This week brought another wave of layoffs across industries from biopharma and technology to media, leaving thousands of professionals, including some in the federal workforce, suddenly facing uncertainty. While the full scope of the cuts remains unclear, the impact is undeniable: careers disrupted.
Yet what’s striking about this moment is how different it feels from the pivots of just two years ago. The workforce has become more complex and increasingly competitive. Between shifting Google algorithms, the dominance of applicant tracking systems and the rise of no-code AI tools and autonomous agents, finding meaningful work has become both an art and a science. Fear often drowns out optimism, and resilience now feels like a daily discipline.
Today, the traditional career ladder has given way to a web of reinvention. The path forward is no longer linear. Pivoting isn’t the exception. It’s the new strategy for staying relevant and fulfilled in a world that keeps rewriting the rules.
Like any strategy, it unfolds in phases. A successful pivot demands the courage to ask for help at precisely the right moment.
Phase One: The Disruption
Every pivot begins with a jolt. Sometimes it’s voluntary. Other times, it’s thrust upon you. Either way, disruption is the catalyst.
The modern challenge of this phase isn’t just the change itself, but how you interpret it. Research from stress mindset and challenge vs. threat frameworks shows that framing stress as a challenge often leads to better outcomes, such as improved focus, emotional regulation and performance, compared to viewing it as a threat. In practice, this means paying close attention to your internal dialogue.
Instead of asking, “Why is this happening to me?” ask, “What can this teach me?” Inventory your strengths, document your transferable skills and look for patterns in what energizes you. This reflection transforms disruption into data, which then becomes direction.
How To Navigate The Disruption
When everything feels uncertain, clarity often begins on paper. The Pivot Journal is your personal compass through career turbulence. Think of it as a dedicated space to record, reflect and reframe your experiences as they unfold. Writing grounds the chaos of change and turns emotion into insight.
How to use your Pivot Journal effectively:
• Record the reality. Each week, document what’s happening—key events, emotions and decisions. Capturing your thoughts in real time helps you separate what you can control from what you can’t.
• Identify your transferable strengths. After each entry, highlight moments when you showed adaptability, leadership or problem-solving. These become the raw material for your next professional narrative.
• Spot emerging patterns. Review your notes monthly to uncover recurring themes such as what excites you, what drains you and where opportunities might lie. Patterns reveal direction long before you consciously decide to pivot.
Phase Two: The Design
Once disruption clarifies your direction, it’s time to design your next chapter. This is where strategy replaces emotion. Approach your career as a living business model that evolves based on new data and opportunities.
Professionals who pivot successfully often treat this phase like product development: prototyping, testing and iterating. That might mean launching a side project to prove a concept or enrolling in a certification course to expand credibility.
By 2030, nearly 60% of the global workforce will need reskilling, with many requiring training to adapt to technological changes such as AI. Both employees and employers see the value in reskilling, as 74% of Millennials and Gen Z workers say they would quit without development opportunities, while businesses see it as a strategy to close skill gaps, increase productivity, and reduce expensive hiring costs.
Strategy here is about precision and how it fits your long-term vision.
How To Master The Design
Turning intention into progress starts with clear, measurable career KPIs. Just as businesses use KPIs to track growth, professionals can use them to measure alignment between daily actions and long-term goals.
How to set effective career KPIs:
• Define what success looks like. Identify three to five metrics that reflect your current priorities, such as new certifications earned, networking connections built or interviews secured. Each KPI should be specific and time-bound.
• Measure both learning and impact. Track skill growth and influence like projects completed, presentations delivered or mentorship relationships established.
• Review and recalibrate. Revisit your KPIs monthly or quarterly. If a goal no longer fits your evolving vision, adjust it. The power of a KPI lies in its ability to help you steer with intention.
Phase Three: The Expansion
The final phase is both relational and reflective. Once you’ve set the design, you scale it through connection and collaboration. Too often, professionals treat networking as a post-pivot activity, but it’s the engine that sustains growth.
And once momentum builds, maintain it through mentorship and reciprocity. Trusting in the process doesn’t mean waiting for results; it means staying engaged while outcomes unfold.
How To Sustain The Expansion
Modern career expansion is about strategic specificity. Asking for help is a strategy for acceleration. But how you ask determines the quality of the guidance you receive.
Top three ways to ask for help effectively:
• Be precise in your ask. Replace vague requests like “Can we chat about my career?” with focused questions such as “I’m exploring brand strategy roles. What skills do hiring managers value most right now?” Specificity turns a favor into a productive exchange.
• Frame the request around respect for time. When reaching out, suggest a short window: “Would you have 15 minutes this week?” or offer to send key questions in advance. Clarity shows professionalism and increases your chance of getting a response.
• Follow up with reflection, not repetition. After receiving advice, act on it and then share what you learned. A short thank-you note that highlights how their insight lays the foundation for an ongoing relationship.
Careers today are less like ladders and more like constellations: collections of experiences that, when viewed together, reveal the shape of who you’ve become. The question isn’t whether you’ll pivot, but how intentionally you’ll navigate the phases when you do.