes, and we’re constantly helping you all to refine your approach when it comes to keywords into ATS systems.

Matt Villanueva 9:28
The other reason you probably want to contract a resume service, and probably why we have a larger volume of career transitioners than maybe is representative of the population, is because you need to convince the person who reads your resume to give you a chance?

Matt Villanueva 9:43
Hey, listen, maybe you didn’t go through a applicant tracking system. Maybe they’re just hand selecting the 10 or dozen or two dozen different clients, candidates from their recruiting system, and they’re going to hand read all of them, but when they get to your resume, you.

Matt Villanueva 10:00
You appear at first glance to have no relevancy to the person they’re looking for. That is bad. That is a very salient reason that again, using a resume service working on your resume, using the principles that you can learn in this podcast for free, the blog that we have for free, talking to someone who’s in the industry, finding a mentor, finding a recruiter that you know, and asking them what they would do.

Matt Villanueva 10:25
All of these are really, really good reasons why your resume should be beefed up to make the right pitch for where you want to go. We always talk about in the career warrior podcast that we want to be future facing. We don’t want to be looking backwards.

Matt Villanueva 10:37
What does that mean in context of your resume? Especially don’t just blab on on about everything you’ve done for industry X or job type X. We need to be talking about why what you’ve done in industry or job type X is relevant, beneficial and assists the company, goals and mission of Company Y, industry y, job type Y, right? You need to bridge that gap.

Matt Villanueva 11:01
Once again, just a little bit of a tangent here, but that’s the idea behind, probably why we have more career transitioners than our prevalent in the market. Now, quick caveat as well, though many of us listening to this probably find ourselves saying, Hey, listen, I have skills that can aid or aid myself in Company Y or industry, why or job function y and oftentimes, many of the people I’m calling 10 to 30 years of experience in any one field feel that they can do that anywhere else they go and I mean anywhere, I hear the word anywhere so often that’s a very confident position.

Matt Villanueva 11:44
Saying anywhere is like, you know, it’s a very strong position to have. Doesn’t mean that the other individuals on the other side of the coin, our counterparts, we might call them, the career specialists, are bad or abnormal or are weird or don’t have useful and applicable, applicable skills that are ubiquitous wherever they go, they probably do, but they have their thing, and perhaps it’s just ordained by the powers that be in their brain chemistry and where they fit in society.

Matt Villanueva 12:13
That is really, really good thing for them, even within management and even as an individual contributor, regardless, they’re sticking with the same thing that they’re doing. I will say this for the majority rest of us. You can rest easy that no one person, one recruiter, one hiring manager, one family member can tell you that you are archetype of you as only being good at one industry or one job type.

Matt Villanueva 12:36
So, you know, think of yourself in terms of how you can aid or provide value to where you want to go again, not where you’re coming from. So often that people describe themselves as a jack of all trades, master of none.

Matt Villanueva 12:50
Have you ever heard that phrase typically used in a disparaging way to say that, hey, I’m not really good at any one thing? Kind of just know and dabble in a lot of things. It’s a common thing people say about themselves, and honestly, it’s used as a defeatist remark to them. I say this. Do you know what supposedly the rest of that proverb actually is? It’s Jack of all trades, master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one.

Matt Villanueva 13:19
So actually, the original apparently, the original origin of that phrase is an attempt to uplift or glorify or say that it is actually probably better as a well rounded human being to be good at a lot of things instead of just being one very specific machine, like again, cog in a machine that’s just good at one specific function. I will say time and time again, it’s okay. And I want to call to action by the end of this episode to say, Hey, listen, I feel like I’m that person, like Matt.

Matt Villanueva 13:48
I’m one of your many callers that have described myself that way. Or I want to hear, on the other hand, are you that career specialist who knows and has known since they were a darn kid what they wanted to do? Right? We’ve always, we always think about that. Hey, I want to be a firefighter when I grow up. I want to be an astronaut when I grow up.

Matt Villanueva 14:05
Some of us actually do end up doing those kid fulfilling those kid, like futures, and some of us find ourselves in some weird niche role in government. When you’re doing something, doing data analysis for a very specific department in the government. And you know what? You love your job. You’re going to be there for 20 years. You’ll be there for 30 years.

Matt Villanueva 14:22
You’ll be there years. You’ll be there till the time you graduate, to the time you graduate, time you retire, which is a sort of graduation in life. But anyway, that may be you, and that’s totally fine. But again, to go back to it, my perspective and my take is even you career specialists are probably going to find yourselves, at times, in a shifting environment of shifting market in which you have to support those factors in the environment, in the market, and adjust and adapt to them, and that may mean making a slight change or even a big change.

Matt Villanueva 14:50
Professionally, you may have to, you may not. I hope for a lot of you crave stability that you don’t have to, but for those of you who like opportunity, who like to find something new, who want to and need.

Matt Villanueva 15:00
Two I encourage you to find out if this is possible. For you to go out and to try it, own it, give it a shot. Call me up when you’ve made it done and done it successfully. Fun quote that I that I found Change is hard at first, messy in the middle and gorgeous at the end. That’s from author Robin. Robin Sharma, author of the 5am club. Change is hard at first. We all know that messy in the middle.

Matt Villanueva 15:23
Many of us feel that right now and gorgeous at the end, right for us human beings, that can be altogether very, very true. Some of us thrive in that ever changing, ever shifting environment. Some of us dread it and regardless, if you are in the midst of a career change, you might find that to be true.

Matt Villanueva 15:39
Gone are the days as well, when I hear and I really, really have been doing this for we’ve been doing this for 10 years. Hey, I’ve been at General Motors from the age of 17, crazy. And I didn’t, didn’t finish high school, worked with them, worked my way up. Was on the floor, graduated supervisor, graduated to manager, the lead manager, whatever the hierarchy you follow, it in the flows of that all the way till the age of 65 when I retired, had this big retirement party.

Matt Villanueva 16:07
Everyone was there. He was amazing. I truly, and I kid you not, would hear that a lot, probably about five to seven years ago. Now, not so much. And this is an episode about job hopping or job changing, or how normal or how often it is, but really and truly, this is an episode more about change and about what to expect now and I think most recruiters, most hiring managers, know and expect that we are bringing perspectives.

Matt Villanueva 16:32
We’re bringing different things from our past and from our resumes into the future and into their company. So it’s almost expected nowadays. In fact, if you want to read into something very interesting, look into the loyalty tax. Sometimes that loyalty, that 3040, years plus at one company or even one industry is penalized.

Matt Villanueva 16:53
It’s called the loyalty tax and maybe it does behoove us as professionals to always keep your head in a swivel and always be looking out for what opportunities you have out there where you might make better for yourself, or you might get better. Be that compensation, be that a work environment, be that doing more of what you love and so sometimes it does be with us to look around.

Matt Villanueva 17:12
So to answer my original question, is it getting harder to be a job, pivoting, industry hopping, multi hat wearing, career changer, 2024 it’s a mixed bag, and again, there is no stat I could tell you accurate or not, that would even come close to inform you how yours might go realistically. I told you earlier, it will be harder. It may take longer. You may have to be open to a lesser compensation in even a less desirable workplace.

Matt Villanueva 17:38
You may that all may be true, and it probably is, however, once again, that has not changed. But what has changed in recent times? What has changed even this past year, is going to be better access to training and education. So we can think of that in terms of formal education, master’s programs.

Matt Villanueva 17:57
Think of that as executive certificates, as management certificates could be worksite cross training. It could be online courses, books aplenty. I’ll link another book that I recommend all of our career transitioners listened to in the show notes. And it’s the whole wide internet. It’s even YouTube.

Matt Villanueva 18:14
All of this you have access to yourself as a professional to help gain access and entry to somewhere the previously would not had, right? Even putting on the new resume, that’s a great place to start. But just having the knowledge that was not previously accessible to you to gain entry and access to an industry that you weren’t in before, there are an increase, there is an increase in prevalence of remote and hybrid work sometimes, as we saw early on and early and mid covid, that this can actually help in aid, in people making a switch for themselves.

Matt Villanueva 18:45
There’s an access to more and more online resources for the job search, including baller resume services like ourselves and many others. I’ll give a pitch for LinkedIn stepping up their game. I think it’s a tremendous resource for every single one of our professionals, at least most of them here at Let’s Eat, Grandma that we work with as clients and you Career Warrior Podcast listeners as well, indeed, is a fine resource, and so are a lot of the other job boards that are out there.

Matt Villanueva 19:15
To name a few, monster Glassdoor zip recruiter. Check out flexjobs.com. Is a popular one that I’ve heard in recent years, and a lot more specialty boards. If you’re not checking out job boards that are unique and specialized to your field, you’re missing out. It’s a really good place to gain access to a smaller pool of candidates and to more more serious you would think companies that are interested in posting within your industry.

Matt Villanueva 19:43
You want to go out and seek those out. We have access that we did not have even five years ago, even last year. I thoroughly encourage you to try it. If you have the luxury of being able to afford that volatility of being a career changer, and even if you’re not again, keep your head in a.

Matt Villanueva 19:59
Level. Keep looking at other sources of skills, where other places in your life, where you can upskill, in case you do have to shift, and you don’t want to be stuck in that one be that one cog in the machine, especially for the rest of your career, it might be good time to check out what is out there. I’ll leave you with this.

Matt Villanueva 20:17
Keep doing you, you magical, winding journey, crazy job seeker. You please let me know if you found this episode helpful, and let me know if you are a generalist or if you’re specialist. I’d love to hear your thoughts, and if you want to hear more of something or less of something else, and you all take care and have a great day.

Chris Villanueva 20:35
All right, so that wraps it up for today’s episode. I’m so glad we got into career change again, again. It’s not an easy topic for job seekers, because oftentimes there are so many emotional things going on in the background. Do I want to make that leap? Am I qualified to start applying for these positions? How do I make myself look like a good candidate for a job I’ve never had before? So that is my brother and Co-Founder, Matthew villanueva, can’t thank him enough for hopping on this episode with his series.

Chris Villanueva 21:05
Matt’s coffee thoughts. We’re gonna bring him in in the future to talk more about the things that he’s noticing with our own callers and some advice we can give you. Now. I promised you that I was going to discuss our next giveaway for our resume service. I’m really loving these giveaways because I’m getting to know you better as a listener for this podcast. This giveaway is going to be a little bit different.

Chris Villanueva 21:28
The second one for the people submitting, I want to get people who have been recently laid off doesn’t have to be necessarily like you were laid off this past week. It can be this past year.

Chris Villanueva 21:40
Even if you’re having a tough time and you have been laid off, please head on over to letseatgrandma.com/podcast/ to submit your name for a free resume package. Now the other thing I tried to encourage from last episode is, okay, you have to be a listener in order to submit your name for the giveaway.

Chris Villanueva 21:58
That’s not going to be the case this time, if you have a friend who was going through the situation, you could submit their name and email address, or you can have them submit their name and email. The whole point here is I want folks who have recently been laid off and have I’ve had a tough time, really, and we want to help them to get back on their feet, at least when it comes to their resume, and really get them moving forward in their job search here.

Chris Villanueva 22:23
So head on over again letseatgrandma.com/podcast/ we would love to hear from you all right, this wraps up today’s episode. Thanks so much for tuning in, and I’ll see you next time.

Chris Villanueva 22:35
Career Warrior Podcast, and before you go, remember if you’re not seeing the results you want in your job search, our highly trained team of professional resume writers here at Let’s Eat, Grandma can help head on over to letseatgrandma.com/podcast/ to get a free resume critique and $70 off any one of our resume writing packages. We talk all the time on the show about the importance of being targeted in your job search and with our unique writing process and focus on individual attention, you’ll get a resume cover letter and LinkedIn profile that are highly customized and tailored to your goals to help you get hired faster. Again, head on over to letseatgrandma.com/podcast/ Thanks, and I’ll see you next time you.